Dean Burry – Inside the Mind of an Opera Storyteller

A four-month-old mystery wrapped in newspaper. A fairy tale that has toured hundreds of times. A classroom full of kids who cheer without restraint. We sit down with Canadian composer Dean Burry to explore how opera becomes irresistible when it balances big myths with small, human truths.

Dean shares the thread that runs through his work from The Brothers Grimm and The Hobbit to the headline-gripping Baby Kintyre: find the poetry inside a story, then let music and text reveal the people beneath the plot. He traces his start in Newfoundland’s drama clubs, his early interest in musical theatre, and why he writes so many of his own libretti. We dig into years of education work at the Canadian Opera Company, where he wrote operas with seven-to-twelve-year-olds and built all the masks and props for them himself, turning limited budgets into creative fuel. His take on accessibility is refreshing – keep the craft sharp, the ideas bold, and the path clear enough that first-time listeners feel invited rather than tested.

All episodes of The Opera Glasses podcast are hosted by the editor of Opera Canada, currently Michael Jones after Elizabeth Bowman hosted seasons 1 and 2. Follow Opera Canada on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Visit OperaCanada.ca for all of your Canadian Opera news and reviews. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Opera Glasses Podcast, the official podcast of Opera Canada Magazine. My name is Michael Jones, and I'm the host of the Opera Glasses Podcast. And today it is my great pleasure to be speaking with a Canadian composer, Dean Burry. We don't often get to speak to composers at this on the podcast. In fact, I don't think we cover them as much as we should in the magazine either. But certainly it's where opera begins. And it is a story that I think is important and that we need to tell. Dean Burry has written a lot of things, which he calls on his website both operas and music theater pieces. He's written them for adults and for children, both for young performers and for young audiences. And this year has seen, he's seen something that very, very few Canadian composers actually receive, which is second, third, and more productions of his work. I was very fortunate earlier this year to see a production of his called Baby Kintyre, which was done by the students at the Glen Gould School. And in March, the Canadian Opera Company will be mounting his brother's Grimm as part of their March break programming, I believe. And we'll hear more about that opera and when it's on. But for now, let me welcome Dean Burry to the podcast. Thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So thrilled to be here, Michael. Representing the composers.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

And one person has to. So I hope you realize you're telling the stories for every composer who's ever lived, ever lived. Because you might be the first composer who's like. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

That's right. I have that weight on my shoulder.

Why opera? Why would this be the art form a composer chooses?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I think the question that I would start with for a composer is why opera? I mean, there certainly would be easier things to write. I've always thought of composition as something that you do sitting at home alone and that you do that work that way. Whereas opera is such a collaborative art form, and you've written a number of them. So what drew you to this art form?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, and it's it's interesting as well, too, because I think by and large, composers that are working in the operatic field came from the more general compositional background. A lot of times what you'll have is you'll have symphonic composers or chamber music composers who get approached by an opera company or approached by a librettist to kind of come into the process. It really was something very different for me. When I graduated from high school, uh, this is back in Gander, Newfoundland, a few years ago, um, I really had done so much theater and music at the same time. I was very involved with the drama club. I had written plays for it that we had produced in the drama club. And so it was really a question for me. When I go to university, am I going to music school and becoming a musician andor a composer? Because I'd already been composing a lot, or am I going to theater school and becoming an actor and a playwright in a sense, right? So I ended up going to Mount Allison University in in New Brunswick for a music degree. Saxophone was actually my major. Um, but I realized pretty quickly that there was a way for me to be in both worlds, you know. And I thought this was the early 90s. I thought it was going to be musical theater chiefly. This was the age of fandom of the opera, La Miz, two things which I listened to on my cassette recorder over and over and over again. Um, but you know, by my third year at Mount Allison, uh I'd already written, you know, a musical. I'd I'd kind of done some of that work, and I thought I I want to try my first opera. So in the in my third year, 1993, I wrote an opera called Unto the Earth Vignettes of a War, which was about the Newfoundland Regiment in the First World War. Um and I've always written my own, like I've worked with a lot of librettists professionally, but up to that point, I'd always written my own text. And I would say, out of the 13, no, out of the 17 operas that I've written, about 14 of them, I think I've written my own libretto, and like been commissioned to write my own libretti. So, you know, a lot of times you hear composers are not supposed to write their own libretto, but it's different if you if you do that from the beginning. I've always taken my degrees are in music, but I've always taken the text as seriously as my as my composing. But um, so for me, unlike a lot of composers who come into the opera because they are composers and brought into the opera world, I fell into opera because it was the way to do my two passions, right? To do the theater. I, when I graduated with my master's in composition, I got more work as an actor. I played Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors out on the on the East Coast. And so I've had that experience of being on the stage. And so I come, that's that's what it is for me. It's opera because opera is every art form wrapped into one. If I came back, uh, you know, if after I die, if I get reincarnated, reincarnated, I'd love to be like a props designer or a lighting designer, or I just every aspect of it is so fascinating and exciting to me. And it's just the the composing and the and the libretto is the is the angle that I came in on.

