James Strecker Reviews the Arts

Photographer credits for four photos immediately above: Juan A. Espino, Andre Surma, Tom W. Bertolotti, Lucyna Przasnyski

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us what you want the public to know about your recent completed projects and/or the ones you are actively working on. What is it for each one, why is it, and how was/is it done?

KATARZYNA SADEJ: Well probably the most interesting project currently in process, and certainly one of the most exciting in my career, has been my participation in the documentary feature film “Our Lady of the Kitchen”. This is the story of how a painting that was stolen from Poland by the Nazis during the second world war ended up hanging in the kitchen of Craig Gilmore and David Crocker; and, how this same painting was repatriated back to Poland by this loving and generous couple. I perform in this documentary, costumed-up as the original woman from the painting by Geldorp. Among the numbers I perform musically, accompanied by the incredible concert pianist Daniel Vnukovski, who also gifts us with some incredible solo piano in the film, are solo songs and duets with tenor Craig Gilmore (one of the heroes of our film). The big number is a Chopin song, with the poetry changed by me to reflect on current affairs. The documentary has a powerful message for human rights, LGBTQ rights, dignity and equality. Having the opportunity to participate, perform, and voice my own concerns for certain sentiments, intolerance and hatred prominent in the world today, has been a very poignant moment for me. You may wonder how a stolen painting and human rights come together in this film, so you may want to follow my frequent posts about this whole process and please do anticipate the release of this film in a few months’ time.

To find out more about the background story for “Our Lady of the Kitchen,” here is an article released by our very own CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-21-2019-1.5142647/poland-s-lgbt-community-gets-unexpected-allies-because-of-a-painting-looted-by-nazis-1.5142713

JS: What kind of audience will this project interest? What new audience are you also seeking? Why to both questions?

KS: For any projects I do, including traditional classical music and opera performances, I always seek to interest people that are generally not in that world. I think it’s very important to always think outside the box and try to encourage people to give higher art a chance. “Our Lady of the Kitchen” is certainly a vehicle for that because it will reach many different people and hopefully many countries. What I say is not meant to look down on other genres of music (I have been known to jam pop tunes myself), but to emphasize that bridging the gigantic gap that now exists between classical music and popular music really should be narrowed. Why, for example, can we not see a real trained opera singer, with vocals of highest caliber, perform during the Academy Award ceremony? Because, right now, the vast majority of the public does not respect or understand operatic singing.

JS: In what ways was/is this project easy to do and in what ways was/is it difficult to realize? How long did it take and why that long?

KS: I have been involved with the documentary for about a year. The translations I did and the poetry I wrote, and the singing practice – all of that took a lot of time. But I tend to prepare things carefully and with my full heart in it. The actual filming has been over 2 years now for the director and producers. Some people are often afraid and feel that it’s too difficult to delve into such projects, which deal with human rights issues and politics. I personally felt compelled to participate from the very start and feel that certain human rights in the 21st century simply must be addressed.

JS: How are you planning to promote, market, and sell this project to the public?

KS: I do frequent posts about it on my social media to boost interest from my followers.

JS: Please give us a brief autobiography, some stuff about yourself, that is relevant to this project.

KS: This project is so special to me because I have really devoted a lot of my career to propagating Polish music (and not for the purpose of making money, believe me!). To be able to present something like this, where I can embody my work in the Polish music field, include my own poetry, and stand up for dignity and human rights all at once, is so unbelievably humbling. I am so grateful to have such a project emerge as a highlight reflecting years of work and learning. It’s also a huge pleasure to be involved with such a talented and amazing team that is creating this entire film.

My family also has an interesting history, having escaped communist Poland in 1988. I was always drawn to Polish music when I was studying music at University and it came easily to me to sing Polish classical songs. I felt like I was in my element. In December 2019 I also released a two-volume album of rarely-known Lutoslawski songs with pianist Basia Bochenek, which can be heard on all music streaming platforms if you search for my name on them. That project took 2 years, to get all the recording done, just so that we could show the world these fabulous 33 songs that barely anyone has heard of.

JS: What’s next in your creative life?]

KS: Much of it, as you might imagine, is on hold because of COVID. I am anticipating a recital tour of Atlantic Canada with concert pianist Daniel Vnukovski, performances as Carmen, a debut in China, a debut with Los Angeles’ Jacaranda series, and others. But other than live performance, which is on hold until further notice, I do have a few interesting side projects.

