Canadian singer to perform in the ancient Egyptian language
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Robyn Driedger-Klassen is perfectly comfortable jumping from Johannes Brahms’s lieder to Giacomo Puccini’s arias to more contemporary art songs. But when she guests with the Turning Point Ensemble in a rare performance of R. Murray Schafer’s Arcana, she’s going to be faced with what could well be a once-in-a-lifetime challenge: performing in the almost-forgotten language of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs.
“This is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. The score is very daunting to look at: it’s hand-written, it’s enormous—it barely fits on the piano—and it’s in hieroglyphs. But the more I work on it the more it makes sense to me, both musically and dramatically. I think it’s going to be a very exciting piece.”
It’s not as if the singer has been immersing herself in Egyptology, however. For her performances with Turning Point—at Ryerson United Church on Friday and Sunday (October 2 and 4)—she’s learning Schafer’s text phonetically.
Arcana, composed for a 1973 singers’ competition, will be presented as part of Of Time and Place, an all-Canadian program that Turning Point coartistic directors Owen Underhill and Jeremy Berkman have assembled in honour of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Canadian Music Centre.
Excerpted from an article by Alexander Varty for straight.com
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