Burry's Roots with the COC Education Programs

SPEAKER_01 5:22

And have you ever had to do those? Because as someone who's had a varied career in theater, I can tell you once you get in, you end up oping lights all of a sudden, or you end up with it.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Especially like when you're talking about when you're talking about Canadian theater or you're talking about Canadian opera schools. But so I for 17 years, I ran the after school opera program at the Canadian Opera Company. It's um when I finished my master's at U of T, I got a job working in the box office at the COC actually, uh, and managed to kind of change that, like over the course of that nine-month contract, get a job in the education, doing like their um their after school opera programs at community centers around the city, but also like workshops in schools and that kind of thing. The after school opera program was I would go to four different community centers around the city four days a week. So every Monday for 10 weeks, I'd be at one community center. And I'd, with those seven to 12 year olds, I'd write a new opera with them. And then, of course, to answer your question, I'd head back down to the, you know, one of the rooms at the COC, go to the dollar store and get stuff and make the props and make the sets. Now, as the program kind of advanced, we had more and more people coming in. Oftentimes we'd hire professional mask makers or professional designers to come in and work with them. Um, and we had a few volunteers over the years that came in as well. But I always loved that, okay, now I need to go make a giant pig's head that can turn into a minotaur, or now I need to go to make, you know, traditional Chinese masks, or now I need to go make, you know, spears for this opera or that opera. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. In fact, I tell people, like when they're producing my operas, there can be all sorts of level involvement when you're the composer andor librettist, right? Sometimes it can be annoying. And I know that there are plenty of directors that are like, oh my God, tell the composer and director, I don't want any more notes. Like we I we've got to do this, right? But literally, I, you know, I said, uh, you know, I'm happy to be involved whoever I can, but I love seeing the set designs and the costume designs and stuff like that, all that stuff. And I think it comes back again to that love of theater and music, and even going further than that, storytelling. I'm a I'm a composer by trade, but I deep down what I am is a storyteller for sure.

What draws you, as a composer, to specific stories for opera?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

So if you start from storytelling, what is it that draws you to a story? Because as I think about the the things of yours that I've seen, they they and and you talk about, you know, a piece about the Newfoundland Regiment, and you talk, and maybe Kintyre was based on a piece from the news, and I've seen your version of The Hobbit that was written for the Canadian Children's Opera Company, I think. At least that's who I saw before. Um so you've you've done a lot of things that have been drawn from a variety of sources. What draws you to a particular story?

