About Masterclass Lady
Rosanne (Giallonardo) Simunovic began her musical career in Timmins, Ontario. She studied piano with Anne Pizzale and later, at an advanced level, with Soeur Anita Vaugeois (Sister Cecile of Les Soeurs De L’Assomption in Timmins). Her vocal and accompaniment skills were nurtured by her aunt, the late Dorothea Mascioli.
When Rosanne graduated from O’Gorman High School, she moved on to the University of Toronto where she continued her piano and vocal studies while attaining a Bachelor of Arts Degree. She was hired as a piano accompanist for several musical companies, most notably, the National Ballet Of Canada. She presently holds an A.R.C.T. Teacher’s Diploma in Voice from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Rosanne has studied choral conducting with numerous well known Canadian Conductors, including Wayne Riddell of Montreal, Quebec and the internationally renowned Dr. Elmer Iseler.
She has been a founding member of numerous community-based arts organizations: the Timmins Arts Council, later known as Arts & Culture Timmins, the Timmins Symphony Orchestra, and, the Timmins Youth Singers…as well as the TYS Alumnus choir, the Timmins Concert Singers. In 1987, she was also selected to be the conductor of the Timmins Board Of Education Choir, comprised of talented students from Grades 5 to 8.
In 1988, she was elected to the Board Of Directors of the Ontario Choral Federation (now known as Choirs Ontario), where she served as Chair of the Festivals Committee for six consecutive seasons. In 1996, in honour of the Ontario Choral Federation’s 25th Anniversary, Rosanne was selected as one of 25 recipients of the OCF’s Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contribution to the choral art. The ceremony was presided by Lieutenant Governor, Hal Jackman.
In November 1997, Rosanne Simunovic was selected by the Rotary Club Of Timmins to receive the prestigious Paul Harris Award for her years of dedication to the artistic development of young musical talent in Timmins.
In August of 2002, Rosanne Simunovic was selected by the Board Of Directors of Choirs Ontario to serve as Conductor of both the Provincial Junior and Teen Choir Camps, now renamed in honour of the Camp Benefactors, Don and Lillian Wright.
In November 2002, Rosanne was the one of the recipients of the Commemorative Medal for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, honouring her work in the development of the arts in Timmins.
Under Rosanne Simunovic’s direction, the Timmins Youth Singers and the Timmins Concert Singers have been featured in numerous choral festivals and performing opportunities outside of Timmins. In 1985, they were selected to partici
November 11, 2013 
Picture Credit: NBC’s The Voice
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I hated that we lost Stephanie and Preston last week.
I think Christina made a mistake in keeping Josh who seems to be a decent singer but always sounds like the singer of the original version of his song instead of himself, and letting the very versatile and original Stephanie go.
Although Preston was one of my favorites I can see the logic in keeping Will and letting him go. Will’s trajectory seems to be upward and his style may be more current while Preston was static to somewhat backward in his progress.
It’s still a good top twelve and should make for another good night of entertainment.
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Gene – this is the first week I have had a chance to watch The Voice from the beginning.
However, I loved Preston – his voice and demeanor stayed with me, so I was sad to see him go as well.
But the talent is so deep this season. Anyone can win pretty much.
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i too will totally miss stephanie and preston. i loved stephanie’s voice but i also loved her sparkly personality. and of course i said preston was my favorite right from the first show, but as you imply gene, he never followed up with any song better than that first song and i kept waiting. there are a lot of them that i like not only for their singing, but also their personalities. that’s why i was sad to see the blond country singer go too.
preston’s song was ranking on itunes for sooo long. after every show his first song would always chart again. i had thoughts that he would win. gene, i have loved matthew schuler’s last two performances, unlike you. and caroline..she has continued to chart and chart right from the very beginning, with ALL her performances. hearing her voice on itunes is a different experience than seeing her live..i appreciate her voice all the more.
