MEET THE SOLOIST: Marion Newman, mezzo soprano: Handel’s Messiah, Dec. 14

Background:  Kwagiulth and Stó:lo First Nations, English, Irish and Scottish mezzo-soprano Marion Newman holds a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the University of Victoria and a Master of Music with Distinction in vocal performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Professional Accomplishments:

• Lead role of Noodin-Kwe in the world premiere run of Giiwedin, a First Nations opera by Spy Dénommé-Welch and Catherine Magowan
• Featured five times as a soloist on CBC’s television broadcast of the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards
• Opened the 2002 Royal Golden Jubilee Gala at Roy Thomson Hall, where she performed the National Anthem with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
• Made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Victoria Symphony, not as a singer, but as a pianist, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 488 in A Major.

Career Highlights:

• Starred in I Call Myself Princess: The Story of Tsianina Redfeather, a new musical play by Jani Lauzon.
• Debuted with Edmonton Opera as the Mother in Hansel and Gretel
• Appeared in world premiere of Bramwell Tovey’s cong cycle Ancestral Voices with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
• Starred as Da Ji in Dora Award-winning Alice Ping-Yee Ho and Marjorie Chan’s The Lesson of Da Ji with Toronto Masque Theatre

Critical Praise:

• “In the title role, Marion Newman sings with rich, opulent tone, and her delivery pulses with the multiple meanings of her duplicitous existence.” – Opera News​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
• “Newman continues to impress with both acting and vocal skills. Her beautiful voice has heft and power, but at the same time an innate sweetness. She modulates it extremely well.” – Opera Canada
• “Newman possesses an extremely sensual quality to her portions, and showed masterful restraint where a lesser performer would have warped the vocal melody beyond recognition with pointless melismatic pomposity. She seemed to wrench the piece out of time altogether at some points, in some instances (as in the opening of the Passion) driving the words home so that they don’t even seem to be the rather ignorable prose that they really are.” – Northumberland View review of Handel’s Messiah