18 - Friday, May 21, 1999 — North Shore News She shoots. She scores! Hockey opera composer Leslie Uyeda aims for emotional heart Ben D'Andrea Contributing Writer AN east side bagel shop seems an unlikely place to plot a new opera. But it makes an odd sort of sense that it’s one of the spots where composer Leslie Uyeda and librettist Tom Cone have met to hash out some ideas for their opera about the lives of a group of hockey fans. Where else but the neutral territory of a bagel shop can hockey and opera meet on equal terms? “Music-making with singers is really what 1 do,” Uyeda says, Who is perhaps best know as Vancouver Opera’s chorus director, a position she has held for the last seven vears. But that’s only one facet of her career. In 1992, she started conducting workshops of The Architect, the opera by composer David MacIntyre and librettist Cone produced by Vancouver Opera, and she has since conducted the mainstage productions of The Pirates of. Pensance and La Bobéme. Then of course there’s her recent leap into the heady realm of composing the hockey opera called Game Misconduct. At the beginning, the new opera didn’t have a subject, just two general instructions from Glynis Leyshon, the artis- tic director of the Vancouver Playhouse. Leyshon was so impressed after hearing two of Uveda’s song cycles that she brought Uyeda and Cone together to write a stage work. Her instructions were that the opera should take place in the BC Tel Theatre of UBC’s Chan Centre and that it should be “an entertainment.” Soon aficr, the informal bagel shop “blabbing” sessions between composer and librettist got started. “Gradually, we * began to flesh out some ideas,” Uyeda says. “We talked about the psychology or the emotional goal of what we might want to say, without having come up with a topic.” Two themes eventually emerged: identity and longing. But the opera’s subject was finally suggested by Cone’s daughter, Ruby, after she came home from watching the Canadian women’s hockey team play. Why not write about hockey? The next morning, Cone tried the idea on Uyeda. It turned out to be an easy sell: Uyeda, who grew up in Montreal cheering on the Canadiens, is in her own words a rabid hockey fan. The subject of hockey is an obvious choice-for Uyeda in yet another way. The background to a Verdi opera necds to be explained, but hockey is familiar to Canadian audiences. “A lot of Canadians continue to love hockey but there are a lot of issues around hockey now,” she says, adding thar Canadian teams find it increasingly difficult to compete in the American-dominated marketplace. Game Misconduct taps into a common understanding of hockey’s great past and a ~ concern for its future. But Game Misconduct isn’t about the Canucks or sopra- _ fos on skates. The opera’s cight singers are hockey fans attending a game, which the audience “sces” through the fans’ cyes. What the audience hears, Uyeda explains, are anings that are going on in the hearts and minds of these fans. A ten-minute excerpt from Game Misconduct was per- formed as part of the recent showcase of contemporary Canadian opera presented by Vancouver New Music to coin- LESLIE Uyeda hopes to have Game Misconduct ready for next summer. cide with the 29th annual Opera America convention. In that excerpt, the character Larry sings the aria that marks the opera's emotional apex. Not surprisingly, Larry com- ments on the loss of the game as he knew it. As a composer, Uyeda says that ber goal is to “get the emotional message across,” and she doesn’t start writing the music until the words spark her imagination. That means working very closely with Cone to develop the libretto, *] think a Jot about text and don’t write for a long time, and then when ['m ready to write, | write quickly.” Plans are for the entire opera to be completed in time for Festival Vancouver in the summer of 2000. “We're very optimistic that we'll be able to do it.” The recent abundance of opera in Vancouver lett audi- ences with some tough decisions to make. Probably for the first time ever, there was more opera in this city than your average aficionado, limited either by time or budget, could absorb. Over the course of a few weeks there was Vancouver Opera’s stunning production of Barték’s Bluebeard 's Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Modern Baroque Opera's Arcifanfano, King of Foals, and Vancouver New Music’s Ebsewhereless with music by Vancouver composer Rodney Sharman and libretto by filmmaker Atom Egoyan. It was