Oksana Rodak

As a conductor and music educator, Oksana Rodak has worked in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Oksana is a graduate of the University of Toronto where she received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. She obtained the Associate Diploma (ARCT) in Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and studied choral conducting and bandura at the National Music Academy of Ukraine.  Oksana began playing bandura in the ODUM (Ukrainian Democratic Youth Organization) Hnat Khotkevych Bandura Ensemble of Toronto, under the directorship of her mother, Walentina Rodak. Specializing in working with youth choirs, Oksana's teaching focuses on the development of leadership skills, artistry and cultural understanding. Oksana has held positions as Artistic Director of Young Naperville Singers, Artistic Director of the Cantate Children’s Choir, Conductor with Anima - The Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus, and Coordinator of Children’s Music at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. She has been awarded the Artist-Teacher and Master-Teacher Diploma from the CME Institute for Choral Music Education. Oksana Rodak is the winner of the Glenn Gould Memorial Scholarship and Leslie Bell Conducting Prize.

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Oksana Zelinska-Shevchuk

Oksana Zelinska is a graduate of the Performance Diploma Program at The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) and is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships in both Classical Voice and Grand Opera at the Kiwanis Music Festival of Greater Toronto. In 2005, she obtained her Bachelor of Music through the Thompson Rivers University in BC. The same year, she became a teacher of voice and piano and later a Head of the Voice Department at the Merriam School of Music, Oakville (Ontario).  Oksana started her music education at the age of six when she began to play piano and the Ukrainian national instrument, the bandura, under her mother's tutelage, an experienced bandura teacher in Ukraine. In 1993, she graduated from the Secondary State Boarding Music School in Lviv (Ukraine) and in 1998 was accepted to The Lviv State Academy of Music where she studied with Oksana Herasymenko, a renown teacher and a well-known composer of contemporary bandura music. As a vocal soloist, Oksana performed in Ravel's “L’Enfant,” sang the role of Marion from the twelfth century work “The Play of Robin and Marion” set to music by Milhaud, and Mendelssohn's “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. A well-known instructor of bandura with over 15 years of teaching experience, in 2001, Oksana began teaching bandura and voice at "Zoloti Struny" Bandura Capella established in Toronto by her late mother Vira Zelinska, and as of 2012, took over the role of an artistic director and a conductor at the Vira Zelinska Ukrainian Youth Bandura Capella "Zoloti Struny".