Finding the Ordinary in the Myth

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah, I think, you know, and one of the great things about having been able to do so many pieces over the years, it's it's allowed me to try a lot of different things, right? Um some of the pieces like traditional opera are drawn from those sources of myth and fairy tales. So we have the Brothers Grim, we have the Brementown musicians that are taken from fairy tales. We have the Scorpion Sting, which is another piece I wrote for the Canadian Opera Company, which is taken from Egyptian mythology. Also Pandora's Locker, which is a which is a teen opera that I wrote for the Glenn Gould School back in 2006, again, drawing from Greek mythology in the same way that the early operas did all the time. Um, but then it's it's things like Baby Kantyre as well, right? Which is a very gritty like news story down to earth right now. It's, I think that when I when I think of everything, again, we're talking about the Hobbit epic, uh, Bells of Bedeck, kind of is the real a real story about, you know, two you know Canadian historical figures. Um a musical I wrote about Mary Pickford, the the silent film star and that kind of thing, right? It's I I think all of these things, it's about finding the poetics within them, right? The poetry within the story. And you know, also I think another thing, it's it's interesting because I just did a big project involving Alex Colville. So it was a big symphonic work called Tracing Colville. Alex Colville is the Canadian painter. In the Second World War, he was a war artist and traveled over to Europe and painted. And so I kind of followed his journey a few years back and then wrote a symphonic piece inspired by that. Uh, Colville is often described as finding the myth in the ordinary. Uh, and what that means is if you look at a Colville painting, it's a very commonplace scene. People standing at the fridge at night, sitting around at the table. But he's finding the myth, the bigger epic story within that everyday thing, right? And in and in kind of writing a little bit more and thinking a little bit more about that, I think I'm whereas he's finding the myth in the ordinary, I'm trying to find the ordinary in the myth, right? So when you take a piece like The Brothers Grim or Isis or something like that, I the Scorpion Sting, what I'm really interested in is the human story that's in those bigger tales, which is a good way to work, I think, for young people, right? Because the trappings of those epic stories will grab people and pull them in, right? But instead of just making it a um, instead of it just making an archetypal distance kind of story, it's finding the humanity within it. And I say, well, one thing in the opera world that I will kind of connect to this is you know, Wagner's operas. They're very long, you know, they do tend to be very long and very impenetrable for a lot of people, right? But taking a look at the ring cycle specifically, and and some of the ring cycle, again, I I find it a little impenetrable myself. But Valkyrie. Valkyrie was one that I came to, and again, it's a five-hour Wagner opera, but at the heart, and it seems like it's about these big things, these big gods and everything like that. But at the heart, it's about a father and a daughter, right? Um, and I remember when I saw the COC's ring cycle back in 2006, I think it was. Um, it that that father-daughter relationship really connected with me in a big time, right? So again, it's that idea. I I would say I like stories that um we can show that there's big drama within uh simple things, but also those big things that we love, Star Wars, Hobbit. I mean, I I'm a big geek as well, too. So I love all that stuff. But within all those big archetypal stories, what's the humanity?

Background in... Or at Least WITH... Teaching

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Um, you talked about that's some of what drew you to working, working with children. Now, was the the work that you did at the COC when you worked your way into their education program, was that was that your first time working with younger people, or was this something that you've always done?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Not not really. I mean, it's something that so in high school, I remember I mentioned I grew up in Ghana, Newfoundland. There was no saxophone teacher. So honestly, um, eventually my parents would drive me into St. John's to have my proper saxophone. But by grade, by grade 10, after two years of playing the saxophone, I started teaching the grade eight saxophone students. So, you know, I had I had you know young people there as well. When I was at Mount Allison doing my undergraduate, I ran a composition camp in the summer that had five-year-olds. And that was really, really useful as well, too, because you know, composing-wise, when you're teaching, you get a lot of people, especially like, you know, more grown-up people, more adult people who get in their own heads and say, Oh, I need to have like Royal Conservatory grade eight theory before I can start composing. But the concept of composing, if you pick up a crayon and make a mark, that's art, right? So being creative with sound is composing as well. And five-year-olds can do that just as well, if not better, in some cases, than older people as well, right? So I would say that I always, there was always a connection with um children. I also mentioned that I just love Star Wars and Spider-Man and all that stuff. So I feel like, listen, I think this is one of the big things that's a problem as we grow up, we lose that sense of wonder. And I would say with every bone in my body, I've yes, tried to grow up and pay taxes and all that kind of stuff, but to hold on to that real wonder, I think that doesn't necessarily just benefit me as someone who works with young people. I think it just benefits me as an artist, right? You know, um, to be able to continually tap into that. So I again working with with young people. I I also feel that um, like I know a lot of people, like if you're if you go to see the Vienna Philharmonic, or if you go to see the Metropolitan Opera or something like that, you know, there's something fantastic about seeing artists working at that level. But for some reason, I've always been, as long as the heart is there, then I get as moved by performances by amateur children or amateur adults as I do from seeing these larger works, right? So I think um the combination of working with young people, and sometimes those are very highly accomplished young people, right? The Canadian Children's Opera Company is not just a pickup choir. Like the this is the pinnacle of young people singing, right? And so it's not just that you're working with that, but also the combination of working on that level, but with community groups, I think has given me like a um an appreciation of what it means to be an arts creator at every level.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Well, you aren't necessarily actively teaching children at this p point in your life. You are working at Queen's University. What do you teach there?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Nothing. Yeah, so I teach music theory. No, I do not teach saxophone. That's right. I haven't really touched it in a long time. Um I uh so I'm teaching music theory, obviously, but then uh musical composition, and like one of my favorite courses is called Music Theater Creation Lab, which is a course where the students for themselves come up with the theme of a piece, they write the libretto, they write the lyrics, they write the music, they direct it, they create a poster, they create their little set, they perform it. So it really is all I guess it again, it comes back to, and I have to mention, Michael, like when we talk about where this kind of came from. I talked about high school in grade four. My mom and I made a puff a puppet theater, and she took my some of my sisters' old stuffed animals. Um, I don't know if she asked my sister or not, but took my sister's old stuffed animals and turned them into puppets. And every the last Friday of every month in grade four, my our teacher would get the students to turn their desks around and I would do a puppet show that I had written with songs and the back of the classroom. So I feel like I've doing been doing the same thing for a very, very long time. I'm really blessed to be able to be doing the thing that I think I was drawn to be doing from a very early point.