exhilarating while it lasted, but what’s next? Long after all the delegates of the Opera America convention have checked out of their hotel rooms and opera production crews have dismantled the sets, composers like Uyeda toil away in that proverbial obscurity (only temporarily, onc hopes) to create a viable future for Canadian opera. “You can’t expect a great Canadian opera to come along if we don’t do Canadian opera day in and day out.” Black broadcasts from the Centennial Layne Christensen News Reporter layne@nsnews.com the city: Vancouver is less “slick urban,” he says. “People here are a little wingier.” And that’s good for Basie Black. It feeds the show’s eclectic blend of inter- ARTHUR Black entertains CBC Radio audiences weekly on Basic Black. BROADCASTING before a stu- dio audience has its challenges. “Things happen,” says Arthur Black, host of the popular Saturday morning show Basic Black on CBC Radio One. “We had a show in Toronto once where the piano went flat. Peter Tonje was play- ing live piano and boing! ... the piano inex- plicably went.” While a technician was called in for emergency assistance, Black chatted with his audience. Spontaneity just adds to the fim, says Black, who will broadcast his show from Centennial Theatre this evening at 7:30 p.m. The program will air Saturday, June Black, who began his radio career as a livestock reporter in Toronto, has been a Saltspring Island resident since relocating his show to Vancouver from Toronto four years ago. CBC brass gave him some grief about pulling up stakes, says the personable broadcaster. His decision to move west was motivated by lifestyle. His observations of views, comic sketches commentary and music. Guests like former tabloid journalist Harold Fiske and “scam and fraud” histori- an Andreas Schroeder are regulars. So are “Humliners” Shelagh Rogers and Danny Marks. They'll ail be joining Black at the Centennial this evening. The Humiline, says Black, is “ferociously popular.” Listeners are encouraged to phone in and hum a tune, which the Humliners attempt to identify. The idea was patterned after a call-in service offered by a library in Birmingham, England, che subject of a Basic Black interview more than a decade ago. Rogers is an ace at clas- sical music, however popularized — “Those music box cunes, Sheila hates ’em. We turn them over to her,” says Black, who turns 56 in August. Marks can nail any tune penned from °50s to present. When they're stumped, listeners provide the best resource. Tickets for tonight’s broadcast are $10 at the theatre box office, 984-4484. Mehrjui on view From Page VW West of Tran’s three great tihimiikers -= the other nwo being Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makbmalbar. Thanks to 2 travelling exhi- biden of films he is now start- ing to get the recognition he deserves. Flat Comments Amos Vogel says Melijui is “one of the great humanist directors of world cinema: a neorealist poet with a power- ful sense of the infinite mys- tery of the image.” See for yourself at the Pacific Cinematheque’s screenings starting Sunday, May 23 at 7:30 p.m. and Monday, May 24 ar 9:35 p.m. with his latest film The Pear Tree (1998). Described as a Proustian autobiographical meditation it is a Vancouver premicre. Mehyjui's focus on the plight of women in contem- porary Iranian society is on view in coming weeks includ- ing the heartbreaking Lela (1997), Sara (1993) and Hamoon (1990). The latter was voted the greatest Iranian film ever made by a critic’s poll in Iran’s Filns Monthly. For details on all Pacific mnanineini Cinematheque screenings pick PhotoTim Matheson = up their monthly guide or phone 688-FILM. Videos ACTOR/ACTRESS Annette Benning, Robert Downey Jr. Christian Stater, Cameron Diaz ..Stanley Tucct, Oliver Platt ..Eddie Murphy, Kelly Preston 5. Last Night...... sees DON McKellar, Sandra Oh 6. Star Trek: Insurrection..........Star Trek Crew 7. Another Day in Paradise.......James Woods, Melanie Griffith © 8. You've Got Mail... .-7om Hanks, Meg Ryan &. Babe: Pig in the City............Animals.:.- 10. Stepmom Top Ten THIS WEEK'S PICKS: 1. In Dreams 2. Very Bad Things 3. The Impostors.. 4. Holy Man. Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts , WE HAVE A HUGE SELECTION # = OF CHILDREN'S MOVIES INCULDING BARNEY. POKEMON BBLUE'S CLUE'S AND TONS MOREI! rent 3 cartoons for 3 days for $2.50 rent 3 live action kids films for 3 days $5.00 with over 1700 kids videos you'll definately make your little ones happy!!! 119 W TH. ST. m9 Ng80-8809