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!

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!

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