The Story of Baby Kintyre

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Well, you're blessed in a number of ways. I talked about the fact that I had that you were receiving subsequent productions of works this year. Now, The Baby Kintire, which was at the Glen Gould School, it was written originally as a radio opera. Uh it was performed on the CBC as a radio opera. Had it been staged before, or was this the first staging of it?

SPEAKER_00 16:35

No, it had never been staged. And again, like once again, by so that was 2009. I'd probably written about seven or eight operas by that point. So another thing is you're always trying to think of what's the next kind of way to work? What's something different? Like what's a different project, right? And so Baby Contire, so just for people listening in a quick story, in 2007, uh there was a contractor working on a house in uh the east end of Toronto, Broadview and Queen. And in the floorboards of the house he was working at, he found a bundle that was wrapped in a comforter. He pulled that apart. There was another another bundle wrapped in a newspaper dated September 15th, 1925. When he opened that up, there was a mummified baby, about a four-month-old baby inside that had clearly been placed there in 1925. Made international news stories, like it was on Chinese news, it was all over the place. But I kind of put it out of my mind until about a month later, it was Labor Day of 2007. We were uh my wife and kids and I were driving back from uh the in-laws cottage from the from the long weekend, and they were all asleep in the car, and there was this news story about some reporters who had gone to find out, to try to find out who that baby might have been. And they didn't find out who the baby was, but what they found was a 94-year-old woman who was living in that house at the time and recounted this like Agatha Christie-like story of characters and plot. And listening to it in the car, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is this isn't this isn't an opera, right? You know, they were asleep. We got we got back, I got out of the car, I emailed CBC, and that can be a challenging call as well, or an email as well, to get a response, right? So I emailed the producer, Mary Weens, at Metro Morning, who had done the story, and within about an hour, she got back to me and said, let's do it. Like I said, I said, this might be crazy, but I'd love to write an opera about this piece. So, and but event, again, eventually, the story was so involved with the radio and connected with the radio, it just seemed like it made sense. The other advantage is as opera composers, we write our pieces and then desperately try to get good recordings. So why not go the other direction and start with the great recording?

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Were you able to get the rights to release that as a recording?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah, we actually got the we got it licensed, and so it was released on the Centerdisc's uh Naxos of Canada label through the Canadian Music Center. So in 2014, that was released as a commercial recording, and you can hear it on on your platforms.

Returning to a Work for Subsequent Productions

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Well, and I would encourage everyone too, because I thought it was a fascinating piece when I got to see it live this year. It wasn't one I knew before. What is it like? What's the experience like returning to a work for for a subsequent production? Do you do you sit there listening, thinking of all the things that you've always wanted to change? Do you actually try to get in and change them? What what what's the experience for you as a composer?