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i haven’t watched the show yet, but i have checked itunes. matthew schuler is way on top. so, that is three songs in three weeks that i have really liked, by him. (i’ve always loved jason castro’s version of Hallelujah.) i think it is very wise to have matthew show a softer side since he has been powerhouse in these last couple songs. i really don’t know where he came from. was he one of those that they didn’t show the background on?
also, above, when i referred to the ‘blonde country singer’ that i was sad to see go..i meant the one who had been involved in pageants and was concerned about her weight.
and, gene, your favorite young singer (not caroline) also has another great song, based on itunes. i.e., what i heard, it sounds great.
i really like jonny grey. he seems more to be in the bottom, but i just really like him too.
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has anyone watched ‘x factor’? i had a ton of shows to watch, wasn’t really interested, wasn’t sure i’d watch, but then i started watching. i watched three shows, two to go (FF a LOT). something i found very very interesting happened. on the last show i watched, which was slated as a results show, thus only one hour, they had everybody (13 people) sing another song. they had to do this because the night before, at the performance show, they’d shown wrong voting numbers, so the results weren’t correct. so, at this results show, 13 people sang new songs. there was some really good stuff. i was wondering why i liked it so much and i realized that they hadn’t had time for production…so there were no crappy dancers etc, it was just pure singing, songs NOT picked by the judges, and there was maybe time for only one judge to comment. zip, zip, zip. wow, such a better show.
i actually like quite a few of the people. there is a 13 y.o. girl who sang ‘this is how i was born’…i know that is not the title, i think it could be a christina song, it left me totally blown away. i’ve always liked her singing, but this song was head and shoulders above anything she’s done. she was born with ‘shriveled’ hands, without the use of her hands/arms, and that is what she sang about. but it wasn’t done in a saccharine way.
there’s another young guy, 17, who has tourette’s. i loved him, probably best. unfortunately he was booted at the very beginning of the next show.
the groups are really strong this year in a contemporary kind of way. i can see them going far (if anyone is watching the show and sees them…it seems that ratings are really low).
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Hunter – I confess that I haven’t way he The X Factor. Nor have I barely tuned into The Voice. Just too many of these shows on now and too much on my plate.
However, that X Factor episode that you described sounds like must-see TV. They need to veer away from the over-the-top productions and let the singers just SING.
Unfortunately, even with the most famous singers, it is all about the production nowadays. I like a show to be well-produced – just not over-produced.
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Hi Hunter and MCL,
I’ve been on the road and haven’t had a chance to catch up with your comments.
I’m sorry you haven’t had time to watch Voice this season MCL. I think it has been a pretty good season so far. No real super stars have emerged but it has been entertaining.
I would have liked to see both Stephanie and Preston make the top 6. Stephanie probably became more versatile and developed her stage persona in her job as a singer on a cruise ship. She reminded me of Phoebe Snow, who I got to see a few years ago as an unannounced act in a very small venue on the ticket with Karla Bonoff. Preston still sounded like the great Sam Moore every time he opened his mouth to sing but, for me anyway, he was hurt by song choice. Maybe they will find another path to the top.
I’m surprised that you liked Shelby Z. (the blonde country singer) She lives about 50 miles north of me in a small town that I wish there was some way to convey how the name “should” be pronounced. It’s Jasper but they say something more like “Jasssspa.” I didn’t really care for her style very much though. I was surprised that Blake let her go though. I think his job this season is to take one for the Voice team and loose. It’s not good for the show if he keeps winning.
Matthew was outstanding this week. It was the first time I didn’t feel like he was shouting at me or just doing something because he could. If he chooses songs wisely from her on, he will be a contender.
This week’s eliminations were just about right, although I thought Jinx would go before Jonny. I wasn’t sure if they were saved in order though. If so, I’m a little concerned for little Jacquie Lee. Christina needs to work with her on communicating with the coaches when they are critiquing her. She just laughs at most of their comments when she should thank them or respond in a more appropriate way. Her single this week is pretty good. I have downloaded each of them but I don’t like one of the changes they made in voting tabulation this year. They only count the first contestant’s song that you buy for the vote totals. I think it was wise to downgrade the value of a song download in the vote total but I wish you could still download songs from more than one contestant and have them count. That is why I haven’t downloaded anything from Caroline. I have listened to the previews and I agree that she sounds even better recorded than on the show. That was part of the reason that I think she will win.
