Post by roger on Sept 28, 2005 7:19:40 GMT
Fiona is so involved with Hayley that I think she deserves her own thread! This appears today in stuff.co.nz
DRAMATIC PERFORMER: Violinist Fiona Pears is preparing to play with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra before accompanying Hayley Westenra on a tour of Europe.
DAVID ALEXANDER/The Press
Violinist's Liverpool dream comes true
28 September 2005
Doors are opening all over Europe for Christchurch musician Fiona Pears. Rosa Shiels reports.
Come November, Christchurch violinist Fiona Pears will be guest soloist with an international orchestra she first heard on recordings when she was a little girl.
The orchestra is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Pears will be performing three of her own pieces – Gypsy Lament, Turkish Fantasie, and Memories of Martin and Mary.
Well known to city audiences for her Parisian Hot Club and gipsy violin styles, Fiona Pears, 31, has been touring with Hayley Westenra, providing accompaniment, along with her partner, piano player/musical director Ian Tilley, for the young singer's Odyssey album-launch concerts around the world.
After a successful round of concerts in Asia, Pears will be accompanying Westenra again in the New Year when she launches the album throughout Europe. In the meantime, Pears is back at her London base doing her own gigs and preparing for the orchestral concert.
"I have a jazz gig in London with Oakley Grenell at a bar," she said at the time of interview last month, "and then a big gig at Shepherds Bush Empire on the 30th (of September) performing my own compositions with a trio," she says.
For the Shepherds Bush Empire gig she is supporting up-and-coming singer-songwriter Heather Nova.
When she backs Hayley Westenra, it's second-fiddle stuff all the way for Pears, who stands in the background, playing subtle harmony lines complementary to Westenra's violinesque singing style.
It's an unusual situation for Pears, whose assured, flamboyant playing coupled with her striking blonde good looks makes her a natural in her own spotlight.
She is normally out front, taking musical charge of her backing group, soloing on her own compositions or performing interpretations of Eastern European classics such as the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5.
As a small child, Pears studied classical piano and violin under Christina Sell and Margaret Buchanan, both of whom she cites as important influences in her ongoing musical approach; Sell teaching her to cherish each note and Buchanan showing her how to retain freshness and always have fun with the violin. Susan Farmer and Jan Tawroszewicz completed her formal instruction.
Growing up, Pears performed with the NZ Secondary Schools Symphony Orchestra, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra (as it was then) and the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, and won national secondary school music competitions in both piano and violin.
AdvertisementAdvertisementBy the time she was 18 she was lighting up various venues around town and national festival venues as well as TV screens as an integral part of the Blue Swing Quartet.
Concert-goers might remember her dramatic performances as support act for such artists as the late Victor Borge, nuevo flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert, and the inimitable Tony Bennett, or her own sellout concerts at Lyttelton's Harbour Light.
She provided string backings on Bic Runga's album Beautiful Collision; spent some time teaching violin, and played privately for her longtime hero and original Hot Club of France member, the late Stephane Grappelli, when he was on his final international tour.
I wonder, did he like her playing?
"Well, he seemed to," she says, "because he wheeled himself over to the piano and started playing, because, of course, he was an amazing pianist. I was still fairly new to jazz – I must've been about 19 or 20. He died two months after that, in Paris."
She has since jammed at the famous annual Samois sur Seine Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival in France, which attracts attendance from international musicians keen to play tribute to the Hot Club musical style that keeps on keeping on.
Pears, who grew up in Greenpark, outside Christchurch, left for her big OE three years ago with few plans in mind.
"All I had was a big purple pack and my fiddle," she says.
"I'd planned to fly into Amsterdam, because I've got friends there. I had three months only, because I had to come back and play at the arts festival that year. I ended up going through London on my way to Ireland, where I was doing a gig as part of the Chichester Festival with pianist Jonathan Taberner (originally from Christchurch)," she says.
"I did the festival and travelled on to Ireland where I had a great time. I knew I had to go back to that part of the world, which is strange, because I'd always wanted to go to Eastern Europe – Hungary or the Czech Republic – because of the gipsy music."