The Brothers Grimm and Writing Operas for Young Audiences

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah, sometimes that's the case. I mean, it's you know, some of these things, like when we talk about second productions, sometimes it's a like for example, Baby Cantire, right, which was on the radio. And this was really the first, I think it was done in a in a used in a workshop in Manitoba in 2010 or something like that. But this really was the first staging, right? So it was uh it was like kind of coming back and kind of thinking about, and of course we've got the recording, right? So the fact that I didn't tell them that you pronounce uh lath and plaster, lath and plaster, not lave and plaster, um, is a chance to kind of correct some of those things that were, you know, were not there. And listen, we grow, like I mean, as as we do work, right? We uh we grow, and there's, you know, places where that half note does not need to be held that long. It would be much more dramatic if it was just a quarter note, you know, or maybe the scansion is not quite as good, right? So um oftentimes they're not major things. I do have some works that I think that if they if they did come back, I would love the chance to kind of like reimagine and revisit them. Um, in fact, actually that that is the case as well. Smaller pieces like so the Brothers Grimm. So the Brothers Grimm, which was done by the Canadian Opera Company in 2001, is a 45-minute piece for piano and five singers. We had a really strong workshop process. And by the time that went out, um, I felt really, really good about it. The other interesting thing about that, when we talk about remounts or reproductions, every time an opera company does one of those small school tour operas, they do it like 40 times. So some of the operas that I've done have been done hundreds of times, right? And so of those, those I consider kind of like, okay, they're they're they they're proven, they work as is, right? But there are other pieces as well. So, for example, in 2010, I wrote the second piece I wrote for the Canadian Children's Opera Company, which was called The Secret World of Aug by uh it's a children's book by Pierre Burton. And so the C the CCOC did it then. And I was happy with the production, but it was also at the tail end of a bunch of productions. So 2009, within 10 months, I had about six operas premiere. It was a creature of habit, uh, this mermaid opera at Rising Tide Theater in Newfoundland. It was The Mummer's Mask, uh, which was done by Toronto Mask Theater. It was Brementown Musicians with Opera Lyra, it was Baby Cantyre, it was Angela and her sisters with University of Manitoba and Secret World of Aug. So it was like, and I'm I also remember I had like a two year old at the time. So most of those operas got written at two o'clock in the morning. Morning in my very cool basement. But again, so it was like that was a piece that I was happy with what went up. But then in 2016 Sarasota Opera in the States wanted to do it, they've done the Holland as well. And again, they always do very large productions. So they commissioned like a larger orchestration as well. And I thought this is a chance to kind of just take my time and revisit this, right? And so I really feel, yeah, I made some fairly substantial changes. And a work that I felt okay about, suddenly I felt like, wow, this might be one of my new favorite works, right? So it's it's always important to kind of be open to that. Uh, the other thing I will say is even when a work is set, different people sing it every single time, you know. Um, now, you know, I've got my Dover scores back here, and generally you're not going to make major note changes for Bohem. You're going to hire people that sing those notes, right? But every time I do a production, especially if it's young people or young artists, so like artist studio kind of, you know, people on the verge of their professional careers, subtle little changes can make that better for them. And my opinion is if they sound good, I sound good. So I've never been very kind of like precious about if if a coach or if a music director or something comes and says, can we alter this note or can we change this slightly? I'm like, go for it. I I mean, it's important that I get asked, but uh most of the time when that happens, it's like, yeah, if you sound good, I sound good. So let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Let's talk about the Brothers Grimm because of course it is coming up for the Canadian Opera Company in March of this year. I think they're doing it as part of their March break programming. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

It is during that, yeah, it's part of their March break programming, but it's also kind of part of the free concert series at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheater.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Okay. And who is, do you know who's singing this time?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I don't know all the names. I do know Andrea Ludwig is singing um Dwarchen. Not Dortchen, uh, Frau Wiemann, the fruit seller who also plays the wolf. And uh I think out of the ones that are there, Andrea has did it before. I think she was in like the third tour way, way, way back when. Um, and so uh so there is gonna be some like some pedigree, right? There is gonna be some some connection. But I mean, that's there's there was a while when it felt like it was hard to cast a stone and not hit someone that had been in the brother's grim because it was, and again, this is this is an incredible blessing. It was the, you know, so in 2001, it was the smallest opera at the biggest opera company in Canada, right? And this was my my my first big commissioned opera. But again, uh like 40 production, like 40 shows that first year. And every time they brought it back, they would tour it over four weeks and do 40 shows, right? So it's like, and then Opera Nuova started picked it up, and then Calgary Opera and University of Manitoba and Little Opera on the Prairie, and then moving to Wales and moving to like so places that needed, it's a niche, right? So I always tell composers writing for children is or for children's pieces, either writing for children to perform or for adults to perform for children, which is what the Brothers Grim is, is not a bad idea because a lot of times I think composers look at that as being lesser work. It's a paycheck, right? I'm a serious composer. So uh, you know, writing operas for young people is a paycheck, right? Whereas it I've never compromised my artistry at all. You know, I feel like I feel like the way I want to speak works with children, it all which means it also really works with people who are unfamiliar with opera, right? I I don't, I don't, I don't shy away from the word accessibility. It doesn't mean that it's always like, I don't write kitty music, I don't write singy songy music or that kind of thing. Um but accessible can mean something different, right? You can still be fresh and original and contemporary, but still be penetrable, like something that can welcome people in, right? Um and so uh so you know, I'm I was really fortunate that that first piece, that the, you know, the Brothers Grim was something that got done over and over and over again. So there are hundreds, like there are literally hundreds of alumni that have done that work, you know, as their as one of their first pieces, you know, when they were young artists, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:21

