Q&A with Matthew Pauls

Matthew Pauls returns for a fourth year to the SSO’s Messiah performances – based now out of Winnipeg, Matt is returning home not only to sing but be part of our big musical family!

We took some time to ask him for a few of his thoughts on Handel’s Messiah.

How did you discover you wanted to be a singer?

I have always been surrounded by classical music and singing (my dad is a choral conductor), so it was a natural choice. If I had to choose a specific moment, it would probably be when a man from my church approached me in grade 12 and told me that he wanted to give me voice lessons and help me prepare to sing in the Festival. I sang Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh and after that I was hooked!

What’s your favourite part of Messiah?

My favourite part of Messiah that I don’t get to sing as a soloist is one of the choruses that often gets cut – “Let all the angels of God worship him.”

It’s hard to pick a favourite bass aria, but when the tempo is just right, it’s hard to beat “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?”

When was the first time you saw Messiah?

My first opportunity to be an audience member for a performance of Messiah was in 2003, while I was attending university in Winnipeg. By that time I was quite familiar with the work, as I had listened to a number of recordings and performed “Part One” and a few other selections from Messiah as a chorister.

What do you find challenging about singing Handel’s music?

The coloratura sections are quite challenging. But they are loads of fun once you’ve mastered them. It’s also challenging to make each performance fresh and interesting so that so the audience doesn’t tire of hearing the same piece every year.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?

Work for perfection in practice sessions and rehearsals; strive to communicate in performance.

Do you get nervous before your performances? If so, how do you calm your nerves?

As long as I have put in enough practice time and prepared well, I don’t get all that nervous. Excited, yes, but not nervous.

How do you prepare for a performance with an orchestra?

Practice, practice, practice…

If you had to convince someone who’s never seen Handel’s Messiah before to come to your performance, what would you say to convince them?

The last chorus alone are worth the price of admission! “Worthy is the Lamb” (with the final “Amen” section) is absolutely glorious! You have to experience it at least once.

Tenor Spencer McKnight has quickly become an SSO audience favourite having made his debut with us in our 2014 Messiah performances.  His effortless coloratura and exceptional diction make him the perfect Messiah tenor.

Fresh off performances of his recital program “Songs of the Great War”, a program outlining the music of the composer soldiers of World War One, Spencer returns to the SSO this season for our Messiah performances and our Bach Magnificat in May.

How did you discover you wanted to be a singer?

I was originally planning on finishing a political science degree and working in the world of politics – however I found that I was increasingly spending more time concentrating on music. I realized that it was my true passion. I haven’t regretted the decision to fully commit myself to music since then!

What’s your favourite part of Messiah?

My favourite aria is But Who May Abide…For He is Like a Refiner’s Fire… and I wish I could sing it! I think the presto section of Refiner’s Fire is one of the most exciting moments in the whole work. Inside I am just a tenor who wants to sing mezzo and alto rep!

Do you remember the first time you saw Messiah?

This may sound awful… but I haven’t seen a full performance of Messiah. When I was young I saw some excerpts of it done by St. Peter’s Chorus. I have only been involved in performances of it in the last few years, however I tend to listen to Messiah all year long. I just never get sick of the music.

What makes Handel’s music attractive for you? 

Some of the things that make Handel’s music so much fun can also be what makes it hard. Some of the very exposed moments are both difficult and enjoyable. I think that’s why it’s easy to love singing Handel – you always have to be on your “A” game to sing it well. The long coloratura moments in Messiah can be extremely difficult for the singers as well. That is what makes it so exciting to listen to!

What oratorio have you always wanted to sing?

Growing up listening to a lot of Verdi… I have to say I want to one day sing Verdi’s Requiem. The tenor gets one of the most beautiful arias in it with the Ingemisco.

Is there a tenor who has had a lasting impact on you? 

I spent most of my teenage life listening to Jose Carreras recordings. I would come home from school and start up YouTube – and search up anything and everything that Jose Carreras ever sang. I would credit him with teaching me how to sing pianissimo.

What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

“If you can think of doing absolutely anything else…do that”. And I can honestly say I can’t imagine doing anything else in the world.

Do you get nervous before taking the stage? 

