CMC Presents : Canadian Irish Diasporas

Renowned Canadian Soprano Maeve Palmer presents an evening charting Irish diaspora communities in Canada in contrast with both contemporary and traditional music from Ireland. Part concert, part historical study, the concert highlights the role of diaspora communities in shaping the Canada we know today.

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Dora award-winning “triple-threat … coloratura” (Opera Canada) Maeve Palmer has performed with Tapestry Opera, New Music Concerts, Continuum Contemporary Music, Opera Atelier, Off-Centre Music, Chorus Niagara, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Orpheus Choir of Toronto, and on tour with the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition.

Maeve is the winner of the 2021 Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song (UofT) for singer showing the most promise. She is the second prizewinner of the 2017 Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, and was a finalist of the 2020 Vancouver Opera Competition (canceled due to COVID19).

Recent performances include Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale at the Banff Centre, Adina in Donizetti’s Elixir of Love, with Highlands Opera, and Genio in the North American premiere of Haydn’s L’Anima del Filosofo, or Orpheus and Eurydice. Other recent performances include Robot 1, and cover of [Helen] in Nicole Lizée’s award winning opera R.U.R. A Torrent of Light, with Tapestry Opera, and Jean MacDonald, and Daisy Fairchild in Dean Burry and Lorna MacDonald’s musical The Bells of Baddeck. In addition to her work in early and contemporary music, Maeve is an interpreter of many classic roles including Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro) with U of T Opera, Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos) with Highlands Opera Studio, Sandrina, and Serpetta (La Finta Giardiniera), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), and Greta Fiorentino (Street Scene). Oratorio performances include soprano soloist in Bach’s Matthäus Passion, Honegger’s King David, and Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia.

In concert, Maeve presented the Canadian premiere of Samuel Andreyev’s cantata Iridescent Notation, with New Music Concerts, and Luigi Nono’s La Fabbrica Illuminata, in Koerner Hall. Other contemporary performances include Mysteries of the Macabre (Ligeti). with the U of T Contemporary Music Ensemble, and the Canadian premiere of Dove’s Mansfield Park, as Mary Crawford with U of T Opera.

World premieres include R.U.R. A Torrent of Light by Nicole Lizée, Lizée’s Malfunctionlieder for soprano, piano, and degraded video, Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Four Seasons Ballad, and Three Songs of the Tang Dynasty, Robert Taylor’s “Opticks,” and Tyler Versluis’s Five poems, for soprano, celli, and harp.

Maeve’s voice is featured in the Hollywood film The Space Between Us, (2017) starring Asa Butterfield, Gary Oldman, and Britt Robertson, and in the TV series Aftermath, (2016).

Maeve holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice Pedagogy and Performance from U of T where she resided as a Junior Fellow at Massey College. She is an alumna of the Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Performance Residency Program at the Glenn Gould School, and the Sidgwick Scholar program with Orpheus Choir of Toronto (2015-18). Maeve studied with Jill Kelman, Mary Morrison, O.C., and Professor Lorna MacDonald, the Lois Marshall Chair in Voice at the University of TOronto.

Upcoming performances include Adele in a concert hits production of Die Fledermaus with the Stratford Symphony Orchestra on New Year's Day, soprano soloist in Bach’s Mass in B Minor with Chorus Niagara, and Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale by Ruders, arr Schlossberg, at the Banff Centre, summer 2025.

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