SCHUBERTIADE: Rebecca Hass
Next in our Schubertiade feature, Rebecca Hass, mezzo-soprano and Director of Community Engagement at Pacific Opera Victoria, shares her favorites for her imagined evening of music.
Who gets to use the title ‘artist’? Does it only belong to certain kinds of creative work? Does someone else have to bestow that title on you? When I began teaching voice privately and working with singers at all levels of their careers as a Life Coach, I discovered that most of them wouldn’t call themselves ‘artists.’ There was something about not being at the conception moment of the creative act, like writing the music or lyrics, that left many singers feeling that they weren’t artists. Rather, they saw themselves in the lesser role of interpreters of someone else’s art. The trap that most then fell into was to believe that their role as interpreters was to be perfect. Technically perfect. Otherwise, they would fail the art. This isn’t true. This is a perspective that needs to change in our emerging artists and every time I work with singers, I challenge them on this and work to welcome them into the understanding that they are artists all the time. They are never not artists. You are an artist when you eat breakfast, when you read, when you are walking the streets of your city. You consume the world as an artist and nothing is wasted.
Now that I am the Director of Community Engagement at Pacific Opera in Victoria, British Columbia, I have been able to create opportunities for singers that move them forward to claim the title of artist, and I’m sparking this through embracing their role as a vocal storyteller. The original creative act is telling a story. My latest initiative is a program for singers that will mentor them in creating a ‘recital’ for film that asks them to program songs that tell a story that has a personal connection. They will be mentored in devised theatre, storytelling, film acting, and image collection to create a multi-faceted short film. The primary inspiration for this project and a mentor on staff for these artists is Lebanese-Canadian soprano Miriam Khalil. A wonderful artist, she devised her own personal recital video as part of our program For All to Hear. You will find Miriam’s work and other artist contributions to an ongoing dialogue about racism and equity and diversity on the Pacific Opera Victoria website.
The power of the singer as storyteller speaks to me in a few ways. It inspires me in my work to impact the audience, to move them, and to even create social change. It also is born of my Indigenous ancestors, Anishnaabe and Metis, who have passed on to me a deep love of a good story well told. My dream recital is filled with singers who tell stories. They are jazz singers, pop singers, classical singers, and those that defy categorization. Sometimes they are the creators of the song, but often they are the artist who interprets the work before them. They are storytellers. They have something to say. Something we all need to hear.
Joni Mitchell — Coyote
This is how I grew up singing: with a guitar in my hand, family and friends hanging out and often playing along, my dad on another guitar, my Uncle Gus on the spoons. For Joni, she gets Bob Dylan. But the scene is the same: people late at night, telling stories. There is such an immediacy to singing in a house for friends and family. It’s intimate. There is nowhere to hide.
Kathleen Ferrier and Phyliss Spurr — Blow the Wind Southerly
When I started singing in more classical traditions, it was in the local music festival in my hometown of Coldwater, Ontario. I remember singing this song and hating it. It wasn’t the style I was used to, playing my guitar and singing. I thought it was pretty boring. How wrong I was! I missed the point entirely. This song has a vulnerability and a longing that is deceptive when it rides on its comforting wave-like melody. I find this a cappella version revealing. The story is sung at the pace Kathleen Ferrier feels it. This is a singer inside the song.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Robert Tweten — Franz Schubert, Erlkönig, D328
As a singer studies, they come to story-filled Lieder. I met Lieder at a time when I was trying to develop a reliable technique and make the same consistently free and beautiful sound on every vowel. This pursuit of technical excellence often left my inner artistic voice out of the picture. What Loraine does in this performance is what I yearned to do all those years ago: she takes vocal risks, and while it's not always what we would traditionally call “beautiful,” it pays off in other ways. She gives us all the characters and uses her technical toolbox to paint a vivid and terrifying moment. You hear the weak, thin, and vulnerable voice of the child and the sweetly seductive ghostly tones of the spirit and the manly squareness of the father. Incredible. A reminder to me that I must never commit less than she does here. I was also rather thrilled to choose this version, which features pianist Robert Tweten. I was lucky enough to have worked with the divine Bob Tweten when we were both young.
