Performance Calendar

March 7,2014

Soloist with the Vancouver Academy of Music’s String Quartet

March 5, 2014, 10:30am

Recital: Pro’ject Sound

with Sarah Hagen, piano

Maple Ridge, BC

February 23, 2014, 8pm

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra New Music

Inventory, by Brian Current

Family Songs, by Edward Top (world premiere)

VSO School of Music

February 13, 2014, 10:30am

Recital: Pro’ject Sound

with Sarah Hagen, piano

Surrey, BC

February 12, 2014, 10:30am

Recital: Pro’ject Sound

with Sarah Hagen, piano

Coquitlam, BC

February 11, 2014, 10:30am

Recital: Pro’ject Sound

with Sarah Hagen, piano

Nanaimo, BC

January 17, 2014

VSO New Music Festival

with Standing Wave Ensemble

Crystallography by Kati Agocs

December 1, 2013

See Into Her Heart. Songs by Libby Larsen, Tom Cipullo, Samuel Barber and featuring Jake Heggie’s staged scene for soprano and piano, At the Statue of Venus.

Qualicum, BC

Recital with Terence Dawson, piano

October 27, 2013

Standing Wave Ensemble

Crystallography, by Kati Agocs (world premiere)

October 21-23, 2013

Modulus Festival

Pedestrial Light, by Caroline Adelaide Shaw

Perruqueries, by Jocelyn Morlock with texts by Bill Richardson.  With Tyler Duncan, baritone and Erika Switzer, piano.  (commissioned by the performers and Music On Main — world-premiere)

September 15, 2013

QuintEssence

Songs by Benjamin Britten and Kurt Weill

http://www.quintessencemusic.ca

June 21, 2013, 8pm

For Poulenc, SongFire Festival

Salon evening celebrating Francis Poulenc with the faculty artists of the Vancouver International Song Institute.

Telus Theatre, Chan Centre, Vancouver, BC

http://www.songfire.ca

June 18, 2013, 8pm

Occitania, SongFire Festival

Featuring Kaija Saariaho’s Lonh with Will Howie, electronics and Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne with Laura Loewen and Daivd Bergeron, piano and Lambroula Pappas, soprano

http://www.songfirefestival.ca

June 8, 2013, 8pm

Living Song, SongFire Festival

Featuring Jake Heggie’s scene for soprano and piano, At the Statue of Venus. The composer will be present!

A carefully chosen outfit

I choose all my clothes for performance with great care.  It doesn’t, however, mean that I spend a lot of money.  In fact, most of the clothes in my closet that I love best are from consignment shops or were purchased for $4.99 at Value Village.  For Pierrot, I chose black and white (obviously) but since I didn’t want to look like I was wearing a costume, I thought stripes were a better choice than polka-dots. The flowing top worked well over leggings making the whole effect sit perfectly between masculine and feminine.  Add a few dashes of silver as an homage to the moon, and I thought I did pretty well.  Especially for a total of about $25!

Happy Birthday, Pierrot Lunaire!

October 15th is the 100th birthday of the premiere of Schoenberg’s masterpiece, Pierrot Lunaire.  Lucky me, I had my first crack at performing it last night and will get another chance tonight.  It has been a fascinating journey to learn this strange and wonderful music.  There have been many days of utter bewilderment, endless hours with a metronome, and tears.  Quite a few tears with head-bashing on the piano keys.  But it has all been worth it.  It has been such a joy to work with the crème de la crème of Vancouver:  Corey Hamm (piano), Mark McGregor (flute), Cris Inguanti (clarinet), David Gillham (violin), Marcus Takizawa (viola), Ariel Barnes (cello) and Marguerite Witvoet (conductor).  Seriously, it doesn’t get much better than these guys!  

Sprechstimme? What the…?

The Pierrot Files continue with the question that haunts all people who tackle Pierrot Lunaire.  What on earth is Sprechstimme?  

