Interviews - my/maSCENA

Corona Serenades: Q&A with Kara Covey

By La Scena Musicale Team on 17 April 2020 Interviews, Opera

Meet Kara Covey, soprano (United States), singer for Corona Serenades Kara Covey’s 2019-2020 engagements include the title role of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah with Texas Concert Opera, Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) with the Varna Opera Festival, Micaëla (Carmen) with the Mediterranean Opera Festival, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) with Varna State Opera and Teatro Malinka, Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus) with Texas Hill Country Opera, Billie in (Speed Dating Tonight!) with Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Lola (Cavalleria Rusticana) with Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Mimì and Musetta (La Bohéme) with the Morelia Opera Festival and the Contessa (Le Nozze di Figaro) with Varna State Opera. She has been granted a position in the Fargo-Moorhead Opera’s Gate…

Corona Serenades: Q&A with Hugo Laporte, baritone (Canada)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 15 April 2020 Interviews, Opera

Meet Hugo Laporte, baritone (Canada), singer for Corona serenades Acclaimed for his velvety timbre and outstanding stage presence, Hugo Laporte has won prizes at the Belvedere Competition, OSM Manuvie Competition, Canadian Music Competition, Prix d’Europe and Marmande competition and earned many grants and engagements through the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques. In January he sang the title role of The Phantom of the Opera in its official French version in Montreal and Quebec City. Hugo will return to the Opéra de Montréal in the role of Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro) and Opéra de Québec in a main role to be announced. Recent appearances include Albert…

Corona Serenades: Q&A with Nils Brown, tenor (Canada)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 15 April 2020 Interviews, Opera

Meet Nils Brown, tenor (Canada), singer for CORONA Sérénades Australian-born Nils Brown makes his home in Montreal. He is regularly engaged by major orchestras and choral organizations in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. He has appeared with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, Edmonton Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, I Musici de Montréal, Portland Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Four Nations Ensemble, Washington Bach Consort, Lamèque Baroque Festival, Elora Singers, Tafelmusik, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Bach Choir of Bethlehem, CBC Vancouver Orchestra and Aradia Ensemble. He has recorded with the Aradia Ensemble, American Bach Society and Washington Bach Consort. Nils…

CORONA Serenades: Q&A with Rose Naggar-Tremblay (mezzo-soprano, Canada)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 14 April 2020 Interviews, Opera

Meet Rose Naggar-Tremblay, singer for CORONA Serenades. Rose Naggar-Tremblay has a bachelor’s degree from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. Her roles for the Opéra de Montréal include Tisbe (La Cenerentola), Zora (Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba), Giovanna (Rigoletto) and Gertrude Stein (Ricky Ian Gordon’s Twenty-Seven). Other notable engagements are Anita in a concert version of West Side Story with the Orchestre de la Francophonie, concerts with the Festival de musique de Saint-Eustache, the Festival de musique de Lachine and the concert Eternal Light with I Musici de Montréal. Rose has performed the role of Duchesse Della Volta (La fille…

Corona Serenades: Q&As with Yara Zeitoun, soprano (Lebanon, living in Vienna)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 10 April 2020 Interviews, Opera

Meet soprano Yara Zeitoun, singer for CORONA Serenades. Raised by a Lebanese father and Moroccan mother in the Middle East and in Canada, Yara Zeitoun was named after a famous Arabic song by the Lebanese classical singer Fairuz. She holds a postgraduate diploma in voice and opera from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, earned with the assistance of the Waverley Fund. Yara has performed at Kensington Palace Gardens with the Peace and Prosperity Trust and in the summer of 2018 was accepted into the International Vocal Arts Institute under Joan Dornemann. She has performed Giulia (La Scala…

Corona Serenades: Q&As with Anne-Marine Suire, soprano (France)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 10 April 2020 Interviews, Opera

Meet soprano Anne-Marine Suire, singer for CORONA Serenades. An alumna of the Longy School of Music in Massachusetts and the Université de Montréal, Anne-Marine Suire made her Paris debut at the Opéra Comique in the role of Marie de Pontcourlay in Varney’s Les Mousquetaires au convent. She has served on the roster of the Académie de l’Opéra Comique (2014-2015) and the Lyon Opera Studio (2015-2016). Among the roles she has sung in Montreal are Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare), Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande), Nella (Gianni Schicchi), Suor Genovieffa (Suor Angelica). For the Centre for Opera Studies in Sulmona, Italy she has appeared as Susanna (Le…

Photo: B. Ealovega

Xian Zhang: A Conductor to Watch

By Carol Xiong on 7 February 2020 Interviews

Xian Zhang’s career spans continents. She conducts 80 to 100 concerts a year, divided between her posts as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conductor emeritus of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. Destined for Music Zhang’s musician parents named her Xian, which is Chinese for the sound of a stringed instrument. “You could tell that my parents had already set their minds on making me a musician,” Zhang recalls. Zhang began her musical studies at age 3, on a piano built by her father. To this day,…

Photo : Svend Andersen

Quatuor Hermès: A French Quartet Around the World

By Arthur Kaptainis on 5 September 2019 Interviews

Let it be known that the Quatuor Hermès, which makes its second appearance under the auspices of the Ladies’ Morning Musical Club on Oct. 6, is named after the mythological messenger of the gods, not the Paris luxury fashion house. “But we would be very happy if the Hermès brand decided to collaborate with us,” Omer Bouchez, first violinist of this busy French ensemble, said on a rare day off. “Perhaps we could offer them a partnership at some point!” Not that the quartet, founded in 2008 at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, needs any branding help.…

Pavillon Perez de l'Université d'Ottawa

University of Ottawa School of Music: 50 years Old and Not a Single Wrinkle

By Marie-Claire Fafard-Blais on 5 September 2019 Education, Interviews

The University of Ottawa School of Music is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Through decades of innovations, many teachers and students have stood out, allowing the school to be recognized across the country as one of the most dynamic. Founded in 1969, the same year as the National Arts Centre and its orchestra, the University of Ottawa School of Music has, from the very beginning, attracted well-known teachers and musicians, such as Gerald Bales, Yves Chartier, David Hildinger and Jean-Pierre Sevilla. “Our privileged relationship with the National Arts Centre Orchestra has had major repercussions on the music school and has allowed…

Biophilia Records: The Greening of Jazz

By Marc Chénard on 5 September 2019 Interviews, Scena Jazz

Would you ever consider buying an album with no disc in it? Probably not. What would be the point of doing such a thing in the first place, right? One New-York based indie, Biophilia Records, dares to do that. And its reason is a simple one: to be environmentally-friendly. After all, CDs are not recyclable, and plastic jewel cases, broken hinges and trays, are a plain nuisance. Biophilia products have none of that, but consist of cardboard packages that unfold like origami. On one of its 20 panels, there is a sticker with a seemingly handwritten code that enables a…

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