SOUNDS OF ANGELS
Violinist and dancer, longtime friends, team up to perform as part of the ROM’s The Angel Speaks,
Even in casual clothes, Edwin Huizinga has an imposing presence.
Tall, bearded, with curly red hair cascading down his back, he walks purposefully along the narrow rehearsal room at the top of St. Lawrence Hall, playing his violin as he goes.
Tyler Gledhill, shorter and with a dancer’s lithe physique, manoeuvres behind, in front of and around Huizinga, his movements flowing with the music.
At one point, he touches Huizinga’s back and then leans against it as Huizinga goes on playing.
These two were friends before, but now they have become bonded in artistic pursuit.
On Thursday, their collaboration will be seen at the Royal Ontario Museum as part of The Angel Speaks, an Opera Atelier production melding the music of 17th-century composer Henry Purcell with Huizinga’s own music and Gledhill’s contemporary choreography.
It all began when Opera Atelier, which specializes in Baroque opera and ballet, was asked to perform at the Royal Chapel in Versailles, France, in 2017.
Atelier co-artistic directors Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg wanted a new Canadian piece to be seen there in honour of Canada 150 celebrations and they chose Huizinga and Gledhill to deliver it.
Pynkoski and Lajeunesse Zingg met both men about a decade ago when each returned to Toronto after time away studying and performing.
Both began working with the company: Gledhill as an artist of Atelier Ballet; Huizinga as a player with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.
Huizinga was born in Puslinch, Ont., and trained in Guelph, in the Young Artist Performance Academy of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, at Oberlin College in Ohio and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he earned a master’s in violin performance.
Born in Ottawa, Gledhill trained at Canada’s National Ballet School, the Dutch National Ballet Academy and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle before beginning his career with ballet companies in the Netherlands and Sweden.
“When Marshall and Jeannette asked me (to choreograph), I was a little bit terrified, but I thought, it’s time to do something outside of my comfort zone and something that’s really going to challenge me,” said Gledhill, taking a break from rehearsal at Atelier’s King St. E. headquarters.
“And knowing that I was going to be working with Edwin, I knew that he would create something beautiful and that we would also have a really good time working on it.”
“I think that the connection between music and dance is extraordinary and it’s so visceral,” added Huizinga. “I was so excited because, I mean, we could talk about anything and we could ask each other anything … It was so nice to be able to send something to Tyler and then call him and be like, ‘Wait a minute, is this OK? Do you like it? Are you inspired by it? Does it attract ideas?’”
In person, by phone or by email when Huizinga was on tour in New Zealand, they created a short piece called Inception. It was envisioned as a pas de deux between the violinist and dancer, and the only instructions were that “it was a journey. It had to travel (the length) of the Royal Chapel,” Pynkoski said.
Walking while playing violin is no mean feat, especially a Baroque violin, which lacks the “stabilization” of a modern instrument, Huizinga said. But he also loves that he gets to interact through the movement with Gledhill.
“One of my favourite moments is when we have our backs to each other and I’m sure Tyler can feel what I’m doing because I can feel his movements through my shoulders, and that is the coolest feeling because you can literally feel the line of the phrase in the music and in the dance,” Huizinga said.
They both missed that connection when, for performances in more traditional theatre spaces in Toronto, Chicago and Versailles last year, Gledhill put on a pair of wings to, as Huizinga put it, “please the eye from hundreds of metres away.”
But that also meant putting more distance between them, lest Huizinga hit the wings with his violin bow, so they’re pleased to return to the more physically connected duet for the ROM performance, in the museum’s Samuel Hall Currelly Gallery.
It won’t just be the two of them up there, either. They have created a new work that includes two singers, Jesse Blumberg and Mireille Asselin, more Atelier Ballet dancers and more Tafelmusik musicians. And for the first time, Huizinga composed music to a libretto, based on the Rainer Maria Rilke poem Annunciation, translated into English by Grace Andreacchi. Nor does the creating end here. Following that day’s rehearsal, Gledhill and Huizinga were due to meet with Pynkoski and Atelier’s music director, David Fallis, to discuss “what’s next” in their collaboration.
“This may go on for another two years; it may go on for another four years,” said Pynkoski. “I guess it will be finished when it’s finished. It will go where it goes, but it’s all good.”