Corey Lyle Gemmell, a native of Hamilton, currently makes his home in Markham, Ontario. He has distinguished himself as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Canada, Germany, the United States and China. At present, he is concertmaster for the Burlington Symphony Orchestra, Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra Toronto. He has also served in this capacity with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brott Music Festival/ National Academy Orchestra, Esprit Orchestra, the Elora Festival Orchestra, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Orchestra, the Ontario Philharmonic, the Toronto Philharmonic Orchestra, the Burlington New Millenium Orchestra and the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra. Very active in Toronto’s thriving musical theatre scene, Mr. Gemmell has been concertmaster in such musicals as Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, the Phantom of the Opera, Hamilton, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to name but a few. One of his personal favourites was performing as concertmaster in the Hugh Jackman Show.
As a soloist Mr. Gemmell has performed much of the standard repertoire for violin and orchestra. In recent seasons he performed solos and concertos by Brahms, Sarasate, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Vivaldi.
Mr. Gemmell has been a member of Ensemble Vivant, the Elgin String Quartet, and the National Piano Trio. He has been a frequent guest artist with New Music Concerts, with whom he performed and led workshops at the National Conservatory of Beijing in 2016 and has been a guest on such series as Live!@WestPlains in Burlington, the Chamber Music Society of Mississauga, Array Music, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society. He is presently pursuing chamber music with the Gemmell & Smith Duo, for violin and piano, and Duo Regale, for violin and organ.
Mr. Gemmell is a member of the faculty for the National Music Camp of Canada as well as a member of the Royal College of Examiners. He has also been on faculty at the Great Lakes International Summer Music Institute at Algoma University, the Royal Conservatory of Music, and the University of Western Ontario.
In 2022 Mr. Gemmell recorded several new works of solo and chamber music by Canadian composers Ronald Royer, Daniel Mehdizadeh, Brandon Walker, and Elizabeth Raum in association with the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, and was released in 2023. He can be heard in recordings of the Mozart Effect, having recorded several of Mozart’s Violin Sonatas and many of Mozart’s String Quartets for the series. With Ensemble Vivant he completed three albums, including a 2022 release, “iFugue”, to critical acclaim. He was one of the contributing artists to record the Royal Conservatory of Music’s complete violin syllabus in 2013. He has also recorded other works by Mozart, Brahms, Ravel, Robert A. Baker as well as numerous movie and commercial recordings.
Mr. Gemmell plays on a violin made in Milan in 1907 by Cipriano Briani and a violin made for him in 2005 by renowned Toronto luthier, Hratch Armenious, as well as bows by Lamy, Martin and Voirin.
(SOSI is grateful to Mr. Gemmell for replacing David Gillham on short notice.) 
