Spring 2020 Edition The Newsletter of the School of Music at the University of British Columbia UBC High Notes The Queen in Me Soprano Teiya Kasahara (BMus’07) on carving their own path in opera as a queer, multidisciplinary Japanese-Canadian performer www.music.ubc.ca SPOTLIGHT LIBERATING THE QUEEN IN ME Photo: Takumi Hayashi/UBC In their new play The Queen in Me, soprano Teiya Kasahara (BMus’07) liberates one of opera’s most iconic villains — and challenges the industry’s centuries-old prejudices Photo: Tallulah By Tze Liew In The Queen in Me, the Queen of the Night at age 15, after seeing Ingmar Bergman’s film begins to sing her most iconic aria, “Der Hölle version of The Magic Flute. “I saw her perform For more than two centuries, the iconic Queen Rache,” like she would in any Magic Flute show. and was like, Oh God, I want to do that,” they of the Night from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte But midway through, she halts. “Stopp! Stopp remember. has been thrilling audiences with her vengeful die Musik!” she screams. Breaking the fourth spirit, bloodthirsty drive, and volatile high Fs. wall, she laments the stifling act everyone’s With this as their dream role, Kasahara dove Qualities that make her the ultimate villain, come to see; one she’s been trapped in for headfirst into voice training, made it into fated to eternal doom while the hero and over two centuries. the UBC Opera program, and honed their heroine, demure as lambs, skip off to enjoy craft for four years under the tutelage of their happy ending. Prof. Nancy Hermiston — with the intensity I wanted to give the Queen of and drive of an ambitious Queen. “I poured But now it’s 2020 — and she’s sick of the Night a voice. I had to tell all of my energy into becoming the best following the script. What if the Queen of the singer, actor and stage animal I could be,” Night could actually tell her own story? her story — and then tell mine says Kasahara. “It meant that I didn’t get as — Teiya Kasahara much of a well-rounded life experience at This is the idea that inspired soprano university, but it made me very successful.” Teiya Kasahara (BMus’07) to create their With unbridled honesty, humour and spirit, Fresh out of the program, they were recruited groundbreaking new play The Queen in Me — she begins to unravel the dark side of the by the prestigious Canadian Opera Company. tackling the prejudices that have been part opera industry: how it has stereotyped and Everything seemed to be falling into place. of the opera industry since Mozart’s time. oppressed many women like her — Turandot, As a queer, non-binary Japanese-Canadian Lady Macbeth, Medea — and all the opera But when Kasahara finally got to play their who’s tired of stuffing themself into the ill- singers who have embodied these roles. dream role as the Queen of the Night — fitting shoes of femme fatales and simpering countless times in fact — they realized it heroines, they are determined to tell new Kasahara has always felt a special connection wasn’t what they’d hoped for. stories that reflect real people, with complex with the Queen of the Night. It was “Der Hölle identities. Rache” that made them fall in love with opera Read the whole story on the High Notes blog. Q & A From Aerosmith to Van Halen Professor Nathan Hesselink uncovers the secret history of Little Mountain Sound, the UBC School of Music, and Vancouver’s heyday as a rock ‘n’ roll mecca Photo: Serra Hwang Serra Photo: Photo: Takumi Hayashi/UBC Takumi Photo: Here’s a little-known fact: Vancouver is the Encouraged by fellow faculty member Prof. Nathan Hesselink Sharman King birthplace of some of the most important rock Sharman King (BMus’70) — whose long ’n’ roll records of the past 40 years. Beginning and successful career as a bass trombonist For starters, can you describe the scene in the late 1970s and continuing through the included a stint as a studio musician at at its peak? 1990s, acts like Van Halen, Aerosmith, Bon Vancouver’s legendary Little Mountain Sound Jovi, Metallica, Blue Öyster Cult, INXS, and the Studios — Prof. Hesselink tracked down and Nathan Hesselink: It’s no exaggeration to say Scorpions flocked to the city to record their interviewed as many producers, composers, that Vancouver was a rock ’n’ roll mecca in iconic albums. musicians, and engineers from back in the day the 1980s and 90s. Think about the really big as he could find. He pored through archives albums of the ‘80s and there’s a good chance Even less known is the role the School of Music that hadn’t been opened in decades. His they were produced at Little Mountain Sound: played in the city’s transformation from local hub detective work took him on a journey back Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, Aerosmith’s