One is that I will be involved in helping promote another fabulous endeavour, this time by Polish sky-jumper Tomasz Kozlowski. He will be beating a world record in 2021, by doing the highest ever-recorded sky jump, from 45 KM above the earth. He graciously approached me a few months ago to see if I would be interested in participating in this project’s promotion. Of course, I agreed, so much so that I will jump out of an airplane with him in the coming months! I am hoping that, despite my huge fear of heights (which I’m willing to face), this can get some of my followers to support this ambitious project, which is aimed at raising funds for victims of climate change related environmental emergencies. I am also dedicating another project I have been working on – a series of me singing in various locations in the wilderness – to help promote Tomasz Kozlowski’s campaign. Please read more about this ambitious endeavor here: www.jumpfortheplanet.com

Aside from those projects, I am also working on creating online performance content which can hopefully bring some entertainment and positivity to people at this time. I am working with the “Our Lady of the Kitchen” documentary project constantly; and, also, I’m collaborating with other musicians online, which has been a huge pleasure.

Here is a Playlist I created on YouTube with my self-isolation shares. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel (believe me, it’s a great support for me to simply subscribe).
Self-isolation shares: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKUoKpKxYzYI9-F9c1acfcHWhXdX4isH
Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/katarzynasadej

Please also follow me on my other social media threads:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatarzynaSadejMezzoSoprano/
Instagram: @katarzynasadej
Twitter: @MezzoSadej

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us.

CHEISTINA QUILICO: I have been performing professionally for 60 years. I began playing with orchestra at 10, made my orchestral debut with orchestra in New York at 14 and so it continued. I am happy to say that I have performed and/or recorded 45 piano concertos already and 50 CDs. This summer I decided to take a break from performing to learn new repertoire. I am scheduled to perform the Tan Dun piano concerto twice next season with the Kindred Spirits Orchestra and record 3 other concertos by Larysa Kuzmenko, Alice Ping Yee Ho and Christos Hatzis with Marc Djokic, violin and Sinfonia Toronto, Nurhan Arman, conductor, as well as record a solo piano CD of works by Alice Ping Yee Ho. I am also a Full Professor of Piano Performance and Musicology at York, so I have been completing teaching, grading and adjudicating online.

JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?

CQ: Learning new repertoire and exploring the evolving work of composers I have worked with before is a mesmerizing and magical journey. I do a lot of art so working with new colours in the different styles of keyboard technique and orchestrations is extremely inspiring for my own art.

JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?

CQ: One of my Granddaughters once said to me: “Why do you have to practice? Don’t you know how to play the piano already?” Many people don’t understand the hours we need to spend at the piano to learn the notes, style, dynamics of our repertoire. Even when you have performed the pieces, they still evolve and need work. Keeping repertoire fresh is a difficult job sometimes. Also, as a Professor I need to research, read and prepare lectures and to create interesting classes. Especially now, when courses have to be taught online. It seems to be more work. I was fortunate enough to have several courses ready with PowerPoint presentations.

JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?

CQ: I put my soul, hard work, imagination, dreams and dedication into my music. I don’t want to let the composers down. I always want to do the best technically and musically when I perform, whether it is classical or new music. I also don’t want to let down the audiences who took time to come and hear me perform and spent money on a ticket. You want to give an audience the best experience and emotional journey through the music that you are playing.

JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?

CQ: Finding time for me to enjoy life. Working full-time as a professor and trying to schedule enough time for practice and research is extremely difficult and becoming more so. Leaving special time for my children, grandchildren, family, dogs is crucial and with everyone so busy it is tough. We also need time to let our creative juices come to fruition and finding or scheduling those precious hours is becoming even more difficult. I am so exhausted from all my work that falling asleep on my sofa in front of the TV with my dogs is all I can do sometimes. I want more free time.

JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?

CQ: I want to go have a beer or whatever they are drinking with Bach and Mozart. Their music speaks to me and I would like to talk with them about their process of composing. I think that we over analyze today so I have a feeling that they would just ask for another beer and gossip about other musicians and composers. I love Egyptology and ancient history so the third person would be the Pharaoh Akhenaten. I would ask him what spiritual journey took him from worshiping numerous Gods in Egypt to believing in one God Ra. I don’t have any idea what he would say and that is the mystery of the past which fascinates me.

JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.

CQ: I was always creative as a young child, but I loved academics and did well in school and in writing. My piano teacher Boris Berlin suggested I try out for Juilliard. My Father was very much against this because I was 14 and he had hoped I would choose an academic career. He challenged me with a dare. He would consider it if I received a scholarship from Juilliard. I was accepted with a scholarship and so I began my journey as an artist in New York. Before then I found playing very easy and wasn’t sure what I wanted but I fell in love with the energy in New York. Still my favourite place.

JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?

CQ: I think that outsiders don’t understand the amount of time you need to spend working on your music and that you are working even when you are not.

JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?

CQ; I have been fortunate to have experimented with a lot of different genres and musical groups in my life. I performed all the virtuoso romantic music, concertos with orchestra, accompanied my late husband, Metropolitan Opera Star, Louis Quilico, in recitals of songs and arias. I have done a lot of experimental music with my first husband, Michel-Geroges Brégent, Québec composer. I worked with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhuasen, György Ligeti, John Cage. These were the greats at the time I was a young artist. I have played jazz, premiered numerous compositions in all different styles. I have worked with electronics, played harpsichord. I think doing more online is something I need to think about.

JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?

CQ: If I could re-live my life I would definitely not be in the arts. I would love to be an Egyptologist. I took courses for over 6 years and toyed with the idea of getting another degree. I have been to Egypt and love exploring. The other choice would have been an astrophysicist if I had been slightly better in math. I was very good in science and I love anything to do with discoveries in space.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

CQ: At the moment we are in a crisis. The Universities are definitely going to be teaching as many courses as they can online. Solo instruments, like piano lessons can be taught online. I just adjudicated over 100 videos for a music competition online. The problem is that it isn’t a level playing field. Each piano is slightly different and some better than others, which makes fair adjudication difficult. However, chamber music at the moment will be difficult to teach safely. I think we have to wait out the pandemic and hope that artists survive financially.

JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?

CQ: I love creating paintings or drawings inspired by the music I play. I had written much poetry when I was younger and one of my biggest thrills lately was that David Jaeger, composer and producer extraordinaire used some of my poetry for his compositions. I also love the fact that I have had the opportunity to work on Baroque, Classic, Romantic and Contemporary Music. Working on different styles keeps my performance fresh and hopefully interesting.

JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?

CQ: I have been extremely lucky in my life to have had a lot of reviews. This is sadly not the case for young artists today. I remember as a young Juilliard pianist to be thrilled to have had so many excellent New York Times reviews by critics who were knowledgeable about the repertoire and the piano world. For me it was the affirmation by these New York Times reviews, and those from Paris, France and the rest of US, Canada, etc. that kept me in the profession. Also, one of my teachers said after I received an especially “rave” review from the New York Times: Don’t be too confident. The next time they could say, “Didn’t live up to potential.” I always remembered that and tried to better my previous performances.

JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?

CQ: My close friends and family know that I am a big animal lover. I love going to Farm Sanctuaries and bonding with cows, goats, horses and other animals. My daughters and I have 13 pets (6 dogs,5 cats and 2 guinea pigs). I also have a backyard sanctuary for squirrels and birds. The squirrels sit by the window and knock on the door for food when I am practicing. It brings me close to nature. That, and my passion for ancient history, especially Egyptology is something not everyone knows about me. Although my 2 dogs, a Pug and a Yorkie are often featured on my Facebook page, more than my concerts.

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?

THEO TAMS: I just released a music video for my latest single “The Last Song” and the song is definitely one of the more personal songs I’ve written, so it was a challenge to try and represent that visually. I had the idea for the music video about a year before we shot it – I needed time to grow a proper beard lol. I knew that I wanted to depict a kind of metamorphosis and the feeling of trying to be everything and everyone for someone else, and you kind of lose your own self and your identity along the way. It was a really freeing process and it’s always a really beautiful thing to execute something the way you originally envisioned:

JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?

TT: Creating the EP “Call The Doctor” and the music video for “The Last Song” was really a form of therapy for me. I think for a long time I was in the studio censoring my own artistry, saying things like, “oh that sounds cool, but it’s not for me, I couldn’t pull that off…” and then I just starting saying “yes” to a lot more. Being more open, being more vulnerable. It’s the most personal EP I’ve done, and I’m really proud of it, it taught me a lot about myself and about trusting my instincts, but it also served a purpose and I think that purpose was to really let go of some shit that was holding me back. The new EP which will be coming out sometime this year has taken a really different turn sonically, and I think it took writing a really personal record to get me to that point where I was willing to start taking some bigger creative risks.

JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?

TT: Honestly, I don’t let my head go there. I am more focused on the people who DO understand and who DO appreciate the work I do. When you’re in a creative field and you put yourself out there, there are bound to be haters and people who want to come down on your art, it’s all part of the business and a shit part of the industry. It can eat at you, so you have to make a choice early on to focus on the positive that you’re getting back rather than the negative.

JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?

TT: I think for a long time I didn’t want to write about certain aspects of my life. I didn’t want to write about faith, I didn’t want to write about my sexuality, I didn’t want to write about my family…. because in certain ways, a lot of those things are very juxtaposed. But the older I get, the more I realized that we ALL have those juxtapositions in some ways. So, I just let go of steering away from those things and instead embrace all the complicated emotions that come with them.

JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?

TT: The biggest challenge I face as a creative person, and I think a lot of creative people struggle with this, is finding ways to maintain being productive even when you’re not feeling inspired. That’s when working on your craft really becomes the job. The job is not creating, it’s pushing through the uninspiring times and learning how to use them to work on other aspects. When I’m not feeling inspired to write, maybe that’s when I can really work on my live set and the performance aspect. When I’m not inspired to sing, maybe that’s when I can really sit down with my journal and my words. When I’m not inspired to do either of those things, maybe that’s when I can sit in silence with my thoughts and try to unearth what might be blocking inspiration. There is ALWAYS something to do, but it’s about gently nudging things in one direction or another to make it all happen.

JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.

TT: Oh dear lord, I’ve had so many hahaha. I think the latest was a therapy session I was in a couple years ago, before the release of “Call The Doctor” and my anxiety was so crippling because there was so much fear attached to the release of this particular EP. It was an extremely personal group of songs, so I was putting myself out there in a way that I hadn’t really done before. I remember talking to my therapist and saying that I just wanted this EP to be successful and I wanted it to be a bit of breakthrough, etc., etc. and she said something to me that I will never forget. She said, “Outside of all those external forces that you cannot control, i.e. public perception, and industry acceptance, etc., do you not feel as though it is simply your purpose to create? To tell these stories and to sing these songs?” It was such an incredible moment for me as an artist because I immediately felt lighter and safer, when you break things down, it really is that simple. We are all here to create – that sounds so whitewashed eat pray love I know… lol, but it’s true.

JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?

TT: I think people often don’t understand that we often don’t get a choice of what inspires us. I can be inspired by the strangest things sometimes; my partner will look at me funny and I’ll write a song about how he broke my heart. My dog can be acting up and being rowdy and I’ll write a song about feeling completely irrelevant and unimportant. On the flip side of that, I’ll see a kid with an ice cream cone and write a song about how the world is a beautiful place and we are all going to be okay. Inspiration comes in the weirdest forms and I think it’s hard for outsiders to really understand that source at times.

JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?

TT: I have always wanted to write a musical. There have been so many songs that I’ve written over the years that never made the cut for projects, often because they were too cinematic sounding, or a bit to over the top, so…PERFECT for musical theatre haha. There hasn’t really been a delay so much as really finding the right time and the right people to collaborate with. BUT I can now safely say that it is in the works, and we have some basic plot information down, and really starting to dive into the characters as well. It’s exciting and the quarantine has finally given some time to really dive into these ideas.

JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?

TT: I have two left feet so I wish I could move. I sometimes think about doing a music video with some dance elements or some choreography to it, but then I remember that I literally trip over myself constantly. I’ve always admired dance as an art form, I find being able to communicate stories and emotion through movement is just beautiful, it literally makes me weak in the knees. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll take the plunge.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

TT: The music industry has changed so much in the last decade especially, it’s a bit disheartening at times because as soon as you have a handle on one aspect of it, there’s 50 more avenues to explore but that’s also what keeps things exciting. You have to give people more than just music, more than just a product, you have to give them a reason to invest in you personally. They really need to care about you, I think that’s one of the positives of coming from a show like Canadian Idol – there has been downsides for sure, but the positive is that you have an incredible fan base of extremely loyal people who really do care about you. I’m super thankful for that.

JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?

TT: I think in an industry where production is playing a bigger role than ever before, it’s really nice to hear that I’m still a legit singer haha. Autotune has it’s uses sure, but it has no place in my studio or in my process. I love being able to deliver raw emotion without having to rely on a computer to get me to sound a certain way.

JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?

TT: I’m resilient as fuck. I think people often forget that or don’t realize it right away. But there are not many things that can break me, I’ve developed a really thick skin over the years which has served me well, but I refuse to lose the ability to feel things and I’ve always tried to write music that allows people to feel things too, even things they’re scared to feel, “The Last Song” is a perfect example of that.