Volume 25 Issue 9 - July / August 2020

TANJA TIZANA DAHLIA KATZ

TANJA TIZANA DAHLIA KATZ Baritone Kenneth Overton in Amplified Opera’s What’s Known to Me is Endless them, and to actually invite conversation and critique and dialogue,” she adds. “I figured: this new company could actually be the proving ground for what can happen when you empower artists to tell stories on their own terms.” Umezawa and Kasahara’s inaugural project, a three-concert series in October 2019 titled AMPLIFY, attempted to put their ideas into practice. Their first concert, The Way I See It (directed by Umezawa), featured mezzo-soprano/author Laurie Rubin and pianist Elizabeth Upchurch, who used their experiences as blind and visually impaired (respectively) individuals navigating the opera industry as a creative and curatorial starting point. The second event, The Queen in Me (directed by Andrea Donaldson and accompanied by Trevor Chartrand), was a one-person show that reinterpreted the story of the Queen of the Night to explore queerness and expressions of gender, starring Kasahara in the soprano role. The third concert – What’s Known to Me is Endless (directed by Michael Mohammed) – explored experiences of Black identity in Canada and the United States, featuring African-American baritone Kenneth Overton in collaboration with Canadian pianist Richard Coburn. Umezawa describes a moment in their first AMPLIFY concert when Rubin sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. “Beforehand, she told a story about her first and only guide dog and how that guide dog taught her what it meant to trust,” says Umezawa. “Then she revealed that the dog had passed away recently and dedicated the song to the guide dogs of the world, singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ It was really touching – and not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of that song. I thought that was a great example of how we could reframe and reread some of these canonical works.” Flexible futures In April 2020, Umezawa and Kasahara announced the addition of opera artists Marion Newman and Asitha Tennekoon as co-founders to the Amplified Opera team. Both artists have years of operatic experience on local and international stages, and both bring fresh perspective to the one-year-old company. Though they are new additions to the team, Newman and Tennekoon are joining as co-founders, with the idea that the four artists will share organizational roles and responsibilities in a fluid and non-hierarchical manner. “When [Kasahara and I] started the company, we started out calling ourselves co-artistic directors and co-founders,’ says Umezawa. “And then we had a talk about the social structures that exist in opera that we would like to challenge. For me personally, the hierarchies that we’ve put into place in opera is something that I don’t believe is necessarily serving us anymore. So Teiya and I removed every title but co-founder, and when we brought Marion and Asitha in, we decided that if we’re all going to be doing all of the work, we’re all co-founders at this point.” “I think it speaks to the transparency that we are trying to foster within this little company,” adds Kasahara. “Being small, and being Marion Newman in the title role of Shanawdithit, with Asitha Tennekoon as John Peyton (Tapestry Opera, Toronto, 2019) new right now, and being nimble, we can be adaptable and flexible, especially to the situation we all find ourselves in.” During a time when most arts organizations have had no choice but to streamline their activities due to complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, news of their expansion came as a welcome surprise. For the team, these steps forward as a young company, and the time they have in quarantine to dedicate to this project, represent a source of positivity amid cancelled concert work. “This is a really great time for us to get to know each other and how we work, and to actually have enough time to decide on our best practices,” says Newman. “That’s pretty special, because what we all had planned meant that we would all have been very busy, had all of that stuff gone ahead. So I’m keeping that in my heart as a good thing.” Being small, and being new right now, and being nimble, we can be adaptable and flexible, especially to the situation we all find ourselves in. “I love that we’re taking care of how we work with each other – the kind of culture we want to create for ourselves and thereby impact the industry as a whole,” adds Tennekoon. “Trying to hone in on the focal points that are the most impactful, so that we’re not just figuring it out as we plan a specific event. I think that’s important, because I don’t think that what we want to say has been effectively brought forward and presented as one collective front for the industry [before].” In the coming months, the team plans to launch Amplify Beta, a retrospective project that will include documentation from AMPLIFY, as well as personal stories submitted by AMPLIFY concertgoers last fall (which will be interpreted on digital media and through a visual art piece by local artist Aquil Virani). They’ve also just announced an upcoming digital collaboration with Tapestry Opera, another independent company in Toronto focused on showcasing new works and perspectives in opera. Titled ‘Holding Space’, it will take the form of a three-part series of private digital discussions with BIPOC opera artists in Canada. Taking place on June 30, July 5 and July 8, the conversations will be moderated via Zoom, and will serve as open forums for artists to share their experiences. (There is also an option to submit discussion proposals anonymously on Amplified Opera’s website. Details and registration info can be found at amplifiedopera.com/holding space.) [In kiosk here.] 10 | July and August 2020 thewholenote.com

KRISTEN LOKEN MEL CARROLL Aria Umezawa hosting the SF Opera Lab Pop-Up: Battle of the Divas, on Thursday, September 20, 2018 at The Great Northern in San Francisco. During our conversation in May, Newman expressed a similar sentiment around the need to give BIPOC creators opportunities for artistic agency within the opera creation process. Reflecting on musical projects in Canada on themes of Indigenous reconciliation that she’s been a part of as a First Nations mezzo-soprano, Newman recalled how efforts by some established organizations have lacked some of the deep and slow thought required to ensure that invited Indigenous artists were able to make informed artistic choices. “One of the things I have felt quite deeply is frustration, when I see people who these stories are about or who are [asked to] create these stories – say, an [Indigenous] librettist who’s never written an opera before – and because they don’t understand the art form, the things they are asking for might not actually reflect opera,” Newman says. “We need to be spending this time figuring out a way of working with community so that [artists] feel they are being heard – and their questions about how opera amplifies a story are being satisfied – before they actually have to produce a piece that goes onstage, or make recommendations about a director or designer who may or may not be the best person for that piece.” “Create really good teams that understand from the root what those stories are, and give them the power to actually say [what they think],” she adds. “I have seen that being attempted, but not quite met yet with companies that are more established and used to doing things a certain way.” Teiya Kasahara’s pandemic balcony video series called “19 Videos for COVID-19” What’s striking about the work of Amplified Opera is how absolutely unapologetic they are in their commitment to addressing issues in their field – and to doing it loudly, with an artist-first philosophy. Umezawa mentioned the hope that their company would serve as an example for what operatic programming that centres artist agency could look like; so far, it’s a plan that’s working. “We went for it,’ says Kasahara. “We put something up, and the reaction from not only the public but also from our colleagues was that we didn’t realize that we needed something like this. And we want more opportunities to talk: to engage with art, and with our personhood as well.” Amplified Opera co-presents ‘Holding Space’ with Tapestry Opera as a series of private Zoom discussions on June 30, July 5 and July 8, 2020. For more information, visit amplifiedopera.com. WholeNote digital media editor Sara Constant is a Toronto-based flutist and writer specializing in contemporary and experimental music. This story is reprinted here from HalfTones, The WholeNote’s regular e-letter, June 25 2020, and can be accessed in digital form at thewholenote.com. thewholenote.com July and August 2020 | 11