I only get nervous if I don’t feel prepared, otherwise I don’t get that nervous. Being nervous is usually just adrenaline that you can focus on using on your performance

What prep goes in to an oratorio performance?

Preparing for a performance with an orchestra is very different that with just a pianist. You need to know what every instrument is doing underneath you – which will help you feel far more comfortable. If you are prepared you can almost feel as though you are just floating on top of what the orchestra does below you.

Do you have any special warm-ups before a performance? 

I have a whole process of warm-ups that I do every day that my voice teacher uses in his teaching. I just do those the day of a performance and a few of them before the performance. The whole group of warm ups takes about 20-30 minutes to do, but once I’ve done them I feel like I can sing almost anything.

What do you tell people who’ve never been to Messiah about experiencing it live? 

I would say that 276 years can’t be wrong, things don’t stay this popular for that long if people don’t love them! Come out and see it – I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. If you are nervous – I would suggest coming to the Sing-Along version. There isn’t a more enjoyable performance for audience and singers in the city!

You can hear Spencer as our tenor soloist for the upcoming Messiah performances on December 15th and 16th.

Visit www.spencermcknighttenor.ca for more information!

Mezzo soprano Lisa Hornung is likely the SSO’s most featured artist – a regular on our stage for 30 seasons!  

Aside from her wonderful text-driven oratorio performances, Lisa is a renowned teacher and hosts a vocal school each summer in her hometown, North Battleford.  Summer School for the Solo Voice recently celebrated its 20th season.

She returns for our performance of Handel’s Messiah – so we grabbed some of her time to ask her a few questions!

How did you discover you wanted to be a singer?

I always sang. Sing songs in my family were a regular occurrence.  Both sides of my family, grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles, were always singing, humming, playing music.  It wasn’t until I was 12 and my aunt told me to take lessons (which I was initially devastated by thinking she meant I was horrid) that I even realized singing lessons was ‘a thing’

What draws you to Handel’s Messiah?

It is my favorite work.  I love the text, the incredible variety in style, tempi, texture and mood.  It isn’t a work you have to ‘come to appreciate or acquire a taste for’. It is immediately accessible and thrilling to the ear, mind and soul.

What’s your favourite part of Messiah? (your own part, and a part you don’t get to sing!)

When the choir is hot and spot on- makes me smile, and sometimes giggle, whether I want to or not.  The choral arts, the collaboration, is magnificent. My own part- the return to the A section in He was despised.  I love how settled and warm the orchestra always is and the pathos of ornamentation the second time ‘round.

When was the first time you saw Messiah?

Hmmm, as I think about it, I have not seen a Messiah I was not singing in.  The first time I heard and learned the music was in university in Greystone Singers….as a soprano!  :). Since them I have sung in a Messiah as alto soloist somewhere every season that I was not sick or singing something else.

What do you find most challenging about singing Handel’s music? 

Keeping my nerves, worry and ego at bay to let the full intent and expression of the text shine.  The music is  difficult and technically very demanding so it is easy to get caught up worrying about what people will think about me instead of how Handel will make them think. 

Who were your biggest musical influences?

Bernadette Fanner,  Christa Ludwig, Richard Best.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?

Don’t go out there to see if you can sing, go out there because you can sing, then,  sing to express, not to impress – Richard Best

Do you get nervous before your performances?

Oh Lord, yes :). I remind myself this is not about me but about honoring the composer and serving the audience. Then putting on make-up, a gown and baubles is a big help as I am almost always in jeans, plaid and a ponytail. It’s like stepping into a braver person’s skin for awhile.

How do you prepare for a performance with an orchestra?

Learning and being at home with the orchestral part is important for me.  Trying to understand how the composer used the instrumentation, tempi, and orchestration to uplift the text.  I spend a great deal of time securing rhythm and tempo so flexibility is an easy option depending the conductor’s ideas.  Once I have learned a work I listen to several different recordings of it to hear others’ ideas and interpretations. 

Do you have special warm ups that you always use before performing?

No.  Kind of depends on the day, how I am feeling and what I feel like singing.  Often I make stuff up and mess around with new warm up ideas on performance days. 

How would you convince someone to come to Messiah for the first time?