I was glad to see Sara Bareilles perform on the results show. She was one of my picks for a new Idol judge but they weren’t listening I guess. The Voice was listening to the fans when they came up with the Twitter vote idea. I personally don’t care for it because it is too random and favors the younger viewer too much but I do like the fact that they listen and aren’t afraid to try new ideas, unlike the stogy American Idol.
I haven’t watched The X Factor this season except once early on when several people said they had tried it and found it worse than previous seasons. My DVR is still set to record it from earlier seasons, but I just delete the recordings without watching them. The episode you described sounds interesting. The over produced performances are one of the worst features of that program. That is one area that I think the Voice does extremely well.
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mcl-xfactor is totally the worst on over production, always throwing in the dancing ladies for a male singer and dancing men for the lady singers, and here are these poor kids, just trying to sing.
the voice, the first season, maybe the second, had some of that with christina and cee lo trying to out produce the other, with blake complaining, but now it seems much better.
gene, yes i liked shelby z. she did a certain little hip thing that i thought was rather sassy for a ‘bigger girl’. i’m talking personality more than i’m talking singing regarding her.
i was upset jonny lost. i wrote on twitter that it seemed there needed to be some recounting..blake thought he was getting the most votes, when i looked (a lot) it seemed jonny was getting the most votes, i have no idea how the female won on that.
it is a form of advertising to ‘trend’ on twitter and ‘the voice’ and ‘johhny’ were trending. and yet jonny lost. i misspelled his name above. some of the people wondered if it was because of misspelled names that he lost. i wonder if they’ll address that this time, it did seem so unfair. and then the west coast couldn’t take part.
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You make a good point, two actually, about the Twitter vote. The name spelling may have been an issue, but wouldn’t the misspelled votes go to the same number as well? Was it the misspelled version of his name that was trending? I hadn’t considered the fact that the west coast wouldn’t be able to participate. It’s such a drastic change from the laid back voting methods usually employed on the Voice that it doesn’t make much sense to me. Not only are the votes limited to people who use Twitter and are in the Eastern or Central time zones, but it also excludes people who are not watching live. It was a big price to pay for the experiment and I think we have seen the last of it but I still support the fact that they are not afraid to try something new.
I wonder about Kat winning the elimination as well. She may be a protected species. I was not surprised to see the other guy go because he was basically a hotel lounge cover artist. He was very good at sounding like the original artist but I have no idea what he sounds like. I thought his Michael Jackson cover was the best thing he did because his voice just couldn’t mimic MJ’s. Jonny was improving week to week. I liked his audition but then he began using an annoying vibrato. That had gone away and he seemed to be doing well. Just guessing, I would say the left coast would favor Kat over Jonny so that may not have been the factor that cost him the spot.
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gene, i think The Voice did it more to ‘make a splash on social media’ than to ‘save a singer’. i think those three were all low, it seemed so on i tunes. it wasn’t a number. it was a hash tag: #jonny #voice save. and like i goofed spelling his name in the post above, it was so easy to make that mistake.
and right now i believe it is ‘november sweeps’. so they are trying to get people to watch live. they didn’t announce it til the very very end, so one had to be watching the whole time before one knew what to do.
i actually don’t know which spelling was trending, i do tend to think it was the misspelled one. i wish i would have taken a picture of it. his name was actually trending twice (at the same time) if i remember right. maybe one with a hashtag, and one without? or spelled right, and misspelled? darn, i don’t remember.
i actually liked the other guy who was eliminated too, i liked his personality. more than the female.
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gene: the ‘left coast’??? 🙂 🙂
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if you do a search on twitter:
#johnny #voicesave
#jonny #voicesave
you see the voting and the comments. i don’t know how they counted, but as i’m writing now, i’m all upset again. 🙂
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…”right now I believe it is ‘November sweeps’. So they are trying to get people to watch live.”
How effective could that strategy be? At best it could be used as a test to see what the live viewership was last week or an incentive to watch live in the future, but as far as I know, no one was aware of the new feature until it happened.
Do you think they will do it again this week?
