A little help from her friends
Published Monday November 23rd, 2009
Stage: Soprano Wendy Nielsen brings fellow New Brunswick performers together for gala event
When Wendy Nielsen calls, most New Brunswick musicians are quick to answer.
The operatic powerhouse has even lured an old musical colleague out of the seminary - for one night at least.
Saint John baritone-turned-Jesuit-priest Erik Oland will come out of retirement to perform at Wendy Nielsen and Friends, a gala concert at Saint John's Imperial Theatre Nov. 28. The show is a fundraiser for the theatre's ongoing Keep IT Live! capital campaign, of which Nielsen is honourary co-chair.
"This is a big, big deal for Erik," Nielsen, fresh off an engagement at the Metropolitan Opera in New York that wrapped late in October, said recently from her home in Cambridge-Narrows. "It speaks to his connection to Saint John and the theatre and that he feels so strongly about it."
The first time Oland sang at the Imperial was a benefit concert in 1994. "And then I went off and joined the Jesuits," he said recently from Guelph, Ont., where he had just finished guiding a 40-day silent retreat.
While he stopped singing professionally in 1994, music has continued to be part of his life. His graduate studies focused on music history and spirituality, and now, as director of a Montreal novitiate, where he is responsible for teaching 10 young men, music is part of their training.
"They always say give them your gifts," he said, "so every Monday morning we gather for singing class."
Oland been working on his voice for the last month, getting it into shape for the show.
"I'm quite happy to do it because I'm a Saint Johner true blue," he said. "And to support the arts community in Saint John is something very important to me."
Nielsen remembers the first time she and Oland performed together: it was 1993, on a Debut Atlantic tour. At the gala, they will reprise a couple of songs from that stint that were written by Sackville composer Alasdair MacLean.
Along with classical works and Spanish Christmas carols, Oland will also sing a couple of original pieces comprised of Alden Nowlan poems set to music composed by his friend Beverly Lewis, a Rothesay native who lives in Toronto.
While the concert is billed as Wendy Nielsen and Friends, not everyone who will join her onstage that night is technically a pal, although they very well might be by the end of the show.
And the show's name is at least partly true: Nielsen has known some of her co-performers for years; along with Oland, this includes the Sopranos, a group of Saint John area women united by their love of singing classical music; and Canadian concert pianist Robert Kortgaard.
She has known of world-renowned pianist Philip Thomson for ages, but has never actually sung with him.
And then there are the pop acts on the program.
Nielsen has never played with Fredericton singer David Myles or Isaac & Blewett, the duo comprised of Tim Isaac and Jim Blewett, who make their home along Chignecto Bay, past Alma, but she sure is excited to meet them.
"I think they are incredibly talented musicians, and to sing with them a little bit is going to be a big thrill for me - my secret wish!" she said.
The soprano has long admired the musicians, sending Myles a fan letter after hearing his latest album, and humming along to Isaac & Blewett at a private house party she attended.
Sometimes Nielsen gets to program a pop repertoire but, much to her dismay, she never, "Never!" gets to sing it.
"So this is Wendy's little fantasy," she said with a laugh.
The evening's program will showcase a range of genres.
"It's very disparate, because we're going to have opera and folk songs and blues," she said, "(but) it's all great music... and I hope that someone who's into the blues might come and hear opera for the first time."
The show is a chance to "celebrate the variety of things that happen at that theatre, both community events and professional events."
Nielsen remembers the first time she performed at the theatre, at a concert for Prince Charles 1996. She sang a couple of arias for the prince, a well-known opera buff.
"But honestly, my most vivid memory from that event was the security. And the dogs."
The prince's security detail interrupted her before the show with German shepherds that sniffed out her dressing room.
"That's the one and only time I've experienced that, I must say."
Nielsen has trod the jewel-box theatre's boards many times since, performing in Messiah and Opera New Brunswick's 2005 production of Tosca. While she has sung at Carnegie Hall and in some of Europe's finest classical houses, the Imperial is still one of her favourite places to perform, she said.
"It has a quality to it not unlike the Metropolitan Opera in that... it has that feeling when you're sitting in the audience that it's a grand theatre, just the sheer beauty of it. But when you're on the stage, looking out at the house, there's a great feeling of intimacy, and it always feels like an occasion, I guess because it's so beautiful."
It is technically pleasing, too.
"For someone who doesn't sing with a mic, you're always looking for the acoustic to work with you. (At the) Imperial, you feel like you can do anything. You can dare to be incredibly soft and it's still going to be heard at the very last row, and yet something like the Tosca we did, which is a big, huge operatic piece with all guns blazing, even despite it being a smaller, theatre, it's able to take that on also," she said.
"To me it feels like a very homey, wonderful experience when I sing there. It's not only the house, it's the people of Saint John... when they like something, you know it."
Tickets for the concert are $50, $100 and $250. Tickets priced at $250 include seats in the A-section and an onstage reception with the artists following the performance. All proceeds go towards Imperial Theatre's Keep IT Live! Capital Campaign. Tickets are available at the box office, online at www.imperialtheatre.nb.ca or by calling 674-4100.
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