Since 1990 Cape Breton (Canada) born soprano Janice Jackson has been in great demand as an interpreter of modern music. In addition to concerts in the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Norway, Belgium, China, and South Africa, she has sung in modern music festivals throughout Europe and Canada – the November Festival (Ghent), Wien Modern (Vienna), Ludwigs Lust (Hamburg), The Proms (Amsterdam), IRCAM (Paris), Big Torino 2000 (Turin), Diem Festival of Electroacoustic Music (Århus, Denmark), Sound Symposium (Newfoundland), Canada’s Scotia Festival of Music.
Many contemporary composers who write for the voice favour Jackson to showcase their works. She has sung over 120 world premieres.
Above all else, Jackson is a musical adventurer, exploring a wide range of musical styles, from cutting edge new music to traditional opera. Jackson’s repertoire includes some of the most demanding music of the 20th century, from Berio, Cage, and Nono to Schönberg, Webern, and Dallapiccola. However, she is also a lover of cabaret, tango, and jazz standards. Her “Classical Cabaret” programs include songs by Arnold Schönberg and Benjamin Britten, Eric Satie’s music hall songs, Kurt Weill songs from Berlin and America, Louis Andriessen’s Four Beatles’ Songs (written for Cathy Berberian in a classical style), George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and more.
She has been a frequent guest artist with other modern music ensembles in Canada and the Netherlands, including Array Music (Toronto), The New Ensemble (Amsterdam), The Basho Ensemble (Utrecht), The Interval Chamber for Microtonal Music (Amsterdam), Dubbel Quintessence (Amsterdam), The Matty Niel Consort (Maastricht), the improvisation group Utrecht Deep Artment and Victoria, BC's Aventa Ensemble.
Scores are not always necessary for a Janice Jackson performance. Her free improvisation work includes collaborations with Barry Guy, Utrecht Deep Artment, Paul Cram’s Upstream Orchestra and Guerrilla Orchestra, the Noir Angels Quartet, and the Canadian Electronic Ensemble and the Innerworkings Trio with fiddle player/composer Rose Bolton and double bassist/composer Lukas Pearse.
Jackson has made numerous recordings with Dutch radio stations (NCRV World Radio, The Concert Sender, and Classical Radio 4) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She can also be heard on several CDs, including Blue Age by Dutch “new age” composer Coen Bais, Serenians by Utrecht Deep Artment, Import by the Escher Ensemble and her Indi CD, City Night - Haiku for the 21st century. Her first solo CD (2004) with accompaniment by pianist Simon Docking features a number of commissioned works, including a new song cycle, the eponymous City Night, by Toronto composer Alice Ping Yee Ho,
In 1995, Jackson sang the world premiere of Orpheus with the Stuttgart State Ballet, a work for soprano and orchestra by Greek composer Theo Abazis. Two years later, she premiered Travelings, a touring program of five solo pieces, each written for her by a different composer, each based on the ancient classical music of a different country – France, Netherlands, India, Japan, and Byzantium.
Her solo concert Out There and Beyond (2000-2001) included everything from spectacular vocal acrobatics to pure theatre, leading to her debut at Toronto’s Music Gallery (2001). Her second concert at the Music Gallery, consisting of electro-acoustic works by French composer Jean Claude Risset, was recorded for Two New Hours, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s weekly new music radio show.
During the 2001-02 season, Jackson was also Musician in Residence with the St. Cecilia Concert Series (Halifax, Canada) where she presented six concerts, including the world premiere of a new song cycle by the brilliant young Canadian composer Emily Doolittle and Songs by Erik Satie with pianist Eve Egoyan.
In the spring of 2002, Jackson spent a month in China where she taught at the taught at the Beijing Conservatory of Music and the Hong Kong School of Performing Arts. She also gave a recital at Beijing’s prestigious Forbidden City Concert Hall where she performed contemporary works by Canadian and Chinese composers.
In 2001, she went into full tango mode with her band Tango Extasis. The six member ensemble played to packed houses and rave reviews, culminating with two performances at the East Coast Music Awards with a live-to-air CBC radio broadcast.
Jackson’s 2002 solo concert, The Canadians, consisted of true vocal acrobatic works to pure theatre and provided her with an opportunity to premiere 2 new solo works by Canadian composers.
In 2003, Jackson mounted a successful five-concert tour of the Netherlands with her solo program O Fortuna – the Female Myth. As well she was a featured guest artist at the highly regarded Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax, Canada) where she performed two chamber works by Canadian composer John Rea as well as Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14.
Jackson undertook an ambitious installation/performance project in the fall of 2003. Angst consisted of four works for solo voice, performed in various rooms of a private Halifax art gallery, surrounded by insect sculptures and other bizarre props. The audience moved from room to room for each piece, ending up sitting on the stairs while Jackson performed Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III in the closet at their foot.
In 2005 she premiered a new work for voice and tape, The Handless Maiden, by Canadian Wende Bartley at the Music Gallery in Toronto.
In September 2006 she became Artistic Director for Vocalypse Productions, a society whose goal is to present quality performances of contemporary vocal music. Her successful solo project Wolf Moon (a Vocalypse Production) featuring 4 dramatic solos was premiered in January 2007 to sold out audiences on the stage of the Sir James Dunn Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Throughout the 2006 – 2007 season she is touring Nova Scotia with her hilarious cabaret show entitled L’amour?. She recently returned from a North American tour with Victoria’s Aventa Ensemble and in September 2007 performed in Live Art Dance’ production of Ear am I.
|
|
 |
|
