Volume 24 Issue 5 - February 2019

FEATURE
The Angel
Speaks:
A Magically New
Theatrical Intervention
In Conversation with
Edwin Huizinga
JENNIFER PARR
BRUCE ZINGER
BRYSON WINCHESTER
When I tell
people about
Opera Atelier’s
ongoing The Angel Speaks
project, I always begin with
when I saw the very first
performance of its first
installment, in May 2017.
I was sitting at the back of the Royal
Chapel at the Palace of Versailles
Edwin Huizinga watching fellow members of Opera
Atelier’s Medea company and
of Tafelmusik perform an attractive selection of Purcell and other
English Baroque music, titled Harmonia Sacra, when suddenly there
appeared high up on the balcony above, the dramatic figure of what
appeared to be a Viking angel playing an exquisite melody on solo
violin.This beautiful mystical thread of music then seemed to bring
forth, and become tangibly present in, the figure of a dancer (Tyler
Gledhill) – another face of the angel – on the ground level with the
singers and audience, a figure in search of something or someone.
That someone, it became clear, was the Virgin Mary in the person
of soprano Mireille Asselin. The violin-playing angel then joined the
other two on the ground level, and we in the audience were transfixed
as the three embodied the story of the Annunciation in music and
choreography in a way that was profoundly moving.
This transformative concert experience was the result of a double
commission by Opera Atelier, their first: an original piece of
contemporary Canadian music for solo violin, Inception, by acclaimed
violinist (and balcony Viking) Edwin Huizinga, combined with new
contemporary choreography by longtime OA artist, and in-demand
contemporary dancer, Tyler Gledhill.
For me, what was truly extraordinary about this piece was the
blending of the Baroque and the new, the music and the choreography,
a seamless interweaving with Purcell’s dramatic cantata, The
Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation, beautifully sung by Asselin. Fascinated
by what OA co-artistic director Marshall Pynkoski calls this “theatrical
intervention” that was so much greater than the sum of its parts,
I contacted composer Edwin Huizinga to learn more about his creative
journey on this project and how it fits in with his already incredibly
multi-faceted career.
When I caught up with him, Huizinga was in California having
just finished recording a new album with his Fire & Grace partner,
guitarist William Coulter, and “phenomenal mandolin player” Ashley
Broder. Like Fire & Grace’s previous albums the new one has a mix
of Baroque and Irish music, but with the addition of Broder to the
ensemble has also mixed in American folk music and bluegrass, while
“still being very much focused on the cross pollination of the two
different genres.”
This cross-pollination of Baroque and folk music can be seen
throughout Huizinga’s career although he “grew up in the middle
of nowhere (Puslinch, Ontario) listening almost exclusively to classical
music on CBC radio,” and from an early age was “fascinated with
the fact that there was so much Baroque dance music out there that I
loved.” The folk side of things didn’t come in until later.
As a young professional violinist, as he became increasingly
immersed in the “world of the Baroque violin, playing with groups
like Tafelmusik and Apollo’s Fire,” he became even more eager to
share this music with other colleagues. Also early in his professional
career, he was beginning to develop his “other love – of the folk world”
playing and writing songs with his Canadian indie band The Wooden
12 | February 2019 thewholenote.com