CLASSICALLY CANADIAN
Soprano Eleanor McCain recruits orchestras and photographers from across the country for new album, coffee-table book
Classical-crossover singer Eleanor McCain is doing her part to define the songs that make us Canadian with her ambitious new albumbook project, True North: The Canadian Songbook.
On the two-CD recording, the classically trained chanteuse lends her soprano to songs by the likes of Anne Murray, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Susan Aglukark and even Bryan Adams, while lush accompaniment is provided by 10 of the country’s top orchestras, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra, as well as symphonies in Quebec, Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria.
“For me, Bryan Adams’ Run To You was a stretch,” McCain said in a recent interview. “I love ballads, but to do a rock song with orchestra, with my style of voice, at first I was like, ‘Should I do that?’ I had to be able to convey each song in a way that honours the song, and I think it worked out in the end.”
McCain, who considers herself an interpreter rather than a songwriter, spent a year listening to music, building a playlist that would represent her take on the essential Canadian repertoire. It also includes tunes from k.d. lang, Sarah McLachlan, Jann Arden, the Guess Who and Gordon Lightfoot.
“A lot of people have celebrated the American songbook, but this is a celebration of being Canadian in the 150th year,” she said. “Ultimately I like to look at this book as a conversation about Canadian songwriting. We have so many incredible songwriters to draw from, and this is my interpretation of this wonderful tradition. Hopefully it inspires people to continue that conversation and maybe cover Nickelback or the Tragically Hip or Blue Rodeo. They’re also great groups, but I didn’t think I could convey their songs.”
The concept grew to include 32 songs, and then snowballed into a bilingual coffee-table book, filled with landscape and fashion photography, insightful commentary from the songwriters, behind-thescenes photos from the recording sessions, and McCain’s personal narrative on her creative journey. The book format was initially inspired by her teenage daughter’s music consumption habits.
“I don’t think she ever listens to or buys CDs,” said McCain, “but she’ll buy a book so I was thinking about how to showcase this music in a changing industry. Around the same time, the Canadian landscape was going through my head as I was listening. I just kept thinking how beautiful and diverse it is, and how lucky we are to have this in our own backyard. I don’t think we celebrate it enough. When I saw (daughter) Laura’s experience, I thought it could be really interesting to bring all these Canadian things together and showcase Canadian photographers from across the country.”
She reached out to Toronto photographer Tony Hauser for assistance in compiling photos. He came up with a long list of 400 landscape images, which they whittled down to about two dozen, doing their best to match songs with images. McCain also recruited Hauser, who is known for his portrait photography, to take pictures of the glamorous singer in spectacular landscape settings, each one showcasing an elegant gown by a Canadian fashion designer.
Around the same time, McCain, the 40-something daughter of the late Wallace McCain, who founded the McCain Foods empire in New Brunswick with his brother, Harrison, was facing the emotional turmoil of a crumbling relationship. Her 2014 marriage to Toronto Symphony Orchestra president Jeff Melanson ended abruptly after just nine months.
With an application for annulment still before the courts, McCain declines comment on the specifics of the breakup, but says she was determined to finish the True North project.
“I had been living with the music and I was very passionate about the project already,” she says, “and I knew this was the best way for me to heal. I’ve interpreted music my whole life, and I found that this music, the Canadian songbook, to be very authentic, very down to earth and it really touched me more than any other songwriters had. It was very cathartic for me.
“I knew it was important to focus on my daughter, my family, where there was love in my life, and music. It’s been a great journey to stay positive about everything.”
She hopes it resonates with others, too, and instils pride in being Canadian.
“I’m really excited to share it,” McCain says. “My greatest hope for it is that it evokes the same kind of passion for Canada that I already had. Through the last couple of years, it’s deepened by working on the book. I hope people really embrace Canadian music, Canadian songwriters, Canadian orchestras, musicians, the landscape and who we are as a nation, and really be proud of ourselves.”
For me, Bryan Adams’ Run To You was a stretch. I love ballads, but to do a rock song with orchestra, with my style of voice, at first I was like, ‘Should I do that?’ I had to be able to convey each song in a way that honours the song, and I think it worked out in the end.