Author Archives: KateHull

On April 6^th, after 7 hours of studying molecular genetics in the basement of IKB, I decided to give myself a break by strolling over to the Chan for UBC Orchestra’s final concert of the year. The first half included Igor Stravinsky’s Funeral Song, followed by Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations, with soprano D’Arcy Blunston singing the surrealist text by Arthur Rimbaud. I could gush over these two pieces forever, but I must talk about the second half, devoted to Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. I can’t exactly say why this piece affected me so strongly, but I feel completely inspired, so bear with me for this one.

In the first movement, titled “Rêveries”, the music speaks of meeting, or even just catching sight of, someone truly enchanting for the first time. Whether on stage reciting Shakespeare, or across a dancefloor, or even sitting across from you on the bus, the overactive imagination begins to envision the life that you and that one person could lead. You only get a glimpse of this person but somehow, against your own will, your mind shows you all the ups and downs of this imaginary future together, the adventures, the arguments, the heartbreaks. Like this first movement, it becomes is an overture to what the future could hold. Perhaps summoned by a simple melody played first by violins, it keeps popping into your head when at work, or in a lecture, or when you see that person once again across a ballroom. This idée fixe keeps reminding you, the hero of this symphony, of that special someone, whether you like it or not.

In movement two, “Un bal”, the scene is set by a triple meter and a light, joyful melody. As the lower strings pluck, you can feel yourself waltzing around a Parisian ballroom, and then that idée fixe suddenly returns. That special someone has just walked in, and you have spotted each other across the room, through the mass of dancing couples.

“Scène aux champs”, or in English, “Scene in the fields”, evokes the bliss of settling into a relationship. Starting with a light-hearted solo from an oboist, the movement flows like wind through a grassy field, and feels as if the composer was imagining him and his special someone as an older couple settling down on the countryside. Near the end of the movement the timpani rumble, alternating with that oboe solo, but getting louder and more ominous each time. Is this just a storm rolling over this country field, or is it foreshadowing what’s to come for this couple?

“Marche au supplice” (March to the scaffolds) is driven by a steady beat – a march – accompanied by military fanfare from the brass. Though we never covered it in class, it is one of the most recognizable movements of this symphony. You can imagine that with each crash of the symbols, our hero watches as prisoner after prisoner meets his end at the guillotine. His footsteps fall heavy as he walks up the wooden steps to the platform above. Suddenly, all other sound fades away. Our hero’s lover appears in the crowd, along with that enchanting idée fixe. One can imagine she gives our hero one last, comforting smile, right before… CRASH!

Once in the afterlife, our hero dreams up a ritual in “Songe d’une nuit du sabbat”. Unnaturally high-sounding winds seem to mock the waltz of the second movement. Violins screech and make unnatural sounds by hitting bows against strings. Amidst all this sacrilegious chaos, chimes break through. Are these church bells, perhaps ringing out at our hero’s funeral? One hopes they bring our hero some comfort, though it seems more likely that they are there to torment him.

As someone who is more familiar with vocal music, the symphony tends to involve working harder to connect with the music. It might be because we have already discussed this work in class, or because Berlioz succeeded in getting exactly what he wanted with this piece, but I found it so completely moving that I forgot all about my upcoming molecular genetics final. It was a truly fantastic end to a semester of fabulous music.

I have been in UBC Choirs for three years now, and have had some amazing musical experiences as a result. This year, as a member of the chamber choir, I have sung under the direction of the Masters of Conducting choral TA’s. On April 5^th, following a week of International Music put on by the UBC School of Music, we performed at the Chan Centre alongside Choral Union and University Singers.

Chamber choir performed after intermission, and our set was conducted by Steven Hamilton, doubling as a his master’s thesis recital. We sang music from around the world, beginning with Dúlamán: a fast-paced and intense musical setting by Michael McGlynn of a Gaelic folk tale. Learning the Gaelic pronunciation was a daunting task, especially as a soloist, with an almost entirely syllabic text setting and alternating meters. It’s a piece that requires a lot of hard work to master, but when done properly, it can revive an audience post-intermission.

To calm both the choir and the audience down, next up was Aftonen by Hugo Alfven. The piece creates a musical painting of the peaceful Swedish countryside in the evening, and was a cool contrast to the intensity of Dúlamán.

Next we travelled to China for two folk songs, Diu Diu Dengand Mountain Song & Dancing Tune, arranged by Chen Yi. The first song began with the choir imitating the sound of a steam engine building speed, then continued to imitate the sounds of the train travelling through the mountains, such as the “Diu! Diu!” sounds made by water drops hitting the metal roof of a train. In the second piece, soloists sang of the beauty of their homeland, quietly accompanied by the choir. It then changed mood and turned into a celebratory dancing song, with a lot of vocal jumping and rhythmic intensity.

