Lori Gemmell – Ontario

harpist . teacher . Chamber Musicals

Summer. Summer is my season because I was born in August, and canoe camping and being in the woods is my favourite thing to do and that’s when I can do it! – Lori

Lori Gemmell is the principal harpist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphon. Before joining the KWS she played with Orchestra London and with the Calgary Phillharmonic Orchestra. She received her Masters degree from the University of Toronto where she studied with eminent harpist, Judy Loman. Lori also studied with Catherine Michel in Paris, France and Alice Chalifoux in Camden, Maine.

Lori has been a regular at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. She has also been featured at Les Concerts aux Iles du Bic near Rimouski, The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit, The Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ontario, The Indian River Festival in P.E.I and the Festival International du Domaine Forget. Lori performed with Le NEM, a contemporary chamber group in Montreal with whom she toured through Europe and Japan. She has given solo concerto performances with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and Orchestra London, among others.

Canadian Composers have long valued her passion and dedication to their music. Over the years she has worked closely with Srul Irving Glick, John Weinzweig, Alexina Louie, Glenn Buhr, Marjan Mozetich, Jeff Ryan, Andy Creeggan, Kevin Fox and now Caroline Lizotte. Her long association with R. Murray Schafer resulted in her recording of The Crown of Ariadne in 2010, after which Schafer wrote Four Songs for Harp and Mezzo-Soprano for Lori and his wife, Eleanor James. In April 2023, Lori premiered a new work by Riho Maimets, Ecdysis, for harp, piccolo and orchestra with Kaili Maimets and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

With her husband, Tom Allen, Lori enjoys creating music and storytelling shows. They have co-produced programs based on music by R. Murray Schafer, Marjan Mozetich, Alexina Louie, as well as Bohemians in Brooklyn, The Judgment of Paris, and From Weimar to Vaudeville all surprise hits at the Global Cabaret Festival at the Young Centre in Toronto. Their have toured all over Canada with their show called The Missing Pages-The Canadian Who Met Beethoven. Their latest show, J.S. Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow, is touring through Canada this year. Their Covid project was a feature film called The Last Curlew, which is showing in theatres in Ontario and Quebec as well as online on Vimeo.

Lori teaches harp and chamber music at Wilfred Laurier University, where she enjoys exploring improvisation with her harp class, and in the summers at the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

In 2002, Lori released her first solo recording, Prelude, in 2009, a harp duo recording with Jennifer Swartz, The Garden of Peacocks, on the Atma label, in 2010, Divertissement, with trumpeter Larry Larson, and in 2011 a solo recording, Canadian Music for Harp. She also played on the Grammy-nominated recording The Reminder by Feist and in 2013 on Bohemians in Brooklyn with Patricia O’Callaghan and Bryce Kulak.

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Lori Gemmell & Tom Allen

“In recent years I have been lucky enough to gather a versatile cast of musical friends that has helped to create a series of shows that combine chamber music, storytelling, original song and music history. We call them Chamber Musicals.” – Tom

Lori Gemmell and Tom Allen have created these wildly wonderful shows that evolve around storytelling, riveting music and… there is always harp music.

Explore the stories:

JS Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow

At 20, and in his first job as an organist, still barely beginning life as a composer but already a spectacular performer, JS Bach got into such trouble that the only thing he could do was to walk away. JS Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow takes you along on that trip: a 400 km odyssey to a glittering northern port city with street fights, big business, insight, fulfillment, the father figure he didn’t know he needed and, quite possibly, love.  With glorious music – both familiar and gripping – from Lori and Tom and a various cast of brilliant musical friends, JS Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow brings that troubled young man in from the cold.

A Poe Cabaret

A Poe Cabaret combines the compelling life story of Edgar Allan Poe with great music conjured in his honour by Claude Debussy, Andre Caplet and celebrated Canadian composer Alexina Louie. This concert is haunted by three of Poe’s stories: the crumbling gothic shadows of The Fall of the House of Usher, the cautionary quarantine epic The Masque of Red Death and a musical setting of Poe’s greatest success, and deepest heartbreak – The Raven. Through storytelling, poetry and riveting music for harp and string quartet, A Poe Cabaret will bring the chilling life and art of Edgar Allan Poe into the light.

The Last Curlew

Mixing theatre, story-telling, riveting dance and powerful music, The Last Curlew brings to the stage the pioneering environmental novel by the Canadian naturalist Fred Bodsworth – The Last of the Curlews. This timeless and beautiful tale traces the journey of a lone male Numenius Borealis, one of the last of its kind, on that critically endangered bird’s astonishing 14,000 km migration. With haunting music by Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Alexina Louie, this, the only stage adaptation of Bodsworth’s career-defining work, has the blessing of his children and has been warmly welcomed by the naturalist and birding community across Canada.

Film version of this show, including video recording of R. Murray Schafer’s Wild Bird, with Etsuko Kimura, available HERE: 

Watch The Last Curlew

Brahms in New York

In 1842, the Brahms family very nearly moved to the USA so that 9 year-old Johannes could become a child virtuoso. Forced to face the harsh realities of minstrel shows, civil war and the constant need for capital, who would this other Brahms have been? He would have escaped the trauma of harbour brothels, and wouldn’t be burdened by seeing himself as the successor to Beethoven, but what would he have accomplished, and what would the two have said to each other?

The Missing Pages

On December 16, 1825 Theodore Molt became the sole Canadian to meet Ludwig van Beethoven, but what could have happened between the two men? After Molt’s florid greeting in one of Beethoven’s notebooks, the following four pages were violently ripped out and destroyed. Betrayal? Competition? Scandal? Or just old fashioned ego and pride? With music, song, drama, history and informed speculation, The Missing Pages investigates.

WATCH video samples of The Missing Pages

Greek Myths

Two timeless tales of lust, abduction, revenge, full of seductive nymphs, hideous monsters and flawed heroes… Our Greek Myths show mixes the tragic story of the Death of Hercules with the entrancing music of Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich… And follows with the spectacular Crown of Ariadne by the late R. Murray Schafer. Originally conceived as part of Schafer’s art circus The Greatest Show, Ariadne puts Lori at the centre of a virtuoso, multi-instrument tour de force. The story – the myth of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur – is a riveting tale of heroism, love at first sight, and fate.