Laura Hawley is a Canadian musician and educator known for her compelling approach to musical leadership and artistic programming, multi-faceted community engagement, distinctive compositional style, and passionate advocacy for Canadian choral art. Her music, often influenced by creative community connections and exchanges, has been described in The WholeNote as conjuring “the forces of nature and its effect on the human spirit.”
Hawley is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and is currently. Her works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded around the world and nationally by many fine ensembles including Elektra Women’s Choir, Pro Coro Canada, Inuksuk Drum Dancers, New Dublin Voices, Canadian Chamber Choir, Vancouver Youth Choir, Korora Choir Association, and Shallaway Youth Choir. Her setting of the French poem Au champ d’honneur is performed annually on national broadcast by the Ottawa Children’s Choir and Canadian Armed Forces Band as part of the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial. Her piece, Alhamdoulillah, became internationally famous when it went viral on YouTube with the title “Welcome to Canada Syrian Refugees” in December 2014. In 2019, the Canadian Chamber Choir toured and recorded her multi-movement work, In Song. Laura is a 2019 recipient of the Association of Canadian Women Composers’ Roberta Stephan Award, and has been Composer-In-Residence with Cantiamo Choirs of Ottawa (2003-2017) Halifax Camerata Singers (2021-2022), and Vancouver Chamber Choir (2024-2025 season).
While Ms. Hawley writes for many of Canada’s top performing ensembles, her unique understanding of developing musicians and sensitivity to a commissioner’s vision has established her as a widely sought composer for educational ensembles as well. Laura has written a variety of instrumental and choral works for children, youth, and developing adult musicians; works that lend themselves well to educational growth. Her works are published with Oxford University Press, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Rhythmic Trident Music Publishing, Cypress Choral Music, Silent Dawn Music Publishing, and on www.laurahawley.ca.
Laura is artistic director of Da Camera Singers (Edmonton), conductor of ChandraTala (Edmonton), founding conductor of the Diocese of Edmonton Children’s Choir, founding artistic director of Hypatia’s Voice Women’s Choir of Ottawa (2015-2019), and was collaborative pianist and singer with the Canadian Chamber Choir from 2018-2022. In 2020, she co-founded the Sonic Timelapse Project, an innovative crowdfunding initiative that commissioned ten new Canadian choral works and established an online platform of supports (videos, workshops, learning tools) for choirs during the COVID-19 pandemic; and in 2022 presented this project at the World Choral Expo EXchange! in Lisbon, Portugal.
An active clinician throughout Canada, Laura has worked with a wide variety of community-based choral and orchestral ensembles from sea to sea to sea, including CAMMAC, Music & Beyond (Ottawa), Choirs Ontario, Choir Alberta, Nova Scotia Choral Federation, Saskatchewan Choral Federation, and Choral Canada. She is a founding pianist and associate conductor of the Cantiamo Choirs of Ottawa, and was their composer-in-residence from 2003-2017. From 2007 to 2018 she was Director of Music at St. John’s South March Anglican Church, leading the adult choir and establishing a thriving parish youth choir. While living in Ontario, she was a three-time nominee for Choirs Ontario’s prestigious “Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting.”
Laura Hawley has taught composition at Concordia University of Edmonton, and has also taught at both of Ottawa’s universities as a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa in the position of Coordinator of the Solfège program at the School of Music, and at Carleton University School for Studies in Art & Culture (Music) as an Associate Performance Faculty Member (classical piano) and academic Instructor (conducting and theory). She has taught piano, theory, harmony and history for over 20 years in her private studio.
Ms. Hawley holds an ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music and completed a Bachelor of Music in piano performance and Master’s in music theory at University of Ottawa. She has studied piano with Arlene MacNay and Sandra Webster, conducting with Wayne Toews, the late Prof. Morihiro Okabe, Michael Zaugg, and Lone Larsen, composition with Stephen Gellman, Ugis Praulins, and Prof. Allan Bell, and voice with Elizabeth Turnbull. She is based in Edmonton, AB.
