CQ 2024: Project [T]: A Mixtape - Teiya Kasahara and David Eliakis

ChamberQUEER is thrilled to present Constellation, our 2024 Pride Month celebration of queer community, diversity, and excellence in chamber music! Featuring multiple live performances and workshops every day, ChamberQUEER 2024: Constellation runs Tuesday, June 11 through Sunday, June 16 at MITU580.

EVENT DETAILS

Project [T]: A Mixtape is the first artistic iteration of a new project from Canadian duo Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them), opera singer and theater creator, and David Eliakis (he/him), piano. The concert will be the premiere of Kasahara's 5-year autobiographical account of their professional career and personal life as they document their transition in real time. Kasahara was assigned female at birth and identifies as a trans(masculine) non-binary person.

Throughout the past two decades their voice has been classified as a high-voiced “treble” singer or soubrette, lyric coloratura soprano, and dramatic soprano, and with these categorizations they have endured the weight of stereotypical feminine gender expectations associated with these voice types and the roles they have been cast to play (ex. The Queen of the Night, Lucia di Lammermoor, Madama Butterfly, etc). Kasahara will reflect on their gender and musical journey thus far: the voice that has led them to this moment of transition in their life, the music that has shaped who they are, and to look ahead to what is to come. Repertoire for A Mixtape will include songs by Handel, Puccini, Purcell, Medtner, Mozart, Schubert and Verdi; American composers Barber, Blitzstein, Rorem, Copland, and Sondheim; and Canadian composers Ian Cusson and Leslie Uyeda. For more on Project [T], follow @projecttdoc or visit www.projecttdoc.com.

Nikkei Canadian settler Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/he) is a queer, trans(masculine) non-binary opera singer and interdisciplinary theater creator based in Tkarón:to* (colonially known as Toronto, Canada). Heralded as “an artist with extraordinary things to say” (The Globe and Mail), Teiya comes from a background of nearly 20 years of singing both traditional and contemporary operatic and concert roles. They explore the intersections of identity through their original works in The Queen In Me, Little Mis(s)gender, Project [T] and their iterative Butterfly Project. For more information follow @teiyakasahara or visit www.teiyakasahara.com.

As a sought-after voice coach, host, and lecturer, pianist David Eliakis continues to expand his musical offerings both on the concert stage and in the lecture hall. His performances have taken him to the stages of Brazil, Switzerland (World Economic Forum), England (as a finalist in the Wigmore Hall Song Competition), Northern Ireland, Germany, and across Canada as pianist and musical director for Against The Grain Theatre’s national tour of La Bohème. David studied with Warren Jones (Manhattan School of Music), as well as with Julius Rudel, Sir Martin Isepp, Dalton Baldwin, Graham Johnson, and Roger Vignoles. David shares his time between the Royal Conservatory of Music where he is on faculty as a Voice Coach and lecturer, as well as the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, and has also collaborated with Tapestry Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Opera In Reach, and Amplified Opera in numerous performances of Teiya Kasahara’s “The Queen In Me”, including their recent performances in Belfast and the National Arts Centre. He was also the host and curator of ATG’s monthly Opera Pub for five years consecutively to sold-out audiences.