That that must be really important to you to have been a part of their histories in that way.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

It it is. And like, I mean, that question, we I think as artists, I know I do, and I'm sure most people do as well too. We ask that questions of relevancy, right? Like I have my my my cousin who's a pharmacist, or you know, friends who are doctors or social workers, like the ones doing school teachers for that matter, doing like really, really important, impactful work. And I think opera composer, right? Opera composer, what it is. But then, like the brothers' grim, about 150,000 kids have seen the brothers' grimm. It was probably their first introduction to opera. And I sat, because again, I was in Toronto and the Canadian Opera Company did these tours, I sat at like many, many school gyms with 300 kids in front of me, knowing that they were into it, knowing that they were loving it, right? So, if nothing else, those pieces are the ones that make me feel like I've really been able to have some impact.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

That must be a terrifying experience because you talked about some composers may feel it's writing down or this is a paycheck when you're when you're writing. But honestly, an audience of young people will let you know exactly what they feel at every moment. You there is But that's what's great about it. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

But I think that's what's absolutely great. You know, the worst, the worst thing is to come out of an of an opera or a piece of contemporary music or something, and everybody stands around and says how interesting it was, right? You know, like which is that, you know, damning with faint praise kind of thing, right? Oftentimes, or or even even worse sometimes is people that can't people can't just come out and say, I loved it, right? Because then someone else is going to intellectualize into why you shouldn't love it or something. That's the that's our that's our social world that we're in today, right? Um, that's and again, that comes up with one of those problems when we grow up. Young people don't have that problem. They either hate it or they love it, and there's something so refreshing about that, right? And you you know it, you know it. They they cheer, right? They cheer in ways that that adults feel like they can't do, right? So I I would say that is, yes, and like I will say, if everyone is like yawning and like fidgeting and stuff like that, yeah, that can be like, all right, this is when I need to go back and rework for sure. Um, but that unbridled emotional response is is exactly what I would want, anyways, right?

Meeting an Adult Who Saw My Work as a Child

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Just as a matter of interest, if if it premiered in 2001, you said, correct? That means that the first audiences for it would probably be in their mid-30s now. Have you have you ever met anyone who saw it as a child, who had that experience?

SPEAKER_00 29:13

I did. I did. In fact, I met someone here at Queens. So I uh I'm the artistic director of the Watershed Festival, which is a festival that we run here, which is an opera music theater festival. And um, we had a New Works Showcase call a couple of years ago. And so people could send in uh proposals to do short videos of things that they were working on. And there was um a woman who got in contact and was one of the people that we had selected for uh the New Works Showcase, and she basically said, I saw this opera in Ottawa in 2008. That would have been an opera lira production in 2008. And what she said was, I have a German background, and it was the first piece, I think she was 10 or something like that. She said, My background is German. This is the first time that I've seen German Germanic culture portrayed positively in media in my life, right? And so again, not only was it like the opera meant something, but uh a big because that was something I tried to do as well, too. I tried to kind of include that as a sense of to bring in like the Germanness of it, you know, and to know that that had that impact. Again, like incredible, incredible. Oh, you know, and the thing is that's the brother's grim, but all of these things, Hobbit premiered in 2004, you know, on Facebook, I'm friends with them. They have like three kids now. There's doctors, there's lawyers, they're, you know, they're all sorts of things that were in that piece and had that shared moment, right? So again, I think it's another advantage of working so much with young people is that you're you're in that pivotal position to make a big change, right? And if you can do it well, then you're kind of connected with them the whole rest of their lives, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

And I certainly believe that children who participate in, even children who just attend theatrical performances, that that has an important impact on them.