Basically it means “Speaking Voice” but it is so much more than that.  Schoenberg really made his mark by using this composition technique in his vocal works.  (See those little x’s in the vocal line?)  What is particularly puzzling to singers is that Schoenberg doesn’t simply want spoken rhythm, but he clearly states actual pitches upon which one must speak.  Now this would be simple if the range of these spoken pitches were in the soprano’s speaking range  — slightly lower than middle C.  Instead, Schoenberg pitches these spoken words as low as F below middle C to as high as Ab above the staff.  The biggest mystery to me is how to make these pitches sound spoken rather than sung.  I’ve come to understand that it will all come down to vibrato.  Keeping the sound straight, especially on high pitches is going to be my biggest challenge.  I’ve spent the last X number of years learning to keep vibrato even and to use it to keep the sound open and full.  But take it out and I start to feel like I’m putting all the strain on my cords!  Yikes.  So my challenge for this week is to do some monkeying around with my technique to see if I can find a comfortable way to make the Sprechstimme believable.

The Pierrot Files

A few months ago, I was hired to do my first performance of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.    I was thrilled; not only because it’s for the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the piece, but also because a few months earlier I had been making goals for myself and decided that before my death, a performance of Pierrot was mandatory.  (For anyone who cares or who hires, my other pre-death musical achievements will be: Strauss’ Four Last Songs, Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder – both with orchestra – Ellen Orford, and maybe just one Juliette before I’m too old and wizened to be remotely believable.)

Well, be careful what you wish for.  When Dave Pay at the Music on Main series in Vancouver hired me, I did a happy dance, then immediately ordered the music.  When it arrived, I dutifully set it on top of the piano and didn’t open it for weeks.  I was intimidated, terrified and absolutely positive that I’d never be able to pull it off.  It’s a huge undertaking and it has been performed so wonderfully by so many people that it feels a little silly to offer my humble, uneducated performance of this piece that has stretched the limits of music, performers and audiences around the world.

So, here I sit with books on the topic, a score that is already looking worn and is sure to look far more so by October, my trusty metronome, a few recordings and a film version that I’m hoping will help.  As I learn things, I will do my best to write them here (while the toddler naps?) in the hopes that they will clarify my own thoughts and maybe inspire a few readers to take the plunge and listen to this incredible piece.

 

Moving Ahead

It’s been almost a week since we finished our run of David MacIntyre’s Love In Public.  It was a great time and such a treat to have 10 performances of a new work.  It’s a short run for the musical theatre world, but for the opera/art song world, it’s nothing short of amazing.  I felt like the show really settled and new discoveries were made right up until the very end.  Every night each of us would get walloped by the beautiful words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  I think what I enjoyed most though was having conversations with grown-ups every evening.  It’s been hard to go back to spending all day talking to a one-year-old:  “Don’t eat the cat-litter!”  “Will you PLEASE eat something?” “Stop flushing the toilet!”.  Yup.  Combine that with the never ending cycle of diaper changing and washing and it makes for a glamorous life.

I’m moving ahead.  In one week’s time I have a concert with the Bach Choir for Mother’s Day.  I had no time to practice the repertoire during the run of LIP, mostly because I was fighting a sore throat and cough for the last 6 shows.  So now it’s a bit of a rush to get everything learned.  It’s going to be a wonderful mix of music though.  We’re doing the fifth movement of the Brahms Requiem, Schubert’s Mirjam’s Siegesgesang, Dvorak’s Songs my Mother Taught Me, Strauss’ Morgen and Vilja Lied from The Merry Widow as a little treat. I’m looking forward to it!  Now if someone wants to come over and babysit for a few hours every day so I can properly learn this music, I’d be in great shape!

 

A Diary of Love in Public

 

Check out my diary about the making of this new and exciting cabaret on the sonnets of E.B.B.  on Sparks & Wiry Cries.

Sparks & Wiry Cries Blog

Don’t forget to subscribe to this new E-Zine as well!  It contains everything you want to know about the wonderful world of song!

April Performances

Love in Public

April 19-21, 24-28, 8pm

April 22 and 29, 2pm

Fei and Milton Wong Theatre, SFU Woodwards

Admission: $25/$15 for students

 

Moon Loves its Light

Last summer, Terence Dawson and I had the great privilege of premiering a wonderful song cycle entitled “Moon Loves its Light” by Vancouver composer, Lloyd Burritt and New Brunswick poet, Marilyn Lerch.  Lloyd approached us saying that he wanted to write something specifically for us and did we have any poetry in mind?  Terry immediately suggested Marilyn Lerch’s works and loaned me a few of her books.  I was so taken with her insights on nature and it was quickly decided that we would use Moon Loves its Light as our text.  Terry and I love these beautiful, imaginative words and from the moment I had Lloyd’s music in my hands, it was obvious that he loves them too.  It is so exciting when music and text come together so perfectly that I have to do very little in the way of vocal acrobatics to have the music make sense with the text. Terry and I have put these songs on our list of “Repeat Repertoire”, meaning, we use them all the time.  We want people to hear the beautiful music and rich poems and to applaud our incredible Canadian talent. You can read more about Lloyd on his website and hear a snippet of the songs here:

