Maritime Ties Link Singer, Composer, and Poet at Early Music Festival
World-renowned Acadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc will open the 2011 Sackville Early Music Festival on Tuesday, October 11, with a concert celebrating the centenary of Elizabeth Bishop who was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911, raised in Great Village, Nova Scotia, and became one of the leading American poets of the twentieth century.
Suzie LeBlanc was born in Edmundston, New Brunswick, and has established an extraordinary international career specializing in Baroque and Classical repertoire. Her thirst and curiosity for new vistas now lead her toward the repertoire of French mélodies, German lieder, Acadian folk songs, and contemporary music. She is artistic director of Le Nouvel Opéra, the ensemble-in-residence at the Montreal Conservatory, and is co-artistic director of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival (2011) in Nova Scotia
“We are especially pleased to offer this tremendously moving blend of Baroque and modern creativity,” stated Festival Artistic Director Réjean Poirier.
Entitled “At the Fishhouses” after a poem written by Bishop during a trip to Nova Scotia in the 1940s, the concert includes songs from the Baroque period, sung by LeBlanc, readings from Bishop’s poems by Chignecto area writer Harry Thurston, and a new work by Sackville composer Alasadair MacLean.
Of the latter piece, LeBlanc has written, “We are delighted to present a recent composition inspired by a line in the poem “Cape Breton”: ‘The silken water is weaving and weaving.’ It was written for the opening concert of the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary. It works beautifully as a chamber piece for five solo strings and, as we’ve found, lends itself well to Baroque strings. The poem “Cape Breton” is like an elegy or a lament for a once pristine landscape, which has been encroached by humans.”
As a key element in the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Festival, the programme has been presented to enthusiastic audiences in nine venues across Nova Scotia over the past months.
Writing for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, reviewer Stephen Pedersen described the experience as being, “like LeBlanc’s voice, a pure and translucent delight. The audience reaction at the end of the concert rang the rafters.”
The Early Music Festival presentation of “At the Fishhouses”, in the Sackville United Church on October 11th, starting at 8 p.m., will be the one and only New Brunswick performance. Tickets will be available at the door, but may be secured in advance at Tidewater Books in Sackville, the Capitol Theatre in Moncton, and at the Centre des arts et de la culture in Dieppe.
