arts & entertainment Mirusia minus that man with the violin
By Helen Musa
WE are about to experience one of the world’s greatest choirs as Musica Viva brings the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge to Llewellyn Hall.
MIRUSIA Louwerse thought she was going to be an opera singer, but life had a more enticing prospect in sight for the Queensland soprano with the voice of an angel.
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Wendy Johnson
Hitting an academic note
By Helen Musa
Lead soprano since 2007 for the sensationallypopular Dutch violinist and conductor André Rieu, she tours the world with Rieu in an enviable international career that has also seen her billed as the only classical artist with an Aria number-one chart award. “The way we can fly everywhere so quickly it doesn’t matter where you are, you can have a career from anywhere,” Mirusia tells “CityNews” by phone from Brisbane, where she now lives with her Dutch-born husband Youri Wystyrk. She will be performing at The Playhouse on Saturday, August 6, with her chamber orchestra and her chosen Australian pianist and arranger Graeme Press (musical director for Judith Durham). “This will be a solo concert, I’ll be performing a whole mix of repertoire, some classical opera, some musical theatre, some of my own compositions – a mixed bag of music for the whole audience to enjoy.” That’s pretty much in the same tradition as Rieu, darling of the crowds and scorned by connoisseurs, who claim he has brought music down to a common level. Favourite Mirusia numbers include “Mio Babbino Caro”, “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” and the title number of her new DVD, “This Time Tomorrow”. Classically trained with tenor Gregory Massingham at Queensland Conservatorium, she was all set to take her opera studies to a higher level when fate intervened. At age 21, she won the Dame Joan Sutherland Scholarship, the youngest singer to have done so. “The money prize is $10,000 and they give it to someone they feel can use it to further their career,” she says. So she used it to record a debut EP, “She Walks in Beauty”, in 2006.
Seduced by water spinach
Soprano Mirusia Louwerse… “This will be a solo concert – a mixed bag of music for the whole audience to enjoy.” Photo by Karl Nielson There’s a Dutch connection. Mirusia is the daughter of immigrants from the Netherlands and speaks Dutch fluently. An aunty in the old country wrote to Rieu and told him she had a niece in Australia who could sing. “André looked at my website and thought: ‘This is great’. I was touring with a show called ‘Scotland the Brave’ when he called me up and said: ‘Hi, my name is André Rieu and I really like your voice’ – I didn’t believe it was André, but the rest is history.” She’s been working with him for nearly nine years. “I can’t wait to work with them again,” she says of the glamorous, crowd-pleasing concerts that have made both her and Rieu household names. The gorgeous costumes, the crowds, the adulation – these are all absorbing to a young musician, and Mirusia is only 31, but for a classically-trained singer, there’s always a nagging doubt. “In the conservatorium I studied operatic voice and I’d love to perform in opera, but at this point it’s quite impossible,” she says.
Led by eminent choral conductor, Stephen Layton, also artistic director of the City of London Sinfonia, who has been at the helm for 10 years, this mixed choir is made up of 30 fresh, young voices of male and female undergraduates of the college. But here’s the unusual thing – they are all chosen for their academic qualities. “Although they must have good voices, they are chosen for their academic talents, no matter what discipline – arts, science or economics,” says Layton. “I see myself as nurturing students to be part of a whole.” It’s a very old choir. Trinity College was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 and, Layton says: “There’s been a choir since that time. Originally it was made up of men and little boys like King’s College choir, but they’re all adults now and in the late ‘70s and ‘80s women were welcomed. Trinity led with this.” He says the high point of their performance will be one of the 20th century’s
most beautiful choral works, “The 1922 Mass for Unaccompanied Double Choir” by Frank Martin. It took the composer 40 years to allow it to be heard, but it has never left the spotlight since. The program also includes Renaissance works by Byrd and Tallis, through Purcell, Elgar and Herbert Howells, then contemporary works by Arvo Pärt, Ešenvalds and Rautavaara. Layton says the program aims “to confuse the boundaries between them… that is why we begin with the music of Pärt, he’s a very interesting figure whose approach combines elements of old and new.” Layton makes good his aim, with a strong emphasis on new music. Two new works have been especially commissioned for this tour, “The Wings of the Wind” by the choir’s organ scholar, Owain Park, and “Hymn of Ancient Lands” by the Australian composer Joe Twist, commissioned for Musica Viva by Mary and Paul Pollard. “We’re all in a global village,” Layton says. “I listen when I travel to places like the Baltic or Poland, I hear their music, I take it back. I see us as always reinventing.” Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Llewellyn Hall, 7pm, August 4, bookings to musicaviva.com.au/trinity
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Mirusia Louwerse, The Playhouse, Saturday, August 6. Bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.
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