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For musicians, summer often means extensive touring. We caught up with three artists from different corners of the music world: vocalist Storm Large from Pink Martini (crossover), Wesli (world musical) and tenor Mishael Eusebio (classical) to get a glimpse of life on the road.
Storm Large (Pink Martini)
Pink Martini is a genre-bending “little orchestra” that plays a unique blend of classical, pop, and global music. Since 2011, Storm Large has been its vocalist, part punk diva, part cabaret queen. This fall marks her first-ever visit to Quebec, with performances in Montreal, Quebec City, Gatineau, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, and Joliette. “I cannot wait to see, feel, and eat everything!” she exclaims.
At the moment, she’s airport-hopping across Europe, heading to Warsaw. After that, a month backpacking solo across Spain. Then she will join Pink Martini to tour heavily in the U.S. through July and August before heading to Canada for five shows in Quebec.
“Tour life is: wake up, panic-pack, find transport, pray for coffee. If there’s time, I’ll squeeze in the gym. Water, exercise, naps, and vitamins, that’s my holy grail. Because show food? Not always … food.”
And then there are the road moments that stick. “I was at a sushi bar in the Chicago airport, killing time during a layover. The waitress says: ‘Some guys at the bar are fans; they’ve paid for your meal.’ I go to thank them and they yell: ‘WE LOVE YOU! OUR KIDS LOVE YOU! WE’VE SEEN ALL YOUR STUFF!’”
“I freeze. Because, (I’d) only just joined Pink Martini. Before that, it was punk rock, raunchy cabaret, and yeah, some semi-nude fetish modelling. I’m thinking, your kids have seen all my stuff?” Then came the clincher: “Except that movie Monster. We didn’t let them watch that one.”
That’s when she realized they thought she was Charlize Theron. “I couldn’t break their hearts. I signed their bill and bolted,” she says, adding: “Charlize, if you’re out there, I owe you a good sushi dinner!”
Wesli
Born in Port-au-Prince, now rooted in Montreal, Wesli’s music bridges Afrobeat, Haitian rara, roots reggae, and the electric pulse of the diaspora. This summer, his band hits the road with Makaya, an album forged in rhythm.
They will begin the tour with performances at the Festival Nuits d’Afrique in Montreal, Afrika Fest in Halifax, the Edmonton Folk Festival, Lethbridge, Grande Prairie, Quebec City and then, they head for France and the U.S.A.
“We’re a band of accents,” Wesli says. “Cuba, Haiti, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Quebec, Guadeloupe, France—everyone has their own way of speaking.” This smooth cultural cocktail got spiked with bourbon while on tour at the Kennedy Center in Washington. “The tech crew was from Nashville. Honestly, we didn’t understand a word. Every sentence sounded like a new dialect. The lesson of the story is that we are not done learning new accents in the U.S. It’s such a big country that we forget they can vary from state to state.”
Touring also brings them to places like Havana, Cuba, where Wesli finds inspiration in the city’s vibrant culture. One venue that left a lasting impression is Fábrica de Arte Cubano, a cultural centre housed in a former cooking oil factory in Havana’s Vedado district.
“The whole city is art,” he says. “The buildings, the people, the rum, the music. Fabrica del Arte Cubano—that place gave us everything.”
Mishael Eusebio
The Phillipine-born tenor, who is a graduate of Opéra de Montréal’s Atelier lyrique, is known for his sweet timbre and thoughtful musicality. This summer, he’s touring across Canada with a full slate of performances.
He’s taking on Rossini in Ottawa, new opera in Toronto and Calgary, Carmen in 4 Seasons in Saint-Eustache, and closing with a recital in Sorel-Tracy. “Tour life can be exhausting,” he says. “Sometimes your housing doesn’t have a kitchen, and the venue’s miles away.” Adaptation is constant. “If the altitude of the city you’re in is high, you have to adapt to singing with less lung power. If the place is really dry, a water bottle is your best friend. Montreal in the summertime is a dream for a singer because it’s warm and humid: ‘People sound,’ to quote my friend Tayte Mitchell, ‘like gods.’” Time zones, though, are another story. “If it is drastically different, it is impossible to get your voice to co-operate; you may have to arrive a couple days before production starts or ask the conductor if you can mark the first couple of times.”
And then there are the moments no planning can prepare you for. “There was a big COVID scare minutes before we had to come on stage, and the administration decided that the show must go on, but that singers had to sing with N95 masks. At the end of the performance, I overheard someone in the audience say: “I didn’t hear a single voice onstage for the whole two hours!”
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