She intends to visit Eastern Europe some time next year, but in the meantime she invokes the mood of European gipsy music when she performs and composes, and the tone she sings up when she plays has an aching quality to it redolent of those regions.
"I do everything that I can to make my violin sound like a cello," she says. "That's my aim. Admittedly, the violin is always going to sound screechy when you're starting – that's normal. But I think the aim is to make it as beautiful as possible. And I've said this before: not to play a thousand notes in every single bar, but to make a beautiful sound and create a melody, and touch somebody with it if you can. If I see a tear I think `Yeah, I got it!'"
When Pears was back in Christchurch last year she was approached by Hayley Westenra's family to be concert master for the quartet for Westenra's forthcoming New Zealand and Australian concerts. Since then, it's been a whirl of activity for the hard working Pears and musical director Tilley, who have their own individual projects as well as backing Westenra as required, from the last round of concerts in Australasia as well as the NZ pavilion at Expo in Japan, and in Singapore, to upcoming performances throughout Britain and the Continent.
"(In Sydney) I got to do a solo, so I was doing my arrangement of Brahms' Hungarian Dance and I had the whole audience at the Sydney Opera house going yeahhh! It was amazing! And I'd flown my parents to Sydney for it because they'd never been overseas."
In her breaks in Britain and from her Westenra responsibilities, Pears has been building up her own profile, playing gigs and concerts in England, Scotland and Wales, including a performance at the London Palladium, and a concert at London's 100 Club for jazz guitarist Diz Disley, who once performed in Grappelli's ensemble.
She has released a DVD of concert performances and is currently working on compositions for a new studio album to be released in 2006.
But when we talked last month, Pears had one thing on her mind – Christmas in New Zealand.
"We're planning on coming anywhere from the 20th, as long as we're back on Christmas Day. That is my plan."
Look around; you may even catch her doing some gigs. It's not often the violin is too far from Fiona Pears' hands.
To buy the Fiona Pears In Concert DVD and her CDs Los Sayas and Doorways to Distant Lands, visit www.fionapears.com
DRAMATIC PERFORMER: Violinist Fiona Pears is preparing to play with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra before accompanying Hayley Westenra on a tour of Europe.
DAVID ALEXANDER/The Press
Violinist's Liverpool dream comes true
28 September 2005
Doors are opening all over Europe for Christchurch musician Fiona Pears. Rosa Shiels reports.
Come November, Christchurch violinist Fiona Pears will be guest soloist with an international orchestra she first heard on recordings when she was a little girl.
The orchestra is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Pears will be performing three of her own pieces – Gypsy Lament, Turkish Fantasie, and Memories of Martin and Mary.
Well known to city audiences for her Parisian Hot Club and gipsy violin styles, Fiona Pears, 31, has been touring with Hayley Westenra, providing accompaniment, along with her partner, piano player/musical director Ian Tilley, for the young singer's Odyssey album-launch concerts around the world.
After a successful round of concerts in Asia, Pears will be accompanying Westenra again in the New Year when she launches the album throughout Europe. In the meantime, Pears is back at her London base doing her own gigs and preparing for the orchestral concert.
"I have a jazz gig in London with Oakley Grenell at a bar," she said at the time of interview last month, "and then a big gig at Shepherds Bush Empire on the 30th (of September) performing my own compositions with a trio," she says.
For the Shepherds Bush Empire gig she is supporting up-and-coming singer-songwriter Heather Nova.
When she backs Hayley Westenra, it's second-fiddle stuff all the way for Pears, who stands in the background, playing subtle harmony lines complementary to Westenra's violinesque singing style.
It's an unusual situation for Pears, whose assured, flamboyant playing coupled with her striking blonde good looks makes her a natural in her own spotlight.
She is normally out front, taking musical charge of her backing group, soloing on her own compositions or performing interpretations of Eastern European classics such as the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5.
