CMC Presents : Map of You

with Rachel Fenlon & Maeve Palmer

This concert features two of Canada’s most exciting sopranos. Rachel Fenlon takes her signature self-accompanied style to the music of composer Daniel Janke from their recently released album Map of You (available from Centrediscs). This music sits at the boundary between art-song and folk creating a language and topology all its own. Rounding out the program is Maeve Palmer and Jialiang Zhu’s exploration of Canadian-Irish identity, contrasting contemporary composers from both Ireland and Irish-Canadian composers here.

Rachel Fenlon is a soprano and pianist who is finding a unique voice on the classical music stages of the world. Drawing from a singer-songwriter approach, Rachel performs song recitals as both singer and pianist accompanying herself. Praised for her “unusually shaped recitals in keeping with her extraordinary talent” (Places des Arts/Festival de Lanaudière), Rachel performs internationally as a recitalist, as solo pianist and singer, and on the opera stage. Rachel was born in the UK, raised on the west coast of Canada, and is now based in Berlin.

The 2024/25 season sees Rachel make self-accompanied recital debuts at the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Bechstein Hall, Salle Bourgie Montreal, Vancouver Recital Society, the Virtuosi Festival in Brazil and the Algarve Music Series. She returns to her native Canada, touring various programmes at leading festivals and venues including Salle Bourgie, Vancouver Recital Society, Domaine Forget, Coast Recital Society, ArtSpring, SweetWater Music Festival, and Music Toronto. In opera, Rachel returns to work with Ensemble Nylandia/Isabella Shaw in La Doriclea. Rachel releases her debut solo album of Schubert’s Die Winterreise on Orchid Classics in autumn 2024.

Further collaborations in 2024/25 include the premiere of Daniel Janke’s new songs which will be performed live in 2025 and released on Centredisques the same year. Rachel collaborates with Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik (MAM) and SWR Radio singing and playing synthesizer in a new work composed by Mart*n Schuettler and will perform new works by Samy Moussa and Víktor Orrí Arnason. Rachel sings and produces Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in a co-production between Vancouver Opera, Opèra de Quebec and Opéra-Théâtre de Metz.

Previous highlights include self-accompanied recitals at prestigious festivals and venues such as Fundación Juan March, the Oxford Lieder Festival, Festival de Lanaudière, Ottawa Chamberfest, National Arts Centre Canada, Settimane Musicali di Ascona, Scotiafest, Vancouver Opera Festival, Martha Argerich Festival Hamburg, Festival International Povoa de Varzim, Toronto Summer Music Festival,  Oper Leipzig, PODIUM Festival Matadepera, Klangwerk LIED the Toronto Summer Music Festival, Kammermusik Festival Ahrenshoop, Pianosalon Christophori, the Canadian Broadcasting Company Studios, GEDOK Festival Berlin, and at venues such as the National SAW Gallery, Kuhlhaus Berlin, the Fox Cabaret Vancouver, St, James Picadilly London, Late Night Liederabend Vienna, Orpheum Annex Vancouver, St. Clement Danes London, Gallery 345 Toronto, Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, the Theater am Delphi Berlin, and Oper Leipzig.

Performing and commissioning new music is a core part of Rachel’s artistic practice. Her most recent new creation is an audiovisual song cycle, titled Sing Nature Alive from My Insides, which world-premiered at Ottawa Chamberfest in 2022.or self-accompanied soprano, piano, live electronics and video projections, for Rachel as performer. The music is composed by co-creator Matthias McIntire, and visual film projections by visual artist and co-creator Jamie A McMillan, set to poetry by Rachel. The piece will be performed three times this season, at the Konzerthaus Berlin, Sweetwater Festival, and Berlied Festival next season.

Rachel has collaborated with composers such as Sarah Sleane, Nicole Lizée, Chaya Czernowin, Susanne Stelzenbach, Helmut Zapf, and Danika Loren. Her recent collaborative highlights include dance projects at Teatro Dello Scompiglio with Freies Tanz Ensemble and at Teatro del Giglio with Tanzfabrik Berlin.

Rachel began her career as an opera singer and continues to perform as an opera singer and concert soloist. On the opera stage, Rachel has sung roles at Deutsche Oper Berlin (Heart Chamber/Czernowin), Vancouver Opera (Susanna/Le Nozze di Figaro; Zerlina/Don Giovanni; Pamina/Die Zauberfloete; Mabel/Pirates of Penzance), Pacific Opera Victoria (Nannetta/Falstaff; Guinevere/Camelot), Ensemble Nylandia (Galatea/Acis and Galatea). In concert, Rachel has performed with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Bach/B minor mass; Beethoven/Ninth Symphony), Victoria Symphony (Handel/Messiah; Aria Concerts; Bach/Magnificat), Sophienkirche Berlin (Arvo Part/Stabat Mater; Haydn/Nelson Mass), and Ensemble Nylandia Finland (Rossignols amoureux).

In addition to her work as a performer, Rachel writes poetry – she has been awarded writing grants from the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Councils for her poetry and will release her debut collection in the coming year. Rachel is the co-founder of the Berlin artist collective CROWN THE MUSE, which has collaborations with stage director Bruno Ravella, and the dance company Ne.Sans under the direction of choreographer Idan Cohen. Rachel is a founding member of the Canadian Artist Collective New Art New Media. Rachel was the founding host of a series titled “Classical (R)evolution” on IDAGIO, which ran for two years beginning in 2020, and interviewed guests such as Marc-André Hamelin, Barbara Hannigan, Vikingur Olafsson, Nico Muhly, Avi Avital, Magdalena Kožená, James Gaffigan, Timo Andres, Heloise Werner, Anna Lapwood, Sean Shibe, Alexander Neef, Francesco Piemontesi, Gerald Finley, amongst many others.

Rachel attended artist residencies at Avaloch Farms Music Institute, Lunenburg Academy for Music Performance, the Banff Centre for the Arts. She was a young artist at Vancouver Opera, and a participant in Oxford Lieder Mastercourse, Rossini Opera Festival young artist summer festival, and the Crear Programme for Song in Scotland with Sir Malcolm Martineau.​

 

“Triple-threat … coloratura” (OperaCanada) Maeve Palmer is an alumna of the Rebanks Family Fellowship and the University of Toronto (UofT) Opera School. Maeve is a prize winner of the 2021 Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song (UofT), a prize winner of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, and a Dora award winner. She has performed with Tapestry Opera, New Music Concerts, Continuum Contemporary Music, and Opera Atelier. Her voice can be heard in the Hollywood film The Space Between Us. Recent operatic roles include Adina, L’Elisir d’Amore (Highlands Opera), Genio Haydn’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Jean MacDonald and Daisy Fairchild in The Bells of Baddeck (MacDonald & Burry), and Robot 1, and [Helena] understudy in Tapestry Opera’s production of RUR: A Torrent of Light (Lizée). An interpreter of many Mozart roles, Maeve has performed as Queen of the Night (Toronto City Opera) Susanna, Sandrina, and Serpetta (UofT Opera), and Zerlina (Center for Opera Studies Italy). World and Canadian premieres include works by Nicole Lizée, Alice Ping Yee Ho, Samuel Andreyev, and Haydn. A passionate scholar, Maeve recently finished her doctorate in Voice Pedagogy and Vocology at UofT as a Massey College Junior Fellow.