2026 Adjudicators

George Cleland has been a conductor of the Niagara Youth Concert Orchestra since 2022, Brock University String Orchestra from 2017 to 2025 and the Peninsula Orchestra since 2009.  He was a finalist in the Timmins Symphony Orchestra Conductor Search, conducting a concert in May 2016 and the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra conductor search, conducting a concert in February 2024.  He is the Music Director for Wesley United Church in Welland, a position he has held since 2022.

George plays regularly as a violinist with the Niagara Symphony, the Brantford Symphony Orchestra, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the Southern Ontario Lyric Opera, the Burlington New Millennium Orchestra and the World Rock Symphony Orchestra.  He was a member of the World Rock Symphony Bangkok tour of Return to Grace in 2015 and played in Toronto for the Bolshoi Ballet’s tour of North America in a production of Swan Lake in 2012.  He is the violinist for Garden City Productions, playing in Fiddler on the Roof, Spamalot, The Addams Family Musical, Beauty and the Beast, Oliver and Brigadoon, and in Rural Stages Productions, playing The Last Five Years.  George was hired as a skilled extra in the Murdoch Mysteries tv show Murder in F Major. 

George has been an upper strings instructor and assistant conductor for Niagara Youth Orchestra, an instructor for Suzuki Niagara, and on staff at Brock University since 2003.  George has also been the orchestral strings instructor for the Niagara Symphony Summer Music Camp since 2021. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Ottawa and a Master of Music from the University of Akron.