_{Artist of the Week} 20 Qs for Maria Fuller

Favourite city that you’ve worked in?
Right now, Prague! It truly is as beautiful and fascinating as everyone says. I’m currently here on a production at the Národní Divaldo – the theatre where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni!

Favourite place?
In Canada, the city of Calgary holds a special place in my heart. I was first there at age nine marching in the Calgary Stampede parade and competing in the showband competition. I remember being excited about the zoo, the cowboys and the rodeo. All these years later, I am delighted that our opera company Ammolite Opera, which I am co-founding with Albertan tenor and stage director, Tayte Mitchell, is located there! This makes Calgary extra special!

What’s your favourite opera house?
Right now, the Teatr Wielki w Łodzi, in Poland. I have been there five times in the last year working as one of their resident conductors. They have kept me busy, including eight performances of Hansel and Gretel, two performances of Madama Butterfly, two weeks of Turandot stage rehearsals (as Keri-Lynn Wilson’s assistant), and assisting on Flying Dutchman, Romeo i Julia (ballet) and coaching L’elisir d’amore. Next month, I am music directing a premier ballet performance.

What’s your favourite thing about conducting an orchestra?
A painter does great work when having access to a variety of colours. As a pianist, I had one colour to paint with: the sound of piano. It was glorious and it fed me. There was so much I could create with that single timbre. It became my life passion to discover as many variations and shades of that colour as I could, and the more I found, the more addicted I became to the pleasure it gave me. When I became a conductor, I was given a pallet of endless colours to create with, and many people to do it with. My life as an artist opened up and suddenly the scope of what was possible in music-making shot sky-high. A limitless capacity for range of epicness, volume, variety, feeling, and a million other things was presented to me on a silver platter with a note saying that the biggest limitation would be my own ability to imagine great enough heights for this extraordinary instrument. As a musician, if my greatest passion and inescapable addiction is making music for the pleasure of those to listen, then to conduct is the greatest gift that could ever be given on earth.

What’s the strangest/funniest thing that has happened to you on stage?
I’m thinking of the time in 2009, Montreal, at the Salle Claude-Champagne auditorium, when I performed the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto in the finals of the Canadian Music Competition. Twenty seconds in every single light in the hall went out (and magically came back on 20 minutes later about 20 seconds before the end). It was so dark that I had to bring my head in super close to the keys to see the ends of the keyboard. The craziest part was that a stage hand came on, to hold a torch flashlight above my accompanist so that he could read the music, and talked in full voice on his walkie talkie the entire time. Afterwards, the adjudicators asked me if I wanted to perform it again with the lights on. I refused. Can you imagine playing it again, with the lights on, but worse? Somehow I managed to get 2nd place.

What is one surprising thing that you have learned in becoming a conductor?
That there is this wide ranging public idea that you’re important! For example in the airport – people always ask what you do for a living, right? For fun I switch through the gamut of pianist/composer/coach/conductor/arranger/trumpeter and without fail, whenever I say conductor their eyes light up and suddenly gravity leaves them and their arms fly into the air and they say: “Really?! Like this?!” (I think they’re trying to clarify that I’m not a train conductor). There is a bitter-sweet aspect to their attention, and my colleagues agree, because often it happens that some of these people whether they’re a server in a restaurant or someone in a security line, treated us before with quite the indifference – bordering on rudeness. To watch their demeanor entirely change merely because of my occupation is disheartening to me. And on the other side of things, those that work with conductors know the truth!

What’s your ancestry?
German from my Mom’s side (Schulz) and British from my Dad’s (Fuller).

Are there more musicians in your family? If yes, who and what do they play?
Yes! All five of us (Natalie, me, Alice, Abby, and Nolan) play piano and trumpet. Natalie and Abby and Alice continue to play trumpet in orchestras. Natalie is a full-time musician living in New York and working as a professor at SUNY Brockport (State University of New York), Rochester Institute of Technology and the Eastman Community Music School. She is also the executive director of the second largest hall in Rochester: Theatre at Innovative Square. Fun fact: her husband’s brother is the music director of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and both Natalie and her husband Karl play with them on occasion.

Where did you go to school?
I was homeschooled on my 2,000 acre farm in Saskatchewan, near Regina. Thanks Mom!!

What’s your favourite mind-calming practice?
Prayer. I have found that by specifically bringing to mind what I’m thankful for and what my blessings are, I am able to effectively poke a hole in the “balloon” of discontentedness when it settles in. I’ve observed in myself that often an uncalm/nervous mind is only the result of not being mindful of the actual state of my present situation. Through prayer, specifically by giving thanks and praise, my brain seems to clear and be able to return to an equilibrium where I suddenly remember the truth, which is that I am healthy, alive, blessed and able-bodied. From there, I remember that my family is well, that I am not being attacked or threatened, and the list goes on. The truth of our situation is rarely what our emotions/feelings in those low moments want to convince us of.