My guess is they may correct the mistake and reinstate Jonny if it is obvious that he was robbed due to name spelling. Let it be a lesson to all of the young parents out there who have named there kid “how do you spell that” instead of a traditional name with a traditional spelling. (end of rant)
Regarding social media. They have done away with Christina what’s her name that used to do the twitter lounge segments on the show. She ended up on Dancing with the Stars this season. Although it was an annoying part of the show, it did keep the show in touch with social media.
Yeah, left coast.
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they kept promoting that we the public would have a chance to ‘save our favorite’ via twitter. that is actually why i made it a point to (more or less) watch live. you know how long it takes me to get there normally. 🙂
i suspect they *may* try it again this week. OR…they will realize just what a big fiasco it was and how unhappy a lot of people were.
it sure did brighten up twitter in an instant and they may want to do that again.
i could not stand ‘milian’ (is it christina?) so i would always FF through anything she did.
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They just announced that the “Twit-Save” will continue this week.
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James, Kat and Tessanne bit off a little more than they could chew this week. Harry Neilson, Pat Benatar and Gladys Knight are monster vocalist to cover and for me each of them came up short. To be fair, Tessanne suffered more from the abbreviated arrangement that lack of vocal chops but she also lacks the rich texture in her voice that Gladys Knight has. Kat was ok but not great. I think you could detect in Cee Lo’s voice that he felt the same way. Two weeks ago when Jacquie sang, you could see that he was just stoked and all he could say was “that’s the best, just the best.” He rambled all over the place with a half hearted complement for Kat tonight.
Caroline still has a great voice that is so pleasant to listin too but this wasn’t a great song for her and she left a lot lying on the table as well. I think they bought the stage props that they used for her last two performances from the Idol set. They were really bad and amateurish.
Mathew gave another great performance tonight although the first verse drug a little. Cole and Ray are growing on me but I can’t see them winning. Young Jacquie Lee delivered a very nice vocal that seemed to be aimed right at Caroline’s signature style. I wasn’t crazy about the song but, for the most part, she delivered it well. She also dealt with the judges comments a little better than she has in past weeks.
The iTunes charts aren’t very encouraging right now but the ratings awarded by those who bought the songs have Jacquie leading Caroline followed by Mathew and James.
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i watched the performance show last night, and just finished the results show. i’d FF a bit through both shows before i watched them to see if they said anything about the twitter voting and couldn’t find it although i knew it was there because you said so gene.
i was rather down on them because they didn’t say one word about last week’s twitter voting. that to me proved that they were doing it to make a splash on social media rather than being invested in the bottom three. they didn’t apologize at all to the west coast, and they said nothing about ‘counting the votes’ because of jonny’s name.
i realized ‘this is all about getting The Voice to trend, and i’m not into helping their free advertising. on the performance show and the next day, i checked into itunes a
number of times and saw that no song was jumping and leaping like they had the week before. this corresponded with my feeling about the performance show: i didn’t much connect to any of the songs or people this week. it is interesting that matthew’s song from last week was still ranking higher than any of the songs from this week. i guess i need to go check it right now.
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gene, i actually think that cee lo seemed really excited about kat’s performance.
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i checked itunes. wow :(. matthew’s song from LAST week is ranking highest at 14. then cole at 26. then matthew’s song from this week at 35, and james at 48. i find it so interesting that apparently i’m not the only one who wasn’t moved by the performances of this week.
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You are correct Hunter, there was no mention of last week’s issues with the Twitter instant save. I think the right contestants went home this week but I don’t like the method and it’s really going to hack me off when an undeserving contestant gets caught in this trap. That could happen soon.
The iTunes results were interesting this week. As you noted, the top song was Mathew’s performance from last week and I never saw it break the top 10. They said that four artists had been in the top 10 but I never saw it happen. I saw Jacquie move up from 98 to 93 during the voting period and she is at 51 now. I was suppressed that “Duck Dynasty Dude” led the current standings. (Honey Boo Boo is back home in Jaaaaspa) I know the iTunes ratings system for each song is not as reliable as the chart but it is interesting that it doesn’t correlate with the chart placement. Tessanne has the highest song rating this week but was way down on the chart. It was also interesting that when I left a rating for Jacquie, her total didn’t go up and her song didn’t register as purchased even though it downloaded. It did eventually show as a purchased song but I have no way of knowing if the rating total is correct or what effect either of these issues may have on chart position.