Three Australian Bush Songsby Iain Grandage, the only song that we sang in English, paints the landscape of the Australian bush from “Dawn” to “Sunset”. The piece requires the improvisation of Australian bird songs, and chamber choir did an amazing job of researching and imitating a wide variety of calls. Watching the performance played back online, I was astounded by how real all the bird songs sounded. Even the dramatic Kookaburra call, mastered by Andrea Ciona, sounded extremely realistic.

Chamber choir’s final song was Balleilakka, which was an absolute behemoth of a piece to learn. It is a musical number from the Kollywood – not Bollywood – film “Sivaji”, and was written by A.R. Rahman in the Tamil language. This piece, arranged for choir by Ethan Sperry, is a vibrant and fast-paced celebration of traditional Tamil culture and the childhood of the movie’s main character, featuring a tricky tongue-twister as the most electrifying moment of the song. After a couple of serious, quiet, mildly-stressful-to-sing pieces, this took away any nerves that had built up during our performance, and I could just enjoy myself knowing how much work we had put into mastering the text.

Much like MUSC 326, the UBC Choirs are made up of students from every faculty. As a biology major with a musical background, it means so much that I was able to continue with choral singing even after high school. Chamber choir is full of students who are committed to enriching their lives with music, and I am very proud to have been a part of such a special ensemble.

The Vancouver Youth Choir (VYC) was founded by conductor Carrie Tennent in 2013, and has grown to include VYC Junior, VYC Kids, and a VYC Tiny. This concert featured the younger choirs in the first half, while the second half was devoted to the main chorus. Instead of a full intermission, Carrie Tennant led all choirs and the audience in a sing-a-long of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. The idea is slightly horrific for an audience member, especially if you are attending alone, but two lines in everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves. It was an excellent way to revive the audience before the second half, and to encourage a community of self-expression.

The second half of the concert featured the Vancouver Youth Choir, performing the same set that they brought to the American Choral Director’s Association Conference in Kansas City. They began with “Ilus Ta Ei Ole”, written by Pärt Uusberg and inspired by Estonia. The piece starts with the basses singing “No, it is not beautiful”, describing the bare fields and empty houses of the Estonian countryside, as the tenors join in. Sopranos and altos provide a low accompanying humming, evoking the image of a bare, winter landscape. Soloists pick it up from the men, going on about the boring winter time, until there is a moment of clarity. The women take over now, singing “But it is all so beautiful”. The rest of the choir joins, singing proudly about the beauty of Uusberg’s homeland, as a soprano line soars above it all. This piece was a beautiful start to a very exciting set, and gave the audience a sense of pride in their own “homeland”, wherever – or whoever – that may be.

The second piece was a stark contrast to the first. An initial, jarring STOMP brought the audience out our winter landscape trance. A piece of music without words, or even a distinct melody, “Fire” by UBC graduate Katerina Gimon evokes the title element through body percussion and vocal effects. The set continued with a theme of contrasting emotion. A 19^thcentury hymn by Otto Nicolai followed, using polyphony and homophony to enhance certain lines of the German text. “Water Fountain”, an arrangement of Tune-Yards’ modern pop song, began with chorus members clapping a steady beat as the audience’s applause for the previous piece faded out.

It is rare, as a member of a choir, to have a feeling of intense connection with those around you. It has happened to me a few times, in rehearsal or a performance, but it is a very special, life changing experience. It is even rarer, as an audience member, to feel that connection with a choir that is not your own. I felt VYC’s energy and connection with each other radiate past the conductor towards me, enveloping me in a force field of high emotion which, honestly, made me tear up slightly. Their sense of unity and enthusiasm made songs like “Fire” and “North” so much more special to watch and listen to.

For the finale, all three choirs once again came together to teach the audience a two-part, 3-note accompaniment, while the Sopranos and Altos sang the melody. It was an excellent way to bring an evening of inspiring music-making to a close.

Puccini’s La bohème, a story of love and bohemian life in 19^thcentury Paris, is an extremely well-known opera. It follows a group of young artists as they deal with unpaid rent, unfulfilling work and unstable love. It is a familiar story that can be set nearly anywhere, during any era.