As a small child, Pears studied classical piano and violin under Christina Sell and Margaret Buchanan, both of whom she cites as important influences in her ongoing musical approach; Sell teaching her to cherish each note and Buchanan showing her how to retain freshness and always have fun with the violin. Susan Farmer and Jan Tawroszewicz completed her formal instruction.
Growing up, Pears performed with the NZ Secondary Schools Symphony Orchestra, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra (as it was then) and the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, and won national secondary school music competitions in both piano and violin.
AdvertisementAdvertisementBy the time she was 18 she was lighting up various venues around town and national festival venues as well as TV screens as an integral part of the Blue Swing Quartet.
Concert-goers might remember her dramatic performances as support act for such artists as the late Victor Borge, nuevo flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert, and the inimitable Tony Bennett, or her own sellout concerts at Lyttelton's Harbour Light.
She provided string backings on Bic Runga's album Beautiful Collision; spent some time teaching violin, and played privately for her longtime hero and original Hot Club of France member, the late Stephane Grappelli, when he was on his final international tour.
I wonder, did he like her playing?
"Well, he seemed to," she says, "because he wheeled himself over to the piano and started playing, because, of course, he was an amazing pianist. I was still fairly new to jazz – I must've been about 19 or 20. He died two months after that, in Paris."
She has since jammed at the famous annual Samois sur Seine Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival in France, which attracts attendance from international musicians keen to play tribute to the Hot Club musical style that keeps on keeping on.
Pears, who grew up in Greenpark, outside Christchurch, left for her big OE three years ago with few plans in mind.
"All I had was a big purple pack and my fiddle," she says.
"I'd planned to fly into Amsterdam, because I've got friends there. I had three months only, because I had to come back and play at the arts festival that year. I ended up going through London on my way to Ireland, where I was doing a gig as part of the Chichester Festival with pianist Jonathan Taberner (originally from Christchurch)," she says.
"I did the festival and travelled on to Ireland where I had a great time. I knew I had to go back to that part of the world, which is strange, because I'd always wanted to go to Eastern Europe – Hungary or the Czech Republic – because of the gipsy music."
She intends to visit Eastern Europe some time next year, but in the meantime she invokes the mood of European gipsy music when she performs and composes, and the tone she sings up when she plays has an aching quality to it redolent of those regions.
"I do everything that I can to make my violin sound like a cello," she says. "That's my aim. Admittedly, the violin is always going to sound screechy when you're starting – that's normal. But I think the aim is to make it as beautiful as possible. And I've said this before: not to play a thousand notes in every single bar, but to make a beautiful sound and create a melody, and touch somebody with it if you can. If I see a tear I think `Yeah, I got it!'"
When Pears was back in Christchurch last year she was approached by Hayley Westenra's family to be concert master for the quartet for Westenra's forthcoming New Zealand and Australian concerts. Since then, it's been a whirl of activity for the hard working Pears and musical director Tilley, who have their own individual projects as well as backing Westenra as required, from the last round of concerts in Australasia as well as the NZ pavilion at Expo in Japan, and in Singapore, to upcoming performances throughout Britain and the Continent.
"(In Sydney) I got to do a solo, so I was doing my arrangement of Brahms' Hungarian Dance and I had the whole audience at the Sydney Opera house going yeahhh! It was amazing! And I'd flown my parents to Sydney for it because they'd never been overseas."
In her breaks in Britain and from her Westenra responsibilities, Pears has been building up her own profile, playing gigs and concerts in England, Scotland and Wales, including a performance at the London Palladium, and a concert at London's 100 Club for jazz guitarist Diz Disley, who once performed in Grappelli's ensemble.
She has released a DVD of concert performances and is currently working on compositions for a new studio album to be released in 2006.
But when we talked last month, Pears had one thing on her mind – Christmas in New Zealand.
"We're planning on coming anywhere from the 20th, as long as we're back on Christmas Day. That is my plan."
Look around; you may even catch her doing some gigs. It's not often the violin is too far from Fiona Pears' hands.
To buy the Fiona Pears In Concert DVD and her CDs Los Sayas and Doorways to Distant Lands, visit www.fionapears.com
