Collaboration: How to Breathe New Life Into Your Musical Activities

Dr. Christopher Foley, with Wendy Hatala Foley

Whether you're a student, professional musician, or teacher, it's never too late to expand the scope of your musical activities through collaboration. Royal Conservatory faculty member and Collaborative Piano Blog author Christopher Foley looks at the genres, skills, and possibilities of the piano in ensemble and how you can incorporate them into your musical life.

Dr. Christopher Foley

Christopher Foley is a collaborative pianist dedicated to the fields of teaching, chamber music, art song, opera, and contemporary music. At the Eastman School of Music, he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1994, majoring in Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music as a student of Jean Barr and David Burge. He is on the faculty of the Royal Conservatory of Music, where he teaches piano, collaborative piano, vocal literature, vocal coaching, and serves as the head of the voice department at the Royal Conservatory School. He has also spent fourteen summers as Resident Accompanist at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, Maine. In 1989 at the Eckhardt-Grammaté Competition for the Performance of Contemporary Music, he won first prize for the performance of the commissioned work (Walter Buczinski's Mosaics) and third prize overall. In 1991, he won first prize in piano at the Kneisel Competition for the Performance of German Lieder in Rochester, New York.

In 2005, Dr. Foley started The Collaborative Piano Blog, which has grown to become one of the top classical music blogs in the world. He has given workshops on his experience as a blogger at both the Eastman School of Music and at the Vancouver Song Institute. As pianist and repetiteur for Tapestry New Opera Works, he coached and performed in recent productions of Opera To Go (2004, 2006, 2008, and 2009), Nigredo Hotel, and Facing South, as well as being on the creative team for Tapestry's unique Composer/Librettist and Director/Musical Director laboratories. At the 2006 Women in Music festival at the Eastman School of Music, he performed works of Laura Schwendiner and Barabara Pentland. In 2003, he performed works by Linda Catlin Smith, Andriy Talpash and Juhan Puhm with the Continuum Ensemble in Distillation: The Water Project, an interdisciplinary project featuring video installations by Ramona Ramlochand. A longtime member of the Vancouver New Music Ensemble, he has performed in diverse programs such as The Wanderer: Chamber Music of Africa and two critically acclaimed six-hour retrospectives of 20th-century music, entitled Countdown: The Odd Decades and Countdown: The Even Decades—Distance and Enchantment. In March of 2002 he coached and performed in Modern Baroque Opera's production of Peter Hannan's controversial neo-baroque opera 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade.

Wendy Hatala Foley

Wendy Hatala Foley has been enchanting Canadian audiences with her “magnificent voice" (Paula Citron, 96.3FM) and engaging performances. Of her recent appearance as Katisha in Toronto Operetta Theatre's The Mikado, Colin Eatock of the Globe and Mail wrote: "Wendy Hatala Foley, as Katisha, burst on stage like a mad woman escaped from an Italian opera: Her powerful voice and stage presence energized every scene she appeared in." Other operatic appearances include the Mother/Witch in Opera Hamilton's School Tour of Hansel and Gretel, Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro with Vancouver Opera, and the role of Trish in Leslie Uyeda's Game Misconduct for Festival Vancouver. Richard Todd in the Ottawa Citizen wrote of her 2007 Duruflé Requiem with the Ottawa Choral Society: "Foley rendered a lovely account of the Pie Jesu, now serene, now urgent, always powerful and expressive." In addition to a 2007 recording and tour of the Vivaldi Stabat Mater with The Vancouver Island Symphony, Ms. Foley's recent oratorio credits include Verdi's Requiem with Vancouver Bach Choir and UBC Choir and Symphony, Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle with The Orpheus Choir and Chorus Niagara, Brahms' Alto Rhapsody and Raminsh's Symphony of Psalms with The Amadeus Choir, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with Chorus London, Mozart's Requiem with The Oakville Symphony, and Handel's Messiah with The Newfoundland Symphony.

Ms. Foley has also appeared as a soloist with The Elmer Iseler Singers, Toronto Sinfonietta, Choralis Camerata, Vancouver Bach Choir, The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, The Vancouver Cantata Singers, The Vancouver Chamber Orchestra, The Vancouver New Music Ensemble, The Vancouver Island Symphony, The UBC Symphony, The Abbottsford Symphony, The Chilliwack Symphony, The Handel Society, at the Canadian Opera Showcase for the Opera America Conference, The U.B.C. Concert Series and the Out to Lunch Concert Series at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Last season was a busy one for Ms. Foley, with engagements as the Third Lady in Mozart's Magic Flute with Opera Hamilton, Giunia in Mercadante's La Vestale with Opera in Concert, the Fairy Queen in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe with Toronto Operetta Theatre, Handel's Messiah with Chorus London, a concert of duets and arias with the Etobicoke Philharmonic Orchestra and finally The Mother and The Witch in Opera Hamilton's Hansel and Gretel. This season brings performances of The Messiah with Orchestre Symphonique de Longueuil in Quebec, and Choralis Camerata in Niagara-on-the-lake, St. Catharines and Fonthill. She will also be covering the role of Death in Le Rossignol for the Canadian Opera Company.