If you hate it I will give you the price of your ticket :). I am that confident in this incredible work.  There is such an astonishing variety of mood, voicing, style, story, text- truly something for everyone.  And honestly, it’s Handel, what’s not to love?

 See and hear SSO favorite Lisa Hornung in our upcoming performances of Handel’s Messiah, December 15th and 16th.

Soprano Chelsea Mahan has been a staple of the SSO’s programming of the last few seasons – she’s regularly featured in oratorio works with the orchestra and has become an audience favorite!

She is a home-grown talent, and we’re thrilled to have her back with the SSO again this season!

We took some time with each of our Messiah soloists for a quick Q&A.

When did you make your SSO debut?

In December of 2013 with Maestro Victor Sawa… singing  the Messiah, of course!

How did you discover you wanted to be a singer?

My family – growing up with 6 sisters we sang all the time. I wanted to be an actor first, but when I realized singing was acting, went that route!

What’s your favourite part of Messiah? (your own part, and a part you don’t get to sing!)

Ooo. That’s a toughy… Well, my favorite part in the soprano solo is in the recit, when you hear the angels descend in the orchestra and I come in with “and suddenly, there was with the angels a multitude of the Heavenly host…” You can hear everything in the orchestra – the angel wings flapping, the stars twinkling…followed by the chorus, who are the angels –  it always excites me!

I also love But who may abide… in the Refiner’s Fire, with the low voice, you really feel the fire burn in the coloratura and it gets pretty toasty.

When was the first time you saw Messiah?

I actually never saw the Messiah until after I performed it with the Greystone Singers a couple of times. (Once with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet!) I guess the first time I saw it was from within the choir.

What do you find challenging about singing Handel’s music?

I suppose the fact that it’s in (older) English. You take for granted that it’s your native language, thus less time goes into “text work.” And everything is easier to sing when you are super connected with the text, inside and out.

Who were your biggest musical influences?

As a kid, Rogers and Hammerstein and Abba…(seriously). They taught me how to tell a story with song.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?

Be prepared. Be the colleague you would want to work with and for. Be genuine and kind to others and to yourself.

Do you get nervous before your performances? If so, how do you calm your nerves?

I usually get a healthy dose of nerves that I don’t really want to calm, cause I find them beneficial.
On the odd chance I get bad nerves, I say the first line of my text over and over and trust the rest is so ingrained it will follow.

How do you prepare for a performance with an orchestra?

I like a big early supper, doing my hair, warming up, looking over my score at the venue, followed by sips of water and lipstick!

Do you have special warm ups that you always use before performing?

Lip trills *surprise* …I also like to channel the effortlessness and simplicity of singers I have met in the past -that type of backstage rapport and warming up lets me relax into the confidence of my preparation.

If you had to convince someone who’s never seen Handel’s Messiah before to come to your performance, what would you say to convince them.

The music is so special (perhaps the reason this has been a tradition for hundreds of years…) It is full of light and life and story. If you let go of preconceived notions and let it transport you, I guarantee you will leave uplifted!

See Chelsea as the soprano soloist with the SSO on December 15th and 16th.
Visit www.chelseamahan.com for more information!

The SSO is excited to team up with the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra to bring you not one, but two Nutcracker Suites!

Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet has proven to be one of the most timeless holiday traditions.  The composer capitalized on his incredible ballet to create one of the most fun and festive pieces in the orchestral repertoire.  Alongside Handel’s Messiah, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker is  the musical signaling of the holiday season.

The Suite features dances from the ballet’s second act, and the melodies have gone on to become some of the most loved ever written.

At Christmas 1960, the composing duo managed something truly extraordinary: a successful reimagining of The Nutcracker Suite. This suite was first composed as a ballet score by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1892. It wasn’t until 68 years later that Ellington and Strayhorn released their own version, refocused through the lens of big band jazz.

