A HIGH NOTE
Saskatoon duo wins prize for female opera creators
In a music world historically dominated by men, Canadian women are being given the chance to make their mark — and a Saskatoon pair is part of the movement. Kendra Harder and Michelle Telford, a pair of Saskatoonbased artists, were one of five pairs awarded the inaugural Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes.
The award is meant to support female and female-identified composers and librettists in Canada in creating an opera. Harder and Telford’s opera brings a much more modern topic into the classical music realm. Their project is all about a woman’s interaction with social media and the internet, which they have cheekily titled The Book of Faces. “It sounds kind of baroque when you put it that way,” Harder joked.
“Each movement will touch down on a different (social media) trope.”
Harder, the composing half of the team, studied music at the University of Saskatchewan and recently graduated. Though her instrument was guitar, she started off as a singer and has always enjoyed opera. The librettist Telford said she had always been a huge fan of writing and poetry, and has also done supertitle work (the translations projected above the stage) for the Saskatoon Opera.
The pair met last year through mutual friends and worked on some music for a local festival in Saskatoon. Eventually, they stumbled upon this new award for female opera creators and decided to make a formal application.
Now, they are the only pair of winners to come from farther west in Canada than Toronto — the only representatives from outside of Quebec and Ontario.
“One thing that’s really exciting is being noticed by people from ... the east,” Harder said.
“To actually have that recognition ... we’re not just nobodies from nowhere.”
The monetary award is $25,000 split among all the winners, but perhaps more important to the young creators is the second part of the prize: a weeklong opera workshop in Montreal hosted by McGill Opera, and the opportunity to debut excerpts from their work at the Canadian national opera summit on Sept. 22 entitled Opera: Changing Worlds. Composition and writing is not a full-time job for either of these women. Harder currently works at the Saskatoon Public Library, and Telford works two different jobs in the city and said she’s “looking for a third.”
Harder and Telford agreed that it was somewhat nerve-racking to be going so far to push their passion project to its limits, but both of them aspire to work in this sort of creative field as a long-term career. With their finished opera slated for a professional preview performance at the Canadian Opera Company’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto next March, their next few months will be busy as they complete their project.
They hope that this is just the start.
“We’re making a little bit of money, but it’s only a very small portion of what we’re going to need to make this a reality,” Telford said. “But this is an awesome starting ground. This is an awesome way to get launched.”
With the world of classical music being historically dominated by famous male composers and performers, the Saskatoon duo said this was a chance to create music that’s by women, for women and about women. There’s not an increased sense of responsibility, they said, but a desire to make an impact for females and female-identified musicians and music creators throughout the country. “Our voices are really important,” Telford said. “I think that there’s an impetus for women to do things for women.”
Our voices are really important. I think that there’s an impetus for women to do things for women.