Linda Pearse

Dr. Linda Pearse joins Mount Allison University in July of 2011 as Brass Specialist. Pearse comes to Mount Allison with over ten years of professional experience as an orchestral and chamber player on tenor and bass trombones, an award-winning recording artist of new music and early music, a degree in jazz performance, and professional work in musical theatre and interdisciplinary multi-media. She has recently completed a Doctor of Music degree in Brass Pedagogy at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington.

Hailing from a rural area on Vancouver Island, Linda Pearse began her career as a jazz musician at the Cedar Junior High School and Nanaimo District Secondary School, the school jazz programs that produced Diana Krall, Ingrid Jensen and Christine Jensen. Her early love of jazz and improvised music led to a Bachelor of Music degree from McGill University in Montréal in jazz performance. Her studies then took her to Germany where she completed an artist’s diploma in classical trombone performance with Abbie Conant, and she studied early music performance at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. After her studies, Pearse embarked on a professional career as a trombone chamber, soloist, and orchestral player. She has performed with the Malaysian Philharmonic in Kuala Lumpur, the Macau Orchestra in China, the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland, the Stuttgart Opera House Orchestra, the Stuttgart Philharmonic (Germany), and the Kwazulu Natal Philharmonic in South Africa.

In her ten years as a professional musician in Europe, she freelanced with both new music ensembles and early music groups, including mixed-genre collaborative music theatre pieces combining acting and music-making in the Basel Theatre. She also performed with the Basel Sinfonietta, the Musical Theater Stuttgart and played as a contracted musician with Musical Theatre Basel. Pearse has made five recordings, including Adolf Wölfli (2004), with Ruedi Häusermann (director), improvised new music with violin, accordion, tuba and trombone for DRS German Radio Switzerland and Decasia (2002), by Michael Gordon with the new music ensemble, Basel Sinfonietta. She has also made a CD recording (2002) of the music of Raphaella Aleotti with Capella Artemisia and a recording with her all-female trombone quartet, “Aurora,” including music of Elizabeth Raum, commissioned for the ensemble for the International Women’s Brass Conference.

Pearse is the winner of two Canada Council of the Arts Grants to Performing Musicians (2008 and 2009), and with her ensemble ¡Sacabuche! she won the 2009 Early Music America Collegium Musicum competition. Recent concerts include performances for the Heinrich Isaac Musicology Conference in Bloomington in May 2010, the Berkeley Early Music Festival with Nigel North and Paul Elliott in June 2010, and a twelve-concert tour to Beijing China with the inter-disciplinary program “Matteo Ricci: His Map and Music.” Her research is forthcoming in the Journal of the Society for Ming Studies and her work on seventeenth-century Italian motets with trombone is under contract for publication with A-R Editions. 

Linda Pearse has a long and distinguished career as a studio teacher on a full range of brass instruments, having taught at the Reinach Music Conservatory in Switzerland, the Macau Conservatory in China, Vincennes University and Indiana University Bloomington. She has taught brass literature, aural skills, written music theory, coached chamber music, taught baroque trombone and conducted brass choir. She has given master classes at Beijing University, China, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vincennes University and Indiana University. She is also a certified Alexander Technique teacher.