{"id":130889,"date":"2020-12-11T06:12:49","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T03:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/an-online-messiah-rises-to-the-occasion\/"},"modified":"2020-12-11T06:12:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T03:12:49","slug":"an-online-messiah-rises-to-the-occasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/an-online-messiah-rises-to-the-occasion\/","title":{"rendered":"#An online Messiah rises to the occasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#An online Messiah rises to the occasion<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Near the end of Part I of George Frideric Handel\u2019s oratorio\u00a0Messiah<\/i>, a singer urges listeners to spread the good news<\/a> of Christ\u2019s birth. \u201cOh Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion,\u201d she sings, \u201cGet up into the high mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any production, much depends on accidents of timing and place. In the extraordinary version of the\u00a0Messiah<\/i>\u00a0that Toronto\u2019s Against The Grain Theatre will reveal this weekend in a free webcast, the soloist for Oh Thou That Tellest is Diyet van Lieshout, a member of Kluane First Nation in southwest Yukon. She was filmed at the edge of the Kluane Icefield, the world\u2019s largest non-polar ice field, a shelf of ice thousands of square kilometres in size. The high mountains are present, too, in the form of the Saint Elias range, home to Mount Logan, the highest mountain summit in Canada.<\/p>\n

Diyet doesn\u2019t quite sing the precise lyrics Handel set, because in translating them into Southern Tutchone with the help of her 91-year-old grandmother Lena Tulhas\u00e8n, she preferred to capture the gist of the song rather than its specifics. \u201cIt\u2019s more of a retelling,\u201d she said in a telephone interview this week. \u201cThe news is that the creator has made all this for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since \u201call this\u201d includes a lake of ice and the highest mountains, \u201cthere\u2019s this sense of awe and wonder and joy,\u201d Diyet said.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI wanted to keep that sense of joy and excitement. So the words have that feeling built into them, just of wonder and awe at being given such a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some gifts take more work. Diyet is a successful folk-pop singer with a degree from the University of Victoria in vocal music, but she hasn\u2019t sung classically in 20 years. She likened prepping for the Messiah to \u201crunning a marathon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Against the Grain\u2019s new production is pieced together from performances recorded in every part of the country. The title for the production is\u00a0Messiah\/Complex<\/i>, which is both neat wordplay and the simple truth. Diyet recorded her voice in a Whitehorse studio, over a recorded performance of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Then an associate shot a video of her at the edge of the ice field, lip-synching to the sound of her voice, which came from a smartphone tucked into her pocket.<\/p>\n

But the hardest work is mental and, if you will, spiritual. \u201cSome red flags came up as soon as I heard [that some people in Toronto wanted her to perform]\u00a0Messiah<\/i>,\u201d she said. \u201cMy own coming to terms with my history and my connection to a colonial past. And to religion, you know? My mom survived residential school. So it\u2019s still really close. And I\u2019m still trying to reconcile those feelings. So I don\u2019t know. I love the music, I really do. I wasn\u2019t sure it was going to be a proper fit for me.\u201d<\/p>\n