En route to Sweden last December, pianist Sarah Hagen stopped in Copenhagen and called up her friend Soren Bebe for a meal and chat. The two had met a decade earlier while at the renowned Banff Centre in Alberta and she had admired his work as a jazz piano performer.
During breakfast, Hagen inquired, “Wouldn’t it be great to do something together to show how classical music and jazz are related?”
The idea sparked their imaginations and, from there, the pair started to build a program.
Bebe, who is often compared to Canada’s late great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, will be in Coquitlam next year to play with Hagen to showcase his improvisational skills.
He’s just one of five world-renowned musicians Hagen is introducing to Tri-City audiences this season.
For the fourth year in a row, she’ll be returning to the Evergreen Cultural Centre stage in Coquitlam with her popular Musical Mornings.
Speaking from Prince Edward Island last week, Hagen told The Tri-City News she’s overwhelmed at the success of her series, which offers guests a chance to have a sip of coffee and nibble on Cobs baked goods at a pre-concert reception, hear a 75-minute recital and mingle with the musicians afterward.
“The first year I had Musical Mornings in Coquitlam, I was happy. The second year, I was very happy. Now, I’m ecstatic,” she gushed, adding, “People are die-hard fans now. We have built a strong community of musical friends.”
David Mann, Evergreen’s performing arts manager, is also thrilled. “It is well worth taking a morning off so you can get to Evergreen on a Wednesday morning,” he said. “Our Musical Mornings series keeps growing in popularity and the quality of performers is consistently high.”
Launching it with Hagen on Oct. 7 is Dutch soprano Anne Grimm.
Hagen said she learned about the singer from Grimm’s husband Benjamin Butterfield, the Victoria-based tenor and UVic associate professor who performed on last year’s Musical Mornings circuit.
Butterfield had mentioned to Hagen that his wife also sang and “I thought, ‘Yeah, sure’ but he sent me a recording and I almost fell off my chair,” Hagen said with a laugh. “It was stunning.”
They have created a program that Hagen says is heavy on the English. “I know that language can be such a barrier for people so we have songs in English and French.”
The next slot in the series is taken by clarinetist Francois Houle, who, like Butterfield, is also no stranger to the Musical Mornings round in Coquitlam. Houle, a sessional lecturer at UBC’s School of Music who studied at McGill and Yale, performs with Hagen on Nov. 25. The two met while on a jury.
“I love his energy and the way he wants to welcome people to music and in such an intelligent way,” Hagen said.
She also adores Marcus Takizawa, the Juilliard-trained violist and assistant principal with the Vancouver Opera Orchestra; he is scheduled to perform with Hagen in Coquitlam on Feb. 3.
The two have played on Vancouver Island and in Vernon “and he’s my favourite person to go on the road with,” Hagen said. “We have common interests: great food and good scotch! We have a great friendship that we bring to the stage. He’s the coolest guy you’ll ever meet, then he picks up the viola and you just think, ‘Well, there’s another side to you.’”
Soren Bebe is next in the lineup, on March 9, while the Bergmann Piano Duo concludes the series on April 13. Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann became a piano duo while studying with Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover, and later with Jean-Eudes Vaillancourt at the Université de Montréal.
Hagen said rehearsing with them has been a ball of laughs. “One piano, six hands, 30 fingers. No problem, right?” she laughed. “It’s so funny because there’s so many elbows.”
But Hagen insists the program, which ends with a piece from Sergei Rachmaninoff, is no circus show. “There are definitely some moments of fun but it’s actually a very serious program and very thoughtful in the middle.”
• Tickets for Musical Mornings are $20/$15 per show or $75 for a subscription to all five concerts. Call the Evergreen Cultural Centre box office at 604-927-6555 or visit evergreenculturalcentre.ca.
jwarren@tricitynews.com
@jwarrenTC