In his original liner notes for the Ellington-Strayhorn Nutcracker Suite, record producer Irving Townsend included the fantastic fiction that Ellington met Tchaikovsky while Ellington’s orchestra was performing at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Knowing that the Russian died in 1893, a full six years before the American was born, this meeting never could have happened in the literal sense. However, listening to the jazzed-up Nutcracker, one could imagine the work as a meeting place for

Ellington and Strayhorn did not simply place jazz rhythms over Tchaikovsky’s music. Instead, they picked up the notes, recast the beats, communed with the themes, and recreated the work, turning it into something that was at once completely their own and completely Tchaikovsky’s. In doing so, they showed that while music may be the universal language, it is spoken with many accents (and therein lies the fun).

So what can you expect at our Nutcracker Meets Duke Ellington concert?  Here’s an example…

Tchaikovsky wrote this…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_f9B4pPtg]

And Ellington and Strayhorn created this little ditty….

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FweWVFcVO00]

Co-commissioned by the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Nova Scotia with a grant from the Ontario Arts Council, Thunder Drum is a work for small orchestra and audio playback. (The audio playback is delivered from a MIDI keyboard.) Although the music of the outer movements is reminiscent of Western European 19th Century music and of more recent epic film sountracks, the underlying theme is informed by a vision of human prehistory expounded by the American mystic Edgar Cayce related to the shifting fortunes of what has been traditionally known as the “red race”, the native inhabitants of the north and central regions of the American continent. A great and lasting influence in my thinking and artistic imagination, Edgar Cayce (1877 – 1945) had mentioned in several of his trance utterances that the antediluvian world we know through legend as “Atlantis” was an advanced civilization dominated by the “red race” which had reached knowledge and technological heights comparable to our own. It fell spectacularly, having pushed its unquenchable thirst for ever increasing energy and power to ecological havoc, as our current civilization too is in danger of reaching with an exponentially increasing likelihood.

 Elegy for a Lost World, the first movement of Thunder Drum, is a musical meditation on this loss, which is traumatically felt by our collective psyche as deep seated memory, in spite of the absence of any external evidence for the existence and loss of such an advanced civilization in our collective past. Beginning and developing along 19th Century European common harmonic and melodic practice (another vanishing world), the music is a vague reminiscence of a two-theme classical sonata form. Rising and then falling, the first lament-like theme is occasionally succeeded by another of serene reminiscence whose infrequent appearance only serves to highlight the sense of loss represented by the first theme. This melodic/harmonic discourse is gradually overtaken by denser chromaticism and accompanying musical tension, exacerbated by the technological “fly by” sound effects of the playback audio which are becoming ever more prominent. The movement concludes with a Beethovenesque tragic cadence.

 Games, the second movement, is a great leap to the present moment. The industrial like “quantized” loops in the playback audio with their unexpected twists and turns are combined with pre-recorded samples by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, one of the world’s best known Inuit artists, (used by permission from a recording session with Tanya for our collaboration on the ballet Going Home Star: Truth and Reconciliation). This sonic background constantly challenges an agile orchestra to technically rise to its unpredictable rhythmic demands, a task increasingly frustrated by metric modulations and other devices of rhythmic complexity. Fiendishly challenging for the conductor to keep the orchestra and the playback together, this erratic and increasingly aggressive movement ends with a series of short modal melodic gestures, which are rather foreign to the otherwise consistent sonic world of this movement but presages the thematic material of the third movement

Without any pause, Reconstitution, the third movement, begins quietly with a timid thematic development of the aggressive modal gestures that concluded the previous movement. They are in quintuple meter, the number five being a numerological indicator of human strife and aggression (pentagon, pentagram, etc.). The music once more picks up pace and energy and, this time around, it ends in an epic, triumphant but also hollow ending with the opening theme of Thunder Drum modulating to an altered major-like mode. In the aftermath of this triumphant conclusion, however, the two modes, the major and the minor are constantly alternating, suggesting an ambivalence and incompleteness that needs to be mediated upon in a future compositional essay. As history teaches us repeatedly, the phenomenon of the oppressed rising to power and dominance only creates a new imbalance of oppressors and oppressed with roles simply reversed, unless a deeper understanding of human purpose is learned through this macro-historical exercise. While rising to dominance may look and sound like historical justice, it does not address humanity’s deeper challenges and aspirations: of each and every one of us becoming our “brother’s keeper”; of treating others as we would have them treat us—the deeper (and perhaps only) Christian message.