From Alleluia to Hallelujah
An interview with
Patricia O’CallaghanBy Rosemary Phillips
What have German cabaret songs, lieder (art songs) and
Leonard Cohen got in common? Canadian singer Patricia O’Callaghan.
“O'Callaghan enters into the world of a song and gives
it a three-dimensional life, using a lower range as smokey as the room will
become and an upper register that vibrates with passion.” - Now Magazine
“I found the songs of Leonard Cohen blended in with the
likes of Schubert’s Alleluia; and
Cohen’s Take This Waltz is more like
an art song than pop. I mixed Cohen and high art, and loved it, and found it very
inspiring,” said O’Callaghan who will be performing An Evening of Leonard Cohen with the Vancouver Island Symphony in a
moving tribute at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo on Saturday, November 18.
“I got more and more into Cohen’s music and made a whole
album of his songs,” she added. “It’s really good poetry, very evocative; keeps
me going back because it’s surprising, unexpected poetry. It bears several
readings and listenings for there’s always more to uncover.”
”…her tender versions of Cohen's ‘Take this Waltz’ and
‘Hallelujah’ are revelatory.” - Timothy White, Billboard
Magazine
And here we uncover a bit of O’Callaghan whose journey with
music and song has taken many years and miles, starting when she was only five
years old. “My mother entered me in a singing competition, for fun. I won and
that impacted me. There was a musical drive in me and Mum started me on piano
lessons as soon as I could reach the keys.”
Meanwhile, O’Callaghan knew deep inside she wanted to be a
singer. “Up there in rural Northern Ontario,” she explained, from her home in
Toronto, “music education was pretty sparse so I
took private piano lessons and sang on my own. While I was in high school in
Iroquois Falls one of my English teachers, Brian Hanneberry, recognized the interest of some students and put on a
few musicals. He was a really special guy. We had a band and when I was 16 my
guidance counsellor, along with Brian Hanneberry, found a voice coach for me,
Rosanne Simunovic of the Timmins Youth Singers, which was an hour’s drive
away.”
After graduation O’Callaghan went on to study music at the
University of Toronto where she was introduced to classical voice, then, at the
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, she continued with
contemporary classical music and living composers. “I got a grant to study in
Austria, which is a great place to start a career. I lived there for a year and
it felt like I was living in another century. The opera repertoire and roles I
would do were extremely rigid and constraining, which is not me. I was sure I didn’t
want to be an opera singer - I enjoyed singing cabaret songs by Arnold
Schoenberg and Kurt Weill. When I came back to Canada I started combining the
two, bridging the styles, as a pioneer. I made a CD, got picked up by a label,
got a record contract, made more albums and that’s how things took off for me.”
In 1997 O’Callaghan, who speaks French, German and Spanish,
released Youkali, cabaret songs by
Kurt Weil, Erik Satie and Francis Poulenc. This was followed by Slow Fox in 1999 which contains “Hallelujah,”
the first of her many interpretations of Leonard Cohen, which culminated with Matador: The Songs of Leonard Cohen,
released by Marquis Classics in 2012.
But what of being female singing male songs? “I find with
Cohen’s poems and songs I like to sing them as a woman because it changes the
context and makes you see the song in a different way. What’s the point of
covering a song if you don’t have something new to bring to it, to offer
something different from the original?”
Then she added, “I never did meet Cohen. We did a theatre
piece based on one of his songs and were in touch by e-mail, but that was the
closest I ever got.”
O’Callaghan began international touring, added credits in
film, theatre and television; collaborated with leading composers, artists and The
Gryphon Trio; conducts choirs and teaches. “I worked hard for a really long
time. As a classical singer you don’t mature until you are about 30, and you
have to be patient. I was doing what I loved to do, and yet I struggled with
stage fright and insomnia. I had to find a way to deal with this without
changing my career. It’s not as debilitating now as it was. Still, I can’t
believe this is happening, the success I have had.”
“O’Callaghan sings her diverse material as if it was
always meant to go side-by-side and by the end of the evening, it’s easy to
believe her.” - Chart Attack Magazine
Where to from here? “That’s a really good question. I’m at a
point of reassessing everything in my life. I want to do more creating and
co-creating, writing with other great musicians, and multidisciplinary artists.
I want to keep recording, which I love to do. I want to keep travelling and exploring
the boundaries of the voice and where it will take me as a singer and
performer. Right now I’m taking a course in percussion.
“Part of me doesn’t know where I’m going next and a part of
me has to be OK with that. I feel pretty lucky. I keep growing as an artist and
goals change. I don’t know if I am living what I saw when I was 24, but I feel
happy with what I have in my life. – Yes, I feel happy.”
This will be O’Callaghan’s first visit to Nanaimo. “It’s
pretty exciting working with an orchestra. For the concert there will be some
other songs mixed in, one by Edith Piaf, but it’s mostly Cohen. I will have my
pianist, Robert Kortgaard, and double-bass player, Andrew Downing, plus the
orchestra. It’s such a big sound, a very heightened experience!”
Tickets for this stirring tribute
to the great Leonard Cohen are available by calling 250-754-8550.
For information about Patricia O’Callaghan, her music and recordings visit www.patricia-ocallaghan.com.
