2026 Adjudicators

Mezzo-soprano Erin Armstrong is native to Windsor/Essex County and is well known for her ability to captivate an audience with her commanding stage presence and warm, rich voice as well as for her constant community driven performances and creative initiatives. She is a recipient of the Windsor Mayor’s Award for Individual Artist, the Elizabeth Havelock Grant for Performing Artist through the Windsor Endowment for the Arts and a nominee for the Ontario Premiere’s Award.

 

Erin is the founder and director of Music Moves Kids children’s choir, summer camps and music theater intensives. Music Moves Kids are recipients of the Performing Arts Infrastructure Grant through the Windsor Endowment for the Arts and have performed on Cogeco TV, PBS and with The Tenors. They have sung in many operas including the Canadian premier of Czech national opera, Jakobin, by Dvorak. Other credits include the chorus of Cherubim in Mefistofele, the shepherds in Amahl and the Night Visitors and the children with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in Act 2 of La Boheme. In 2016 they performed the children’s opera Brundibar, both at the Windsor and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. They have been the chorus of Kuchenkinder for three productions of Hansel and Gretel and will reprise their roles this coming summer for Jazz Fest and the Windsor Fringe. They are frequent guests of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra for the Holiday Pops concerts, and they were invited to sing at Carnegie Hall in New York, singing John Rutter’s Mass of the Children, conducted by John Rutter in 2018.

 

Erin is also founder and director of Abridged Opera, an initiative in Windsor in their thirteenth season, designed to bridge the gap for audiences and the world of opera, making the art form more accessible. Abridged Opera has produced twenty-eight full scale productions, several in partnership with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, and over forty concerts.

 

Erin is a seasoned vocal teacher, with over two decades of experience. She runs her own studio and has recently taken on voice faculty position in the Music Theatre Depart of Saint Clair College. Erin also conducts the UMEI Christian High School Choir, the Leamington United Church Choir and was the conductor of the Windsor Community Choir for 8 seasons, including the strange online times during the pandemic. She has guest-conducted at Walkerville Centre for the Creative Arts and is an up-and-coming opera director having worked for Abridged Opera, the Windsor Symphony and Opera Idaho. She has adjudicated several festivals including Lambton’s own, Erie Online Festival, MusicFest Windsor and for the University of Windsor Juries. Erin is at the helm of several different recording projects, a workshop series for aging voices (The Vintage Voice), a new Canadian operatic work, and is delighted about the creation of her vocal music series. Erin is also delighted to have returned to the operatic stage post Covid and after the birth of her second son. This season she will debut four new operatic roles.

 

Past opera credits for Erin include Orfeo (Orfeo et Euridice), Step-mother (Cendrillon), Jezibaba/Foreign Princess (Rusalka) Fricka/Schwertleite/Ortlinde (Die Walküre), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), Beppe (L’Amico Fritz), Azucena (Il Trovatore), Dalilah (Samson and Dalilah), 3rd Lady (Magic Flute), Mother (Amahl and the Night Visitors), Mother and Witch in (Hansel and Gretel), Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte), Old Woman (Candide), Mrs. Grose (The Turn of the Screw), Margherite (Mefistofeles), Heidi Schiller (Follies), Mrs. Andrews (Mary Poppins),  Mimi (La Boheme), Violetta (La Traviata), Angelica/La Zia Principessa (Suor Angelica), High Priestess/Amneris (Aida), La Contessa (La nozze di Figaro), Giulietta (I Capuletti ed I Montecchi), Beth (Little Women), Juliette (Romeo et Juliette), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus) and Donna Anna (Don Giovanni). Erin is an alumna of Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Program and a graduate of the Universities of Windsor and British Columbia. She holds her Bachelor and Masters of Music as well as a Bachelor of Education.