Allan Bevan comes to Robertson-Wesley with a wealth of musical experience to share. Dr. Bevan is a graduate of the University of Windsor School of Music where he studied organ with David Palmer. He completed a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting at the University of Alberta where he studied conducting with Leonard Ratzlaff and Debra Cairns. Allan served as Leonard Ratzlaff’s research assistant and in that capacity, he arranged music for the U. of A. Madrigal Singers, he was also the choral librarian for the choir and an interim accompanist for the Richard Eaton Singers.

Allan continued with Doctoral studies at the University of Calgary where he studied Composition with William Jordan, Allan Bell, and David Eagle. While at the U. of C. Allan’s choral compositions won numerous awards from the Association of Canadian Choral Conductor’s (now Choral Canada). Allan was the winner of the 2000 Ruth Watson Henderson Choral Composition Award sponsored by Choirs Ontario, and other competitions in the United States and Europe. His main area of doctoral research was in Middle English diction specializing in the sacred poetry of anonymous scholars and preachers from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. He applied this research to what has become one of his best-known compositions Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode. This oratorio for Good Friday was premiered by Pro Coro Canada in 2005 to a sustained standing ovation. Since that time, the piece has been performed in Toronto, San Francisco, Vancouver, Dallas, and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Allan has composed and arranged music for many of Edmonton’s best-known choirs, including Ariose Women’s Choir, Chorale Saint-Jean, Da Camera Singers, Edmonton Metropolitan Chorus, I Coristi, and the Richard Eaton Singers. Other commissions and performances of his music include works for Cantare Children’s Choir, Chorus Niagara, the Toronto Orpheus Choir, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and many others. His choral music is published by Cypress Choral Music of Vancouver, and Lorenz Corporation in Ohio.
Allan has served churches previously as Music Director in Calgary, Lethbridge, Thunder Bay, and Toronto. As an instructor, Dr. Bevan has taught for the Departments of Music at the University of Calgary, Lakehead University, and the University of Western Ontario.