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McGill graduate Jingjing Xu is the 2024 winner of the prestigious Mirjam Helin Competition held in Helsinki, Finland. The Montreal-based, Chinese mezzo-soprano says that competition selections such as Saariaho’s “Attente” and Ravel’s “Le paon” maximized her opportunity to demonstrate different styles and vocal colours. The first song “contains long notes that must be performed straight-tone and with long crescendi or decrescendi, (in order to) depict stillness and loneliness,” she notes. In a completely different vein, the Ravel required her to narrate the courtship of a peacock!
Xu approaches singing from an imaginative standpoint, celebrating how “it creates a spiritual world that is always shifting.” She enjoys using her vocalism to draw audiences deep into this spiritual realm. Xu says that her collaborative piano partner, Christopher Knopp, sees musical gestures as more precise and clear. This intriguing difference in approach sparks conversation and experimentation, encouraging them both to delve more deeply into the pieces they work on together.
Xu has many hopes for the future, with ambitions to perform iconic mezzo-soprano roles such as Angelina from La Cenerentola, Octavian from Der Rosenkavalier, and Cherubino from Le nozze di Figaro. In January 2025, she will perform with Finland’s Oulu Symphony Orchestra alongside two other participants from the Mirjam Helin Competition.
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