Leila Getz and the Vancouver Recital Society: 45 Years as a Star Whisperer

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The Vancouver Recital Society turns 45 this season. Not bad for a venture few believed would last a year in a city perched on the edge of the Pacific and better known for its mountains than its culture. That it is still alive and well is solely due to VRS Founder and Artistic Director Leila Getz, a woman who firmly believes in taking giant leaps of faith.

“I met my husband Leon when I was 25,” says Getz. “Three weeks later I was married and on my way to Canada.” Both natives of Cape Town, South Africa, Leon was visiting his parents before returning to teach law at the University of British Columbia. Getz, trained in piano and cello, had been working as a music teacher and concert page-turner amid a flourishing Cape Town music scene. Vancouver, by contrast, felt like a musical desert, to the point that “Leon finally told (Getz) to stop moaning and do something about it!” So she did.

“As soon as I could, I flew down to New York to see if I could find some artists willing to come here,” says Getz. Since the late 1970s, she’s travelled countless kilometres, watched hours of video and listened intently to word-of-mouth. She has learned from distinguished mentors, such as William Lyne of London’s Wigmore Hall, and sat on juries for major music competitions—all to ensure she never missed an essential artist. Through it all, Getz made her final choices based on one thing only: her gut.

The 83-year-old Getz bristles with intelligence and energy, even while speaking by phone from the cafeteria of Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital, where she was recovering from several nasty broken bones. She viscerally knows when she’s in the presence of true talent. “When it’s there, it just knocks you out,” she says.

Starting with five concerts at the tiny Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island in 1980-81, VRS now presents 20 concerts a season at UBC’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, as well as at two downtown locations: the intimate Vancouver Playhouse and, for really big names (like Yo-Yo Ma coming up May 2025), the historic Orpheum Theatre. Concerts fall into two basic streams—one for established artists and one for up-and-comers.

The list of musical stars who have performed with VRS is exceptional. It includes legends like Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jessye Norman, Itzhak Perlman, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, as well as Joshua Bell, Anne Sofie von Otter, Bryn Terfel, Maxim Vengerov, and Sir András Schiff in their Canadian debuts (Take that, Toronto!). But those were easy choices: anyone could identify them as big stars who would sell tickets. Where Getz really shines is in identifying emerging artists so talented that audiences, not just from Vancouver anymore, have learned to trust her judgment and follow her lead. Other music organizers have even been known to book musicians simply based on their appearance with the VRS.

Getz’s emerging artist list includes Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, who appeared at the Playhouse in 2020 and who won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition this past September. Pianists Lang Lang and Yuja Wang were booked when they were barely known. But Cecilia Bartoli remains one of Getz’s favourite “finds.”

Getz first booked the Italian mezzo-soprano to play the Orpheum in 1992, and re-booked her for two more concerts the next year. “I knew she was going to be famous,” says Getz—but she wasn’t yet. “I almost stood on street corners and begged people to come. And we did manage to sell about half the theatre for that first recital and the word-of-mouth was absolutely fantastic.” By the next year, Bartoli’s two appearances—including one with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra under conductor Mario Bernardi—both sold out. “The audience was absolutely blown away,” Getz says. “Mario didn’t know what hit him. When Cecilia returned again a few years later, that really turned things around for us. She kind of solidified our finances—like a fairy godmother.”

As with many of the artists she’s booked multiple times, including Sir András Schiff—“a poet and so intelligent; when he plays the piano he just turns me inside out”—Getz maintains a close relationship with Bartoli, though the singer’s dislike of flying means she will likely never return. There have been a handful, however, Getz would prefer to forget.

“We have presented three of the worst concerts I’ve ever been to,” she says, including “a pianist who went to rehearse at the Playhouse and said to the lighting technician:
‘I don’t want any lights in the house. I want the only light to be on me because I am the concert.’ I thought ‘Oh shit’ and my ‘oh shit’ was perfectly correct because it was a horrendous concert.” Getz’s husband, usually her greatest supporter, would not, alas, let her leave.