Magnolia blooms from tough times
Singer Cari Burdett releases her first album after several setbacks
What: Cari Burdett
Where: Upstairs Lounge, Oak Bay Recreation Centre
When: Saturday, 6 p.m. doors, 7:30 p.m. show
Tickets: $20 advance, $25 door at Ivy’s Bookshop, Lyle’s Place, Long & McQuade
When it comes to life-ordeath comebacks, Cari Burdett could write the book.
On Saturday, the 40-yearold singer from Duncan performs a concert at the Upstairs Lounge. It marks the release of her first album, Magnolia.
Produced by Joby Baker, the disc is an eclectic mix with influences ranging from art song and opera to jazz and gypsy. Threading it all together is Burdett’s sultry voice, a smoky mezzosoprano. Burdett considers
Magnolia an artistic rebirth. The new album takes its title from the magnolia bush she planted in her garden last spring. By doing this, she says, she symbolically gave herself permission to sing and perform once more.
Things looked considerably less promising in 2008, when the singer had a car accident en route to a voice lesson in Victoria. “It was this crazy April day and it started — flukey wooky — to snow. I didn’t hit any cars, but I spun and hit the barrier and hit the sidewall,” Burdett recalled this week.
An airbag might have saved her life. However, she suffered whiplash and injuries to her chest and legs. For two weeks, Burdett couldn’t even walk.
Back then, she was preparing to compete as a finalist in the national Eckhardt-Gramatté music competition in Manitoba. Burdett imagined this could be a career breakthrough, since past winners included such notables as Jon Kimura Parker and Ben Heppner. However, her injuries made it impossible to sing in the finals.
It wasn’t the first major setback for Burdett, who had taken a music degree from McGill University in Montreal and a master’s from London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Music.
A month before receiving her graduate degree, she developed a node on one of her vocal cords. Specialists in both Montreal and London suggested surgery. Burdett, following gut instinct, refused.
One doctor suggested the physical changes surrounding pregnancy sometimes help the condition. Burdett decided to follow this advice. She ended up having three children, the first born in 2002.
“I think the cells change and regenerate. You’re cre- ating a baby. Your whole body transforms. It healed my vocal node all by itself,” she said.
After years of motherhood, the Eckhardt-Gramatté competition was to have marked her return to the professional music world. “I kept thinking, ‘Why are these things happening?’ That God was saying to me I’m not supposed to sing,” she said.
After her auto accident, Burdett resumed lessons with Nancy Argenta, a Canadian soprano with an international reputation.
Argenta eventually pronounced her student ready to re-enter the world of performance. Burdett started self-producing concerts in the Cowichan Valley, sometimes teaming up with singer Sara Marreiros.
Deciding to broaden her scope, she also embarked on a series of community projects. These included founding the Cowichan Community Threshold Singers. Part of a global movement (they’re found in most major American cities), Threshold choirs sing at the bedsides of people who are seriously ill or dying.
Burdett, who founded her Threshold choir about seven years ago, organizes performances for care homes, hospices and hospitals. As someone who has cheated death several times (before her vocal-node experience, she survived a serious kidney infection), Burdett believes she has developed a healthy rela- tionship with the notion of mortality.
She follows the advice of Stephen Jenkinson, a Canadian writer and palliativecare consultant, who has suggested: “If you don’t really live life as if you’re going to die, then you’re not really living your life.”
“I asked myself that question, being around people who are dying. And it just kept coming back to me: You need to make a CD,” Burdett said.
She enlisted Victoria singer Anne Schaefer as a mentor. Schaefer recommended Grammy-nominated Victoria producer Joby Baker.
Baker soon won Burdett over when she expressed hesitation about singing in a classical style for non-clas- sical songs (her album includes songs made famous by Joni Mitchell, Edith Piaf and Nina Simone).
“At first, I was trying to hide my vibrato. I said: ‘I have to hide my opera.’ He said: ‘No way. You don’t have to hide your opera; we’re going to use it.’”
Saturday’s show includes two musicians featured on Magnolia — pianist Miles Black and violinist Richard Moody — as well as guitarist Marc Atkinson, bassist Sean Drabbit and drummer Kelby MacNayr.
Burdett is looking forward to this show, and beyond. “I’m really trying to work on what brings me joy. Does this bring me joy? Let’s go for it.”