Spring at Nebula Performances

nebulaperformances
May 15
4 min read

Updated: Jun 5

Chinese Art Song Workshop

Nebula Performances hosted our first Chinese Art Song Workshop on April 16th, with wonderful singers and collaborative pianists. Thank you to everyone who came to audit and support us—it was truly heartwarming to see a crowd so engaged with Chinese music and poetry. We’re proud to turn this workshop into a continuing series, which will be featured in our upcoming Nebula Summer MusicFest!

“I really enjoyed the Chinese Art song workshop on Wednesday!

It was delighted to hear the beauty of notes on the composers and Chinese poets.

Wenwen was amazing helping each singers with different techniques and harmonies…

Afterwards, You can hear the significant difference in their voice and dynamics between sadness, love and joy! All performers did a fantastic job, bravo”

“ I greatly enjoyed working on my first Chinese art song at Nebula Performances for their Chinese Art Song Workshop. Artistic Director Wenwen Du taught me about using emotion, historical context, harmony, and phrasing that I was previously not accustomed to. I hope Nebula does host more of these workshops in the Future."

The Masterclass Series: Jason Ho

Violinist Jason Ho—one of the most popular local performers and an Artist-in-Residence at Nebula—gave his first violin masterclass at Nebula Performances on April 19th.

We love seeing the younger generation of talented instrumentalists becoming part of the Nebula community and sharing their gifts on our stage.

We’re so excited that he’ll be joining us again for the Nebula Summer MusicFest—we can’t wait to share some beautiful chamber music with him.

Stay tuned for our July festival concerts! The faculty concert on July 2nd is going to be a stellar night you won’t want to miss.

Sing, Snack, Social

Join us for inspiring sessions designed to strengthen your vocal technique and collaborative skills at our upcoming Sing Snack Social on Friday April 25th at 3:00pm. Work closely with Nebula’s Artistic Director, Wenwen Du and Nebula’s Artists-in-Residence—Tamar Simon, and Geoffrey Schellenberg—as they guide you in refining your technique and enhancing your artistic expression. Cost for singers is just $35 and $50 for pianists. Auditing tickets are available for only $15!

Coming up in the community...

Vancouver Opera Presents Madama Butterfly

At Nebula Performances we take pride in our engagement with other musicians and supporting other artistic organizations, Vancouver Opera in this case.

On March 22nd, we had the honour of bringing the music director of Vancouver Opera, Maestro Jacques Lacombe onto our stage for a masterclass featuring French repertoire. We are thrilled that Maestro Lacombe will be joining Team Nebula once again, as a guest faculty member for the Nebula Summer MusicFest July 2nd-13th!

Maestro Lacombe invited our artistic director, Wenwen Du to the sitzprobe of Vancouver Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly, where she greatly enjoyed the experience, the stellar musicianship of the performers, and Maestro Lacombe’s precise and passionate interpretation of Puccini’s masterpiece. His conductor’s notes can be seen below!

Jacques Lacombe's Conductor Notes

As a conductor and a musician, I'm often asked questions like: "who is your favorite composer" or "what is your favorite opera". I can never give a simple and unique answer to those questions. I feel very lucky to have the privilege of conducting on a regular base so many masterpieces composed by so many different composers.

Having said that, I have to admit that Puccini is at the very top of my list of favorite composers. On a personal note, I feel that I owe him something in regards to my current position as Music Director of the Vancouver Opera. It is in fact with La Fanciulla del West by Puccini that I made my debut with the company in the fall of 2003, over twenty years ago. For me, this was the beginning of a very precious and stimulating collaboration with the company, which I now have the honor to serve as Music Director.

I could not have wished for a better way to start my relationship with Vancouver than by conducting Puccini. I think that Puccini is one of the best composers to put in music in a very personal and unique way, the complexity of human emotions and nature. Looking at the corpus of his works, we realize that this is particularly true of female characters in his operas: Mimi in La Bohème, Tosca, Butterfly, Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, Liù and Turandot, just to name a few, are incredibly well crafted characters that all sopranos enjoy singing. There is just so much you can do and give with those roles as performers. On that theme, one should not forget the extraordinary contribution of the librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. This unique team of librettists gave Puccini the perfect words to allow him to write some of the most popular operas in the entire repertoire: La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly, among others.

Puccini had a great sense for theater and drama, combined with an obvious and outstanding musical talent. We do know that Puccini was not always easy to work with and was quite demanding of his collaborators, but in my opinion, this is one of the best examples of what great artistic collaborations can produce.

From the pure musical aspect of Puccini's work, as mentioned above, for me his way of writing melodies and motives as well as the harmonies in which he surrounds his themes is always so perfectly and impressively in line with the emotions of the stories that he puts into music. In addition to that, there is no question that Puccini is one of the greatest masters of orchestration in the history of music. This is the reason, why, we as musicians, always find an immense pleasure in performing his music.

Hopefully, we'll be able to share that joy and passion for one of the greatest opera composers with you during these performances of Madama Butterfly!

- Jacques Lacombe, Conductor, Vancouver Opera Music Director

Nebula Performances in the community this spring!