Who is Marc Coderre?
Marc P Coderre was born near the end of 1973 in Ottawa Ontario.
In June 2003, he married Marina Molinari (Dec 29 1973 – Apr 23 2010) in their home parish of St Joseph’s in Ottawa (they had already become married “on paper” in Japan in November 1999). They had been a couple since November 11 1987.
Marc is currently a single widowed father of one son (Gabriel).

Marc graduated from Immaculata High School in 1992 (where he met Marina). Marc is a triple-alumni of Ottawa’s post-secondary institutes, having obtained a bachelors from the University of Ottawa in Political Science with a minor in History, then a masters from Carleton University in Political Science and also a Teacher of English as a Second Language certificate from Algonquin College. And later a certificate in Digital Music Production at Algonquin.

Marc has been a member of St Joseph’s Parish in Ottawa since October 1980 and a tenor in St Joseph’s Choir since March 1989.  (At the time directed by Jane Williams until 1997 and currently by Jamie Loback since 2005).  Marc has been on a hiatus as of April 2020 due to the pandemic protocols.

From Fall 2016 to Spring 2020, Marc was a member of the casual Song Kitchen Choir Ottawa led by Chris McLean.  At the start of 2017 Marc become a tenor of Musica Viva Singers, a local community choir under the direction of Scott Richardson.  Marc has also been singing regularly at the Saturday mass at Holy Cross parish since 2018 with Lindsay Delisle, backed by Armando and Eric Edmonds.  And in 2019, Armando created an informal musical vocal group with Marc, Lindsay, Sophia Auger, and Michael Trolley, eventually known as Sounding Joy.

Marc began creating and recording his own music at home in July 1989 (under the alias Asterisk until 1997 and then as Warhorse thereafter) first using an analogue 4-track machine, later a digital 8-track machine, and in recent years with Cubase.

His work in a real studio began in fall 2001 when he was invited to sing on the CD Songs For the Soul by Karen Lahaise, a long time St Joe’s choir mate at the time.  This was recorded at SATB Studio (now called St Francis Studio) operated by Armando Prini, himself a former musician and director of St Joseph’s choir, whom Marc has known since 1990. Marc would later participate in Karen’s second album Shelter of My Heart as well. Elsewhere, Marc has also done vocal session work in 2017 for a project by Sjef Frenken (not yet released).

In early 2002, Marc decided to do his own CD project. It took a while for the production to finally get started. There were many lengthy delays and false starts, in Feb 2003 and summer 2004, but come fall 2005 and the two years that followed, work was done in earnest and the long-awaited CD, Illumination, was released in November 2007. The CD includes favourites from his choir past as well as compositions written by himself or written with his eldest brother, Michael.

In April 2006, Marc started writing new songs for his second CD, Inspiration. Work in the studio began in the summer of 2008. For this project, music veteran Alan Cranny was brought into the team to provide musical arrangements and perform on many of the songs. The CD was released in February 2011.

Following the loss of Marc’s wife, Marina, in April 2010, Marc began work on his third CD, Rise Again. This project features the musical talents of Sean Chhangur on a number of tracks. One song features words by his late wife. It’s Marc’s most personal album to date. It was released in April 2015.

Marc’s CDs thus represent the intersecting of both his long involvement in choir music and his own hobby of song-writing. Not surprisingly, his CDs are a mix of originals and liturgical songs by other composers in the Catholic tradition.

What is Circle Nine Music?
Rather than just use (c)Marc Coderre on songs and CDs, Marc uses “Circle Nine”. The significance of which comes from Japanese.(Marc once spent three years living in Japan.) In Japanese, “Marc” is transcribed as “maruku”. One meaning of “maru” is circle and one meaning of “ku” is nine. 丸九

(updated January 14 2023)