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
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!
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.
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.)
Sweet Songstress 