Conducted by Judith Yan, Vancouver Opera’s production of La bohème took the typical setting of fin-de-siècle Paris and pushed it forward a few decades, bringing the set and costumes into 1920s Paris. The production began, however, in modern times. The curtain rises as tourists wander through the streets of Paris’ Latin quarter, inspecting vintage furniture, post cards and souvenirs. A woman puts on an old gramophone, and the opening to the opera, not quite a full-scale overture, begins to play. We are then transported back in time to the 1920s to meet the young bohemians at the centre of the opera.

I must admit that I often find myself listening more for the leading soprano or mezzo rather than for the male voices, probably because I have a better grasp of how the female voice can sound and can be manipulated. It is not very often that I find myself holding my breath for the next time the male lead sings, but such was the case for this performance. While I applauded Mimi’s “Mi chiamano Mimi”, and cried for her during her final aria “Sono andati”, Korean tenor Ji-Min Park ‘s Rodolfo was just so intriguing to watch and to listen to. His aria “Che gelida manina” gave me the chills usually reserved for the high note in a soprano aria. It was his voice I followed closely as he and Mimi walked backstage at the end of act 1, still singing as they catch up to their friends.

After an introduction to the exciting and reactive Musetta in act 2, act 3 once again begins in the present day, this time with an accordion playing the melody of “Musetta’s Waltz” from act two. I saw this production on February 19^th, and Karl Lagerfeld, creative director for Chanel, had died that morning. As a tribute to him, a chorus member walks on dressed in all black, with his signature white ponytail and dark glasses. It was a subtle tribute that worked to the production’s advantage, further strengthening the connection between the past and the present through the idea of the Chanel brand and its popular association with 1920s Paris.

Puccini’s operas have always been very accessible, and are usually what I recommend to those who are new to the genre. It is easy to engage with his music, as his melodies are used frequently in film and television and enhance relatively straight forward plots. La bohème, among other Puccini operas, has been adapted into movies and musicals, most notably Jonathan Larson’s Rent. So, if you are already into musical theatre, La bohème is a perfect introduction to opera. The Canadian Opera Company’s 2013 production of La bohème was the first opera (of many) I ever saw, so it was nice to return to it after 6 years of expanding my opera knowledge.

On February 1^st, I went to see UBC Opera’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, or “The Magic Flute”, at the Chan Centre. Backed by the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, this production was sure to be a spectacular one. Despite having listened to recordings of this opera long before going, I had no idea what the plot was and didn’t have time to read the program synopsis because I was running late (thanks Translink). This opera, however, proved very easy to follow.

In TheMagic Flute, we can see the beginnings of a modern musical theatre genre. The Flute weaves spoken dialogue, characteristic of singspiel, into the mix of arias, recitatives and ensembles, as well as borrows components from various music drama genres.  It is an opera that is difficult to imagine being performed in a monarch’s court, appealing much more to a rowdy, flirtatious, vaudevillean audience. The colourful, lavish costumes and props, including a beautifully crafted cardboard serpent, contrasted the relatively bare set design of white staircases, ramps, and Neoclassical columns. The production seemed like a child’s colourful crayon sketch of fairy-tale characters on a white page, which is fitting for a fantastical opera composed in an era of simplicity in art and architecture.

The story begins with our tenor hero, Tamino, stumbling into a hidden kingdom after being chased by a snake-like creature. He is taken to the Queen of the Night, who sends him on a mission, accompanied by the comical Papageno, to rescue Pamina from Sarastro. Once there, Tamino and Pamina fall in love and discover that Sarastro and his community of priests are actually the good guys, with superior ideals and morals. Tamino, Pamina and Papageno go through a series of trials in order to join Sarastro and his temple.

At the end of Act 1 a chorus comes out to join the priests and Sarastro, producing a wall of sound that comes at and surrounds the audience. This piece, sung by the chorus as priests of the temple, uses homophonic texture to enhance the idea of a religious experience while singing praise to Sarastro, their leader.

As a long-time lover of opera, I was beyond excited to see The Flute. Having listened to the opera before, I knew it had so many well-known pieces that even those most skeptical of classical music would enjoy. One of these pieces is “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen”, also known as the Queen of the Night’s Aria. As someone who has listened to countless versions of this aria, I was beyond impressed with soprano Sydney Frelick’s rendition. She performed the aria with great confidence and accuracy. It never felt like she was glossing over any notes to get to the more important ones. Each note was given the emphasis it deserved, without sacrificing emotion by sounding overly technical.

Every time I see a production put on by UBC Opera I am blown away by the talent of these students, many of whom I know through my participation in UBC Choirs. I am so excited to see what is to come for these talented young singers and hope to see them performing at major opera companies in the future.