Piper Hayes
Music Co-Director
Hanna Bech Mathieson
Music Co-Director
Piper has been teaching somatic voice for the past five years and been a professor at Centennial College in Toronto since 2019. She uses her combined background as a professional musician, certified yoga instructor, personal trainer, swim instructor and her many years of voice study to teach students what she calls vocal empowerment.
She is a full-time touring musician, songwriter and multidisciplinary artist and two time nominee of the Ontario Arts Council’s Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award. Her musical duo Piper & Carson has toured across Turtle Island and overseas to Scotland and the Netherlands.
She has worked extensively in mental health and healing, and on numerous occasions even teamed up with the Canadian Mental Health Association to facilitate workshops on mental health and music.
She has taught kids music camps and been a band coach and guitar instructor at Girls Rock Camp TO. In addition Piper helped develop a music class for Hamilton Adult Community Support Program, where she worked with adults with disabilities, using music to bridge gaps in communication and let go of anything holding us back.
Hanna is a teacher, a songwriter, composer, and a community-oriented individual. She believes that art is found in everyday life, and that when we learn music together we are not only learning music – we are learning through music.
Hanna is a lifelong learner and has studied instruments, functional bel canto voice studies, songwriting, improvisation, solfa and pedagogy through institutions and teachers such as McMaster University, University of Toronto, Dalcroze Eurhythmics Canada, Carol Bagott-Forte, Lori Yates, and an apprenticeship with Hamilton Sings! founder Sue Crowe Connolly.
As a creative, Hanna has made arrangements and compositions for the choir, and put together inventive community arts events such as Queens of Quirk, and Mirroring. As a songwriter she crowdfunded her EP Naked Bones in 2016 with international support, and in 2017 she was featured in the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s Indie Series.
Some fun facts about Hanna:
- Her great-grandfather taught in a one room school house
- Hanna has been with HS from the first term until 2021 and is returning in 2022
- Hanna is a multi-instrumentalist and went to school for trumpet
She likes to joke that she played trumpet until she could sing.
