World-renowned Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian sings with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval

World-renowned Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian sings with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval –

The Orchestre symphonique de Laval moves its musicians and instruments to the magnificent St-Rose-de-Lima Church – for an all Respighi concert next Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 8 p.m. Acoustic of the church will highlight the vivid work of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s Gli uccelli (The Birds), Il Tramonto (Sunset), Trittico Botticelliano (Botticelli Triptych) and Antique arie e danze (Ancient Airs and Dances: Suite no. 1). The concert Under The Sun of Italy – The Music of Respighi will be led by conductor Alain Trudel.

Not to be missed: the great Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian will unveil the dazzling colours of the setting sun in the symphonic poem Il Tramonto. Her impressive career led her to sing with the greatest opera houses (Metropolitan Opera in New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago) and the best orchestras in the world (New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Vienna, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal). Bayrakdarian is the winner of four consecutive Juno Awards for Best Classical Album (Vocal). She also has a degree in biomedical engineering, and she was the featured vocalist on the Grammy-award winning soundtrack of the blockbuster film The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers. 

Featured composer Ottorino Respighi created a new form of musical art in which Romanticism and Impressionism combine with the greatest and noblest of the Italian music tradition. If the works in the program are all from the same composer, each of them offers different sounds and all have their peculiarities. For example, the five short pieces that form the Suite Gli uccelli (The birds) pay tribute to composers of the Baroque era, that liked to emulate in music different manifestations of life (in this case, bird calls or types of bird noises). Trittico Botticelliano (Botticelli Triptych) are three symphonic poems that depict in music three of Botticelli’s most famous paintings. 

Four-time Juno-winning Armenian-Canadian soprano Bayrakdarian immigrated to Canada in her teens, and in the same year she graduated cum laude from the University of Toronto with a science degree in Biomedical Engineering, she was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions.

Bayrakdarian also brings her multihued voice, beauty, presence and style to the Grammy-award winning soundtrack of Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers, to the Canadian band Delerium as guest soloist on their 2007 Grammy-nominated dance remix “Angelicus,” and to her CD Mozart arie & duetti with fellow Canadians Russell Braun and Michael Schade. Bayrakdarian was also nominated for another Grammy for the BBC-produced short film Holocaust-A Musical Memorial Film from Auschwitz, and was the focus of the Gemini-nominated film “Long Journey Home” documenting her first visit to her ancestral homeland Armenia.