http://lloydburritt.com/featured-works/soprano/#moon_loves_its

And about Marilyn here:

http://www.wfnb.ca/membership/member-pages/member-pages-k-m/

http://national-random-acts-of-poetry.blogspot.ca/2007/08/marilyn-lerch.html

For some silly reason, I did not think to get a photo of Terry and myself with Lloyd and Marilyn.  I have a really good excuse:  I had terrible baby brain!  This concert happened only ten weeks after having my first baby.  It’s nothing short of a miracle that I could get myself in front of an audience let alone zip up the only dress from my arsenal of performance clothes that fit at the time!

Photos are by John Hallett

Choosing Your Repertoire

Often choosing repertoire for graduation recitals and juries seems to preoccupy students for months.  I’ve only been teaching at the college level for a couple of years and already I can’t count the number of times I’ve been approached for help on finding song repertoire.  The fact is, there are so many options out there that it can be utterly overwhelming.  There are thousands of songs, cycles, languages, styles and instrument combinations from which to choose.  So how does one go about narrowing it all down to just 60 minutes or, even more difficult, just the 6 songs required for most juries?

1. The first and most important point it that you MUST choose music that makes you happy.  It is no fun to find yourself preparing music that you only chose because someone told you it would be good for you.  Does the text move you?  Do the vocal lines fit you at this point in your singing life?  Is it challenging enough but not impossible?  Will you be excited to sing it six months down the road on the night of your recital?  Consider these things closely. A large amount of cash is the only reason that I sing anything that I don’t really love. We all have to pay our bills!

2. Finding the right thing in the required languages can be tricky.  In school we are mostly bound to the Big Four: German, Italian, French and English.  But there is a bounty of songs out there in every language imaginable!  If you can fit it into your program, look in to Sibelius songs in Swedish or Dvorak in Czech or the mountains of glorious Russian songs.  Even these languages are pretty commonplace now.  If you speak Greek or Farsi or Hebrew or (insert language here) find something in your language and if it fits your voice, sing it!  It will open up an amazing world of repertoire!

3. You can’t get away without learning the classics.  There’s a reason that Schubert’s Auf dem Wasser zu singen, Fauré’s Après un Rêve, or Quilter’s Love’s Philosophy are sung all the time.  It’s because they are wonderful, beautiful songs.  They are challenging for singers at all stages in their careers (Strauss’ Morgen, anyone?) and they please audiences like crazy!  I admit that I went through a long phase of not wanting to sing the classics simply because everybody else was doing them and I am the type of singer who doesn’t like going down the well-worn path.  But now here I am in my 30’s and there is an embarrassingly large amount of common song repertoire that I don’t know!  So now that I find myself teaching a lot more than I used to, I am scrambling to learn the details of Nuit d’étoiles, Fantôches and all the songs of Tosti!  It’s kind of exciting, I must admit!  And guess what?  I’m having a glorious time learning music that is considerably more tonal than I am used to.

4. Ask questions of your colleagues, your teachers and your coaches.  Find out what they think would be an exciting musical adventure for you.  Then go to the library and look through the scores and listen to recordings.  Library time is just as important as practice time.  Resist feeling overwhelmed.  Rather, let those rows upon rows of scores inspire you on your life-long journey of learning.

5.  Try everything!  Yes, sing what you love.  But, sometimes you don’t know that you’ll love it until you try it!  Some songs don’t seem very appealing at first.  But think about how your tastes have changed over time.  Maybe the first recording of a song you listened to left a bad taste in your mouth but a live performance changed your mind.  That is the magic of music!  Every performance is thrilling and wildly different.

 

There is a vast amount of song repertoire out there.  The best way to find the songs that will excite you is to dive in, head first.  Few things are more exciting than starting with a blank slate and seeing where you end up!  Have fun!

Here is a photo of two of my favourite artists: Erika Switzer and François LeRoux.  They are pros at choosing repertoire that is unusual and wonderfully entertaining!  (How much do I LOVE that yellow suit?  That’s one for the Concert Frocks category!)