k.d. Lang — Hallelujah
Before Leonard Cohen died, he made a public plea asking everyone to stop singing this song. Who hasn’t covered it? There are so many versions, from Jeff Buckley to Regina Spektor to Britain’s Got Talent winner, Susan Boyle. When you pick up a song that everyone has sung, and everyone has a favourite version already, what do you do? k.d. Lang knows. You listen deeply to your soul and you sing. You don’t try to nail the song, or to mimic another rendition, or break the mold. You don't try to get it right. You don’t try to make people cry. Your job as the artist is to stay inside and live that song. In this performance, k.d. Lang does just that. That takes courage, and she is fearless in this rendition, in front of the writer of the song, Leonard Cohen. This is a live performance from the Canadian Song Writers Hall of Fame Inductee night.
Nina Simone — Strange Fruit
Solo voice artists who use their technical skills to give full-blooded life to their ideas—that’s what I’m looking for always. I object to technique for technique’s sake. In this powerful song, Nina Simone uses her voice as a paintbrush and fills the canvas in my mind with deeply etched images that I won’t soon forget.
Iestyn Davies and Thomas Dunford— Dowland and Clapton
Iestyn Davies was in my town last fall for a concert. I had a chance to host him for a noon-hour talk and was taken by his intelligence and warmth. All this and more appears in his singing. I chose this because you might not be familiar with the voice of the countertenor. Its otherworldly quality might make you giggle. But listen closely, and just let the heart in his sound scoop you up and take you away. Brilliant programming with the Dowland and the Clapton back-to-back.
Jeremy Dutcher — Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa
A trained opera singer of the Wolastoq First Nations, Jeremy connected his voice and compositional style with recordings of his ancestors on wax cylinders from the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The result? Songs that cross over time, musical styles, and cultures. In this performance, his voice mixes with his ancestor’s voice, singing a traditional Maliseet. He is a bold storytelling artist challenging what we think a classical singer is or should be. Also in this video, you will see in the role of back-up singer another strong creative voice in our field, Teiya Kasahara. Teiya is an amazing storyteller in their own path, one who is unwilling to be defined by norms of the opera world (check out The Queen in Me for proof of that). Might this be the future of opera? Are we ready to embrace other cultures and languages that can move us through music and story? There are many samples of Jeremy’s work online, but I prefer this video above all: the artist immersed in the moment, the crowd traveling with him wherever he wants to go. The pandemic has revealed clearly to singers that performance is a two-way exchange. The audience needs live performance, but performers need them too. I love this performance from the Polaris Prize Gala for bringing that home to me again.
Laurie Anderson - Only an expert
As opera and classical music begins to find its legs in a digital world, it is this piece of music, with its strong music and strong visual content, that makes me a believer that we can bridge into the digital with integrity. When I was working on my own piece for an Indigenous multi-media theatre production focused on social change, I used this song for inspiration. I wanted to create my version of this song, using my voice, my art form and media. It was smart, it made a point, it could laugh at itself, and it mattered. This song, video or not, leaves a mark.
ENCORE
Maria Callas — Gioachino Rossini, ‘Una voce poco fa’ from Il Barbiere di Siviglia
It is the classically trained singer in me that wants to finish with a classic aria encore. I don’t think I can find a better storyteller for this aria then Maria Callas. I sang this aria many times when I was an emerging artist and sang the role as well. I appreciate how difficult it is to fill each piece of coloratura with meaning. After all, the text to this aria is so short and simple and it repeats and repeats. Basically, it’s five minutes of “Lindoro will be mine. I might seem innocent and docile, but I have a hundred tricks up my sleeve.” I remember hearing Callas sing this and thinking, “That’s the way to do it! Listen to her!” The way she holds and releases the name of her beloved each time. It's so good. Her little hand gestures in this video communicate elegant resistance. Steel spine, and gooey love all together. It’s all there in the voice: it’s new and fresh every time. Every thought she has. She inspires me to have faith that any song can be new, fresh, and vital. No matter how well we think we know a song, if a singer shows up with their heart and head connected and good vocal toolbox, how can they be anything but an artist?
Please play the video below to listen to Rebecca Hass’ dream recital as a playlist.
November 20, 2020
