I'm not sure what we did before the Internet. There are so many great sites and musical links online. There are some excellent recordings of live concerts online through CBC/Radio-Canada's website. My favourites are the jazz and classical concerts, but they have many different genres. In a time when our public broadcaster is cutting staff, intelligent programming (just my opinion) and budgets for live recordings of great Canadian artists, it's good to know that there are still some events being covered.
Stay tuned for my future rant on my view of what public broadcasting should be.
In the meantime check out some shows (online or the old fashioned way)!
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Tenor
Two posts in a week! I'm getting there.
I thought that this interview with the preeminent Canadian tenor Ben Heppner was very interesting. You may recognize him from the Winter Olympics, or from the stage of the Met or the COC. Ben has performed just about everywhere in the world and is very well respected and down to earth.
What I find very pertinent (selfishly) to my own career are his comments on family and travel. I love what I do and I love to discover new places and I love waking up in random cities and countries. However after 5 weeks in a hotel room(no matter how good) it's nice to come home.
Here is Ben in a slightly dated production.....Great singing though!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
and we're back....
It turns out that I'm not that great at posting regularly. I hope to change this over the summer months when I am not as busy.
One of the most common questions I am asked is, " What company do you work for?"
Well....my own, sort of. All singers in a way are their own bosses. Many singers start their professional careers by working for a company in that company's young artist or ensemble program. This can last anywhere between 1-3 years. During that time you are an employee of the opera company. After 'graduating' you are typically on your own. Opera companies hire you on a contract basis. That means that you are hired for x amount of time to do y number shows. For example, a singer can be hired for a 5 week contract consisting of 3.5 weeks of rehearsals and 4 shows. The singer is paid per show and is technically not paid for the rehearsal period. This means that if he/she is too ill to perform, then they do not get paid for that performance.
The goal is to string together a number of contracts during a season and hopefully space them out in such a way that there is enough time to learn new roles, practice and be vocally rested/healthy.
As a side note, there are singers that work as company employees. They are mainly in Europe and work under fest contracts. More on that at a later point.
Basically I (along with my colleagues) am self-employed.
Revenue Canada agrees.
Now time to do my taxes...oops.
Enjoy the summer festival season!
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