to international hard rock mecca. That is, until in time, from the heyday of the 1980s, to the Pump, Van Halen’s Balance. Bold, important recently: Prof. Nathan Hesselink stumbled upon launch of the Bachelor of Music program in the albums that sold tens of millions of copies this secret history while doing research for a early 1960s, all the way back to Vancouver’s internationally and came to define the hard project on rhythm and technology in rock music. first jazz supper clubs and CBC Radio’s early rock sound of that era. The biggest bands in experiments with live music broadcasts. His the world were coming to Little Mountain “I was talking to local sound engineers and research culminated in an eye-opening talk at Sound Studios to record their music. Metallica, producers and UBC kept coming up. As it turned the School of Music this past February. AC/DC, The Cult… pop acts like Bryan Adams out, our alumni had their fingerprints all over and INXS, too. The list goes on and on. these great albums from that era,” he told High High Notes sat down with Prof. Hesselink and Notes recently. Sharman King to discuss the project so far. Read the full interview on the High Notes blog. ALUMNI MAKING WAVES Awards, new shows, and a virtual orchestra for the COVID-19 pandemic Legendary Canadian composer and School Indigenous cellist Cris Derksen (BMus’07) plight of missing and murdered Indigenous of Music alumnus Alexina Louie (BMus’70) collaborated with Toronto playwright Evalyn women and girls. Derksen performed the was awarded the 2020 Governor General’s Parry and Inuk artist Laakkuluk Williamson show’s live soundtrack. Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Bathory on Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools, Artistic Achievement, in recognition of her an exciting new multimedia project that Morna Edmundson (BMus’81), the artistic groundbreaking orchestral and chamber combines music, art, and Greenlandic mask director of the Elektra Women’s Choir (EWC), works, film scores, and more. In February, dancing to address colonialism and sexuality, teamed up with conductor/harpsichordist/ Louie returned to the School of Music for a climate change, racism, reconciliation, and the School of Music lecturer Alexander Weimann composer residency, during which the UBC to create Women of the Italian Baroque, a joint Alexina Louie Symphony Orchestra performed her The EWC and Pacific Baroque Orchestra concert Ringing Earth: Festive Overture at the Chan that showcases seven brilliant, little-known Centre for the Performing Arts. female composers from Baroque-era Italy. Composer Jared Miller (BMus’10) Conductor Janna Sailor (MMus ’08, received a 2020 Juno nomination in the DMPS ’12) and violinist Donovan Seidle category of Classical Composition of brought together members of the Calgary the Year for his album Under Sea, Above Philharmonic and Edmonton Symphony Sky. The work is an ode to our planet, orchestras to film a virtual performance representing “both Earth’s massive, of Elgar’s "Variation IX (Nimrod)" from majestic and wild side, and its incredibly the Enigma Variations — bringing beautiful fragility, as climate change continues to music to self-isolating audiences during the wreak havoc upon it.” COVID-19 pandemic. IDEAS AROUND THE WORLD IN SIX TONES Musicologist and French opera expert Dr. Hedy Law goes back to her Hong Kong roots with an exciting new course that explores the global phenomenon of Cantonese music, from opera to pop Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Tze Liew teaching Western music for so long. I popular genres like Cantopop, musicals and thought, if I only teach Monteverdi through TV dramas,” says Dr. Law. Dr. Hedy Law has always been aware of a Mozart, then I’ll never have a chance to teach certain irony at the heart of her academic Cantonese repertory within the curriculum Read the whole story on the High Notes blog. career. An expert on 18th-century French here. And so I'm just like, really? That seems opera and pantomime, she grew up immersed to be a really big opportunity lost,” she says. in a very different tradition: her mother was a Cantonese opera teacher. Dr. Law’s course is a broad overview of major Cantonese music genres since the early 19th The contrast wasn’t something she thought century, from Cantonese opera to Cantopop too much about, until recently. After more (Cantonese pop music) and everything in than a decade teaching Western music and between. theory, she found her attention wandering from the powdered wigs and tinkling It follows the footprints of a long and rich harpsichords of Mozart to the phoenix eyes history, no smaller in scope than the Western and plaintive erhu that she grew up with in music canon.