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A native of Montreal, mezzo soprano Anne-Marie Donovan graduated from McGill University in 1985, and has performed across Canada, in the US, Mexico and Europe as a recitalist, chamber musician, and interpreter of 20th century music and music theatre. In 1990 she co-founded the Blue Rider Ensemble with some of Canada's finest chamber musicians. Their interpretation of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire led to an invitation to perform at the Schoenberg Retrospective in Barcelona, Spain, and the ensemble's recording of that work has been met with great critical acclaim. Blue Rider has since toured with many different concert programs and premiered Mounting Picassso, an instrumental theatre work by Peter Hatch. In 1992 Anne-Marie founded the MIRROR IMAGE vocal ensemble, a multidisciplinary chamber ensemble of solo voices. MIRROR IMAGE came together to perform Stimmung, a landmark work by Karlheinz Stockhausen using the Eastern technique of overtone singing. The ensemble's interpretation of Stimmung led to many invitations from concert societies and composers and MIRROR IMAGE has gone on, under Anne-Marie's direction, to produce one major new production every year. While performing with these two ensembles, Anne-Marie continued to perform as a soloist. She was invited to perform the premiere of Dreaming Lolita by Sid Robinovich with the Winnipeg Symphony at the Winnipeg New Music Festival. She premiered Insomnia by Barbara Croall with the Composer's Orchestra in Toronto. Recital appearances included Brandon University, University of British Columbia, Wilfrid Laurier University, Arkell Schoolhouse Gallery, The Music Gallery For Openers Festival in Toronto and Oscar Pederson Hall and Pollack Hall in Montreal. She was also frequently heard on CBC Radio. Anne-Marie began to build associations with living composers, and many leading composers have chosen her as a vehicle for their expression. She has commissioned and/or premiered works by Canadians Glenn Buhr, Peter Hatch, Peter Hannan, John Oswald, Linda C. Smith, Tim Brady, Christos Hatzis and Barbara Croall, to name a few, as well as many works by international composers such as Donald Crockett, Julian Grant and Steve Kohn. Anne-Marie has also recorded many of these works on the Marquis Classics, A&R Records, ARTIFACT and Ghandarva labels. In 1994 Anne Marie became artistic director of NUMUS Inc., one of Canada's most active new music societies, a post she kept until spring 2000. During her tenure, NUMUS brought its voice to a wide-ranging audience, regularly playing to capacity houses, which grew by an average of 50% each year. Under Anne-Marie's leadership, NUMUS had many artistic accomplishments: a thriving concert series; the establishement of a series of concerts for children; educational programs for people of all ages; competitions to nurture young professional performers and composers; the release of NUMUS' first CD; and cooperative ventures with many other arts organizations. Anne-Marie's tenure with NUMUS culminated in a hugely successful and inspiring three-day festival in February 2000. 'MAKROKOSMOPOLITAIN' celebrated the chamber music of the great American composer, George Crumb, with concerts, lectures, master classes and composer seminars, and George Crumb was NUMUS' guest and composer-in-residence for the festival. Although Anne-Marie has stepped down as Artistic Director of NUMUS, she will remain involved with the organization as Director of Opera Productions and Producer of Screen Test, a provocative new opera in development by composer Tim Brady and librettist John Sobol. Anne-Marie is active as an educator and has taught in the Drama and Speech & Commmunication Department at the University of Waterloo since 1993. She also works through TRACE, the teaching resources centre at the university, giving effective communication and spoken voice workshops for staff and faculty. Anne-Marie has twice been nominated for the Distinguished Teacher Award at the University of Waterloo. In the past few seasons, Anne-Marie has performed frequently with the Penderecki Quartet, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, at the Elora Festival's Festival Within a Festival, the Festival de Musica de Camera in San Miguel, Mexico, NUMUS Concerts, the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, and the 2000 Rhodes/Anderson Cave Concerts in Napa, California. Anne-Marie's one-woman millennium show, ALPHABARET, premiered in 1998, featured twenty six songs by twenty six composers from A to Z, starting with Laurie Anderson, through the likes of Joan LaBarabara and Meridith Monk, and ending with Frank Zappa. This season Anne-Marie will be featured with Espace Musique in Ottawa, the Canadian Chamber Ensemble, in recital at La Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur in Montreal, at the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and on a cross-Canada tour wiith electric guitarist Tim Brady and his ensemble, Bradyworks. She will also release a recording of Brahms songs with the Streicher Ensemble with the label DoReMi. Anne-Marie lives in Waterloo, Ontario with her son, Michael, and her husband, Paul Pulford.REPERTOIRE
SONG REPERTOIRE
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY
"Laden with flowers,
Donovan returned to the stage to offer the famous Wiegenlied by Brahms. Surely
it cannot be sung better." The
Montreal Gazette "...this performance
showed to best advantage Donovan's formidable dramatic abilities... a singer to
reckon with." The
Globe and Mail "A well deserved cum
laude for the Blue Rider Ensemble from Canada and especially for the mezzo
soprano Anne-Marie Donovan who managed to unleash the swirling ghosts in the
crystal interior of the Fundacio." La
Vanguargia, Barcelona "Mezzo soprano
Anne-Marie Donovan quietly and reverently stole the show on Saturday at the
Humanities Theatre. Performing Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, Donovan brought
dignity and poise to the poignant late 15th-century religious text... As for
Donovan's voice, well, its difficult to imagine a more direct, moving
performance. Her intensity was underscored by her voice, which is flawlessly
even throughout her range." The
Record, Kitchener-Waterloo In the Gorecki, Anne-Marie
Donovan presented as moving a performance as anything else in recent
memory." Winnipeg
Free Press "Donovan's deep
affinity for text matches a robust and flexible timbre ideally suited for music
that has no laurels (yet) to rest on. It was her task to make the strange
instantly familiar, even alluring." The
Record, Kitchener-Waterloo "Dreaming Lolita is a
very literal work, often graphic...There are uncomfortable complications here,
complicity, even humour, and mezzo soprano Anne-Marie Donovan delivered a
performance of rivetting intensity." Interchange,
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation "Anne-Marie Donovan
gives a stellar performance of the 3 Songs, her rich, warm voice tenderly
melding with the string ensemble." Northern
Exposure, Canadian Cds in Review by Hal Hill & John Sutherland "This is an airy, gossamer reading (Pierrot lunaire) in which
the voice is highly integrated into the ensemble, and it is a delight...I
recommend it highly." James H. North, Fanfare "Anne-Marie Donovan is the soulful mezzo soprano... There is bound
to be something you like (on this disc.)" For Booking Information Contact LONG REACH FINE ARTS: Telephone: (514) 485-8220 E-mail: john@longreachfinearts.com Send mail to suzanne@longreachfinearts.com
with questions or comments about this web site.
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Mezzo-Soprano