I wasn’t thrilled with the performances this week either. They all went backward to some degree. The best act of the week was Team Christina’s team performance on Tuesday. I am almost universally annoyed by dancers on any of these shows during a performance but I thought this was very well done. All of the contestants should be feeling the heat this week so I haope they will each rise to the occation and we will get a great show next week.
My take was that Cee Lo was grasping at straws to be supportive of Kat. She was opportunity lost for me. I was looking for a rocker chick this year but she was too much glam and not enough rock for my taste and her singing took a back seat to her stage performances. I felt sure that she would go home and thought Jinks (sp) should have gone last week.
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Oh yeah, Caroline and Tessanne’s duet was very good as well.
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i loved the caroline/tessanne duet. i was surprised that i did. i thought that caroline would be drowned out, instead they blended beautifully.
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Exactly.
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gene, when you wrote this:
“I know the iTunes ratings system for each song is not as reliable as the chart but it is interesting that it doesn’t correlate with the chart placement. Tessanne has the highest song rating this week but was way down on the chart. It was also interesting that when I left a rating for Jacquie, her total didn’t go up and her song didn’t register as purchased even though it downloaded. It did eventually show as a purchased song but I have no way of knowing if the rating total is correct or what effect either of these issues may have on chart position.”
i don’t know what you are referring to???
i go to a site called ‘giveaway of the day’. it is free software everyday. in the comments section, we can give a thumbs up or down to a comment. when i do that sometimes, nothing happens, but at other times, it will show two rather than one vote. i asked about it. sometimes people are writing/voting at the same time, and the equipment has to ‘do its thing’ before it is registered. i think that is the same thing with itunes. i’m sure it is recording it correctly.
i open up itunes and go to the ‘top singles’ list. are you going somewhere else? i think so. is it The Voice separate section? i’ve never gone there so i’m not sure what ‘rating’ you are talking about for a singer???
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it is interesting, i didn’t like the team christina performance at all. i just felt like it was a lot of hype.
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as i’ve mentioned, i love rock, and kat doesn’t do it for me.
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when kat finished her performance, they cut to cee lo and his face was one of excited triumph. as i think about it, i didn’t watch a lot of the judge’s comments, so i guess i didn’t see the part you’re talking about. i did remember thinking, ‘cee lo is thrilled’. and i thought he was probably thinking of the ending (which had been his idea). i did think the ending was cool, where she put her hand in the air. but like you said, it is performance, not singing.
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i had written this above, regarding ‘x factor’: “i actually like quite a few of the people. there is a 13 y.o. girl who sang ‘this is how i was born’…i know that is not the title, i think it could be a christina song, it left me totally blown away. i’ve always liked her singing, but this song was head and shoulders above anything she’s done. she was born with ‘shriveled’ hands, without the use of her hands/arms, and that is what she sang about. but it wasn’t done in a saccharine way.”
i found a link to the song. i liked it better on tv because i could get the volume higher, the volume doesn’t go higher for me on this computer. anyway, when she sang this song it absolutely blew me away because the words so perfectly fit her.
she can’t use her hands/arms.
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I also go to the top singles to see the chart placement but what I was referring to was if you go to each song from the Voice for the week by clicking on the Voice icon near the top of the iTunes home page, you will see a star rating of 0-5 and a rating number for each song which is similar to what you referred to on the software site. The number represents the number of customers who bought the song and chose to rate it. I reloaded the page several times and never saw the number change from 13 last night after I added my rating. Tonight it is two hundred and something. That may or may not represent all of the customers who rated the song. I have looked at these numbers for years to see who was actually buying the songs from Idol contestants as compared to the hype the judges put out about them.
There was also a long delay before the system acknowledged my purchase. When you buy a song it no longer shows the price beside it when you look at that song again in the iTunes store. The price will be replaced with the word play. I saw the song download but it didn’t change to “Play” for a few hours. The song from last week had not changed either.
These issues lead me to wonder if the count is accurate with regard to the chart placement. See what I mean?
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