Earle Peach, Conductor
Earle Peach is a singer, composer, conductor, arranger, teacher and performer who lives in Vancouver. He leads four choirs in the city, teaches privately, and has a studio in which he records musicians for demos and albums. Earle also performs with his wife Barbara Jackson in a duo called Songtree, and also leads a band called Illiteratty which performs mostly his music. In 2015 his arrangement of the Black Fly Song by Wade Hemsworth was published by Cypress Music. Earle is also politically active, and likes to garden, swim and ride his bike.
In the fall of 2017 Earle won the Mayor’s Arts Award for Community Engaged Arts .
Click to hear his acceptance speech
And listen to an interview with Earle on The Activist Network on YouTube where he talks about his life as a choir activist and how his music interacts with how he lives and what he believes in.
Alaric Posey, Assistant Conductor
Alaric Posey earned a bachelor’s degree in music at the University of Calgary in 1993. After many years away from choral music, he eventually returned by joining the Highs & Lows Choir in 2003, and has been conducting the Highs & Lows as Assistant Conductor since 2009, as well as singing and teaching music in the Vancouver area.
Elaine Joe, Accompanist
Elaine Joe started playing piano at the tender age of 4. She studied with the Royal Conservatory, played competitively and won numerous awards. Since then, she’s studied Popular and Blues piano. Throughout her career, she’s played with singers, violinists, choirs and in bands. Elaine works as a performer, accompanist, composer, and a teacher. She plays for four choirs ranging from a mental health choir to a Ukrainian one. As the choirs are rather eclectic, she has an interesting repertoire of Folk, World, Broadway, Jazz and Popular tunes.
In her spare time, she performs with an accordion squeezebox circle, dances and plays djembe on the beach and is learning cello. Her latest ventures include singing in a Klezmer band, playing accordion with Zeelia, a Slavic Soul band, and playing in a Funk band. Away from the music, she can be found on the mountain snowboarding, x-country skiing or rollerblading in the summer. She has a passion for treehouses and sometimes practices in the trees. In her quiet time she writes poetry.
Kevin Elwell, Equipment Manager
Kevin has a B.A. in Linguistics with a Minor in Music (Concordia, 1986). He has been singing in a capella and four-part harmony choirs since 1981, has managed or co-managed the Highs and Lows Choir since 2003 and has been a Peer Support Worker/ESL Instructor with Vancouver Coastal Health since 2006. He is passionate about the choir because he has seen first-hand the many ways the choir members have benefited from singing with Highs & Lows over the years.