Catherine Robbin. Mezzo-soprano, b Toronto 28 Sep 1950; BA (Toronto) 1977. She studied with Dorothy Allan Park at the RCMT, with Jacob Hamm and Phyllis Mailing in Vancouver, and with Audrey Langford in London and took master classes and private lessons with Ré Koster in Canada, the USA, and France and with Sir Peter Pears in England. Her professional debut as a singer took place in 1972 in Messiah with the St Catharines SO (Niagara Symphony). She won the Caplet Award at the 1978 Concours international de chant in Paris, a silver medal at the 1978 Geneva Concours international, and the Gold Award at the 1979 Benson & Hedges International Competition for Concert Singers. In 1978 she began to perform in a trio with John Dodington, bass, and Jane Coop (later replaced by Valerie Tryon), piano. Also in 1978 with Coop she performed Michael Colgrass' set of songs New People for the CBC. In 1979 for JM she made the first of several tours to France and appeared at the Bordeaux Festival (in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9) and the Saint-Lizier-en-Ariège Festival. She made her New York recital debut 23 Mar 1981. In 1982 she sang Dido in the Stratford Festival production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, after which John Kraglund wrote that she had 'made sensitive use of a voice which is unquestionably the greatest, in its range, that Canada has produced in several decades' (Toronto Globe and Mail, 7 Jul 1982).