Emily Hamper
article and photos by Ann Baggley
We're on her back patio, pulling out chairs and settling down to talk when from the sky high above there's an intense roar. Chat is impossible for a few moments. “The Snowbirds,” remarks vocal coach and accompanist Emily Hamper, gazing upwards. Likely, she is thinking about her young son and how much he adores these fliers. But quickly, we're back to business, drinking strong coffee and eating some extraordinarily healthy homemade oatcakes.
Emily is a native west-coaster, born in Vancouver into a musical family.
Her aunt is well known soprano Nancy Argenta, and her parents were prominent musicians in the arts community. They met at the Faculty of Music at UBC, her dad studying voice and piano and her mom the violin. The violin was the instrument that Emily began to play as a 4 years old. “I'm not really sure why we started violin first,” she muses, sipping on her coffee, “except for the same reason [my son] started violin first, is that you can get small violins, whereas you can't get small pianos!” A year later piano was started. It was simply “a given” that she'd learn this also.
Taught by her grandmother, a life long musician who went back to school to get her diploma in music, Emily found her grandmother to be “pretty influential”. She taught Emily that the piano was worthwhile.
“Her approach when teaching was very calm. When we would hear her play there was always a deep connection to the music. And you pick that up. She wasn't just playing for something to do. It meant a lot to her.”
At the age of 10, Emily began lessons in earnest. “It was a big step for me,” Emily recalls. “It was around this [time] that I would take a book of Bach and do sight reading for hours.” Around that time, their household grew. Emily's parents had divorced, and her mother's partner (a professional musician as well) moved in. Emily's long sessions of sight reading became a challenge, since practice space was at a premium. “Family Practise Hour”, as it was called, was a routine occurrence. Emily's own bedroom became the piano room.
Emily continued to play through high school, but considered studying science and psychology once she graduated. Only after taking a year off school and a job playing for ballet classes in downtown Vancouver (where she was making three times what her friends were making) that it occurred to Emily, “One can make a living doing this! You think I would have thought that growing up in a house full of musicians. It never occurred to me that that was worth investing in.”
Invest she did. She spent the next few years studying music at UBC under the late Robert Rogers, but ultimately felt that she didn't fit in here. “I was too young,” Emily admits. She had some big successes at this time — she won a Concerto Competition and subsequently made her solo debut playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Vancouver Philharmonic — but Emily still felt that she was always in the shadow of her parents. “If I were to advise anybody [in the same situation], I would say go away. Go where nobody knows you. Otherwise, after 10 years, you'll think you've only gotten as far as you [have] because everyone knows your parents.”
When a job came up at University of Toronto for an accompanist in the opera division, Emily jumped at it and on short notice was on the move. “This is when I found my stride.” she beams, “I always loved, musically, the sound of orchestra plus voices. I was very at home working on that rep. Singers liked working with me, I fit in well in the opera school structure I loved being a part of that team.” She chalks up the success of the program to W. James Craig and Stephen Ralls, whom she apprenticed under. “[Stephen] had such fine musicianship, fine pianist skills and a wonderful coach and so this was my influence in Toronto, and I was just soaking it all in,” Emily remembers.
Among Emily's musical influences these days, Mozart is king. “I'm still figuring him out,” Emily admits. “He's my go-to for sanity. If I need to warm up early in the morning and my brain won't get together, I yank out a Mozart sonata and that will do it. The structure [is] like looking at a crystal. There's something about it that organizes your brain. After you spend enough time with a composer his or her language becomes very familiar. Mozart's music is perfect. Except when he breaks some of the rules. The imperfection becomes the new perfection. It's seeing a flaw in the crystal, but it makes it more beautiful.”
Not satisfied with this assessment, Emily continues. “It's that within that structure, or deliberate deviance from it, he manages to constantly communicate emotional truth. There is something so inclusively and vulnerably human in all of it which communicates directly with the soul.
I think this is largely what makes his operas so beloved — his characters are so real and sympathetic, and how he sets the words is just, well ... truth.”
For more than 15 years Emily has been accompanying, coaching, teaching and performing across the globe. She is most sought after for her 'sensitivity and attention to detail' and these elements have garnered her the Best Collaborative Pianist Prize at the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. She has also been invited to join the faculty of the Institute for Young Dramatic Voices in 2014, to teach at a “beach-front vocal training program” (her words!) in San Diego, California.
Upcoming events include a recital here in Stratford on October 20 with INNERChamber along side her husband, baritone Phillip Addis. In December, a commission that has been written for Emily and Philip by
Erik Colin Ross will be performed at Music Toronto, and then subsequently at the Opera National de Paris's Amphitheatre in January. Emily laughs as she recounts this schedule to me, “Doing this with a kid is not for the faint of heart or brain!”
Managing a life full of so much travel, organization and planning can take it's toll on a person, let alone a family. “Transitions are difficult,” Emily acknowledges. “It's the separation of the family, and learning how to live together again.” Since their move to Stratford from Toronto in 2009, Emily and Phillip have found that “Life is easier here. [Home] is almost like a sanctuary. It's the best of what we had hoped to find in Stratford. It takes so much less time to get errands done ... what takes the most time is talking to everyone! Which is great! I love it!”
To relax and unwind, Emily bakes and cans, although “canning is not relaxing!” she chuckles. “You've got boiling water everywhere (and) it looks like someone's been murdered in your kitchen because you're skinning tomatoes! It's a big investment of time and energy, but looking at all those jars and knowing that we'll eat well, [that's the reward].”