Tyler Versluis is an Ontario-based composer and conductor. His music has been commissioned and performed by a growing list of Canadian ensembles and organizations, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Penderecki String Quartet, Soundstreams, ARRAYmusic, Freesound, Caution Tape Sound Collective, the Toy Piano Composers, and VIVA! Youth Singers of Toronto. His music is also performed internationally, with premières and repeat performances in the USA, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania.
Tyler is an alumnus of a number of prestigious workshops, including the Winnipeg New Music Festival Composers Institute, the Soundstreams Emerging Composers Workshop, Vancouver's Art Song Lab, the Orford Academy, the Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop, and the ARRAYmusic Young Composers Workshop. In addition, he has attended festivals abroad including the Composers+ Summer Academy in Lithuania, and the Atlantic Music Festival and Fresh Inc Festival in the United States. In 2021 he was the guest composer at the Arts Forum Festival in Kraków, and in 2022 he was the only Canadian composer featured at Festival Forfest in Czechia in 2022. Also in 2022 his work for accordion duo and woodwind trio "Quintet" was released on the album "Accosphere" on Poland's DUX Records. Tyler studied music at Brock University and later completed a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Toronto, where he received the John Weinzweig Graduating Scholarship. His principal teachers were Abigail Richardson-Schulte, Gary Kulesha and Norbert Palej. In 2017 Tyler received the Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Composition for his work for accordion and percussion, “3 Unuttered Miracles”, and also received the Cecilia String Quartet Composition Prize for his String Quartet No. 1 “Bogusławów”. In addition to his composition work, Tyler has worked as an organist and choirmaster in various liturgical settings since 2008, and works as a mentor specializing in music creation and theory. Since 2020, he is the Programming Director of the Canadian Composers Orchestra, which currently produces produces high-quality digital content of Canadian classical compositions, including video performances, score-videos and educational content. In 2021 he co-founded the VIVA! Singers Creation Workshop with Laura Menard, which introduces young people to the world of composition, music programming and songwriting. Since July 2023, Tyler is President of the Canadian League of Composers. Originally from St. Catharines, Tyler now lives and works in Toronto. |