Making an Impression that Matters

SPEAKER_00 31:07

No, and and it's like, you know, this is this is our competition, right? Like everything else, right? It's your phone or it's the phones and that kind of thing. So I think I think a lot of young people are kind of astounded when they get brought into a live um production, and it's something which is so different, you know, from what they do. But uh but Michael, like it that's a big responsibility as well, right? If if this is my chance, right? Um, like so, for example, um a couple other productions. Uh I don't know how I got so lucky, but there's a bunch of productions happening on this year. And so I wrote a I wrote a symphonic work um based on Jacob Tutu Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler back in 2016 for the Montreal Chamber Music Festival. And there's a group in Toronto that's doing it, North York Concert Orchestra, uh in on March 14th, I think. Then Thunder Bass Symphony is doing it, and then Kingston Symphony is doing it here. And I'm actually narrating the Toronto and the Kingston one. The Kingston with Kingston Symphony, when they do it, they bring in all the grade fours for the whole school board, right? Um, and we'll be doing school shows that way. And like this is I get one crack, right? I get one crack at these at showing these grade four students what the symphony orchestra is, what live performance is. And damn it, it better be good, right? Like it better be something engaging that makes that impact, right? So I can't be there can't be like a lot of BS, right? Like, I mean, it it needs to speak to people directly. Again, if you if if you're clever about it, you can take them into ways into directions that they're not necessarily familiar with and and and introduce them to new things, which you should absolutely. But you want this to be, I I often use the um the metaphor of like if you go to a rock climbing gym, right? If you go to a rock climbing gym and there's no hand holds on the wall, no one is gonna get to the top and everyone's gonna be frustrated, right? If you go to a rock climbing gym and there's an escalator, everyone's gonna get to the top. But what's the point, right? So it's just so whether it's a piece for young people or or adults, definitely, there needs to be enough hand holds there so that it's a bit of a challenge to get through it. There's some work to kind of get through it, but everyone can get to the top and feel satisfied by that, right? Feel like that they've come through something. So that's that's your challenge right there.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

I think that sounds like a really noble aim, and it might be a good place for us to finish this. Um, I think I'm sensing that we're at time. Um, before we leave, I'm going to remind people the Brothers Grim, which according to the COC website, has been performed over 600 times since it premiered in 2001. It's being performed on Wednesday, March 18th at 12 noon as part of the COC's free concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheater. I would encourage everybody, particularly those of you with children who are looking for things to do that week, to come out and see it, to come out and hear it and engage with this piece because it is important and it will it will matter for your child. But I would also advise you to come out early because for those of you who've not attended the free lunch and concert series, people will line up early to get those seats. So you will want to arrive a little early and have something to occupy your child until the performance begins at 12. That's that is The Brothers Grim by Dean Murray being performed at the C at the COC's lunchtime free concert series on Wednesday, March 18th. Visit coc.ca for details. Thank you so much, Dean, for joining us. It has been an it's been amazing to talk to you. And I I think we should sometimes do a second session because we didn't actually get to talk about the process of composing and what that's about. Or are you just teasing me so that I'll have another composer on to talk about their process as well?

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Oh gosh, no, you should do that. But uh, you know, most of us are pretty good at talking, you know. If you get us talking about our works, uh then uh I'd be I'd be happy to be back. And again, thanks for the work of Opera Canada as well, too, because I mean, like a community like this in Canada, an opera community, takes so many different aspects. And we know, you know, there are lots of performers, there are lots of people who are putting the thing on stage. Um, but it's it's it's also people like composers who kind of get that work to get out there, but also um things like Opera Canada magazine, which kind of broaden it a sense and and increase awareness so much. Um so it's been a it's a real pleasure to talk to you for sure.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Well, and it is it's it is a pleasure to talk to you, and I believe that that's important work. I like to think of us as a bridge between the company and the public. One conduit. There are many, many, many bridges, but one conduit to help people understand and engage with what I think is a spectacular and wonderful art form. So thank you for joining us, and thank you to our listeners for being here with us this week.