What’s your favourite coffee shop?
Cafés have become a home away from home for me. I travel a lot (over 14 months, I was on the road for 249 days last year), and I have discovered about myself that studying in cafés is a comfort in that there is a familiarity about it. The country, the city, the language… they are always changing. But the feeling of a café is often the same. My friends on Instagram see a story from me every morning of a latte from a new café. Right now my favourite cafe is La Bohème Café in Prague!

What’s the luckiest thing that has ever happened to you?
Seeing a Greek word that I had never heard or seen before appear in my vision during my sleep. When I looked up the meaning the next morning, I was hit by the fact that the word was a direct answer to a concern I had had the previous day. It felt truly like a divine intervention. The effect that seeing it had was to reassure me that everything was going alright despite the circumstances I was in. I don’t use the word “luck” very often, but I could consider this experience an exception as I have never had this happen before, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to make it happen again.

What’s the best thing about being an opera artist?
It’s the only time that you are happy when someone dies, because it signals the end of the day and you home. Kidding! One of the best things is that a large part of our lives is spent telling stories, being creative, laughing and sharing joy. It’s truly a privilege to consider this our work. Imagine… our “work” is such that an audience of people come to watch us work after their own work is finished. Unbelievable. What we’re doing is truly special and valuable. 

Are you the happiest in the country or in the city?
It feels like I was raised in the country but brought up in the city. Both have a lot of value to me. Currently, I am enjoying the variety of living everywhere and landing up on the farm in between. I suspect that if given the opportunity I would choose to live in the middle of nowhere… but close to an airport! 

What is the best advice you have ever been given?
“Don’t let others’ opinion of you become your reality.” The chances are that they have not invested in you or even brought you to mind enough for any of their judgements and opinions to deserve a landing spot on you. It can be tricky to decipher who to trust because in our work environment of constant critique and feedback, we are trained to be receptive to it, and it can become an addiction to receive because it can propel us closer to perfection. Not all opinions are sound, though. The amount of times that I have heard the opinion that I should “focus” myself on one aspect of music, and then that same person says in the next moment that they want me to play piano, and conduct, and then maybe write something is astounding. If only it was as easy as just to do what you’re told. If I had “focused,” as I was directed by many, there’s no way that I would have considered the invitation from Mo. Gibson to learn to conduct. I have learned that it is very, very important to understand and know yourself, for yourself. No one knows me as well as I know myself, and I have to be reasonable with that information, but I also must guard myself by it. I truly wish the same for everyone.

What is something most people don’t know about you?
Two things come to mind: I have a hunters safety license which enables me to hunt and own a gun.

Secondly, the most addicting thing for me right now is composing/arranging. I write in airports, on the airplane, in cafés, wherever I can. I am super excited about my newest carol, “Freue die Welt” (“Joy to the World”), which I finished last night! Can I share it with you?! It’s a MIDI recording and I’m singing all the voices (sorry in advance for that):

As for composition, I’m set to premier my own Messiah, The Return of the Messiah, in Calgary this December. It features text from the most played movements of Handel’s Messiah, is just over an hour, has two soloists and is written in a fusion style of Baroque and film score. Here’s a link to a MIDI demo (sorry again for the singing):

Do your on stage experiences also feed into your personal life?
I’ll answer this in terms of how stage time activates a unique focus in artists that can be difficult, or at best confusing, to turn off. Last November, I was waiting to walk into the pit to conduct Hansel and Gretel and was suddenly hit with a vision that I was about to walk into a boxing ring. “Here I am standing all alone in silence, yawning, a normal heart rate… and in seconds the light will go off indicating my entrance to the pit [the ring] where my brain functionality including speed, awareness and problem solving capabilities will go from 0-100 in about a second.” In that moment the podium became an intellectual, highly focused boxing ring with the thrill level of a gamer who games addictively. The stage relies on occupying the conductor’s complete present state of mind – nothing else cognitively can exist for three hours. As artists, we all go from being aware of self in silence and solitude to stepping on the other side of the curtain where we receive instantly an entirely new “library” of thoughts and behaviours. On that side of the curtain, our cognizance expands from self to the entire room. It’s like a gamer’s addiction with gaming: you exchange one reality for another and get entirely absorbed in accomplishing its demands. This feeds into my personal life because off the stage, I can struggle to return to the other library again, or even to distinguish between them. It is not so simple to turn down this ambition and focus in exchange for the inconsequential things that come with the non-artist library like cooking, scheduling, etc. I want to get better at this.

What is one very popular thing that you have no interest in?
Sadly, it is museums. I’d rather go on a walk, lift up a rock and study something in its actual environment, in living form, doing what it does. It’s a conundrum for me because museums are filled with exceptional artifacts, but in their exceptionality they somehow become common-place for me. However, if Liszt’s hair or Mozart’s violin is there, I quite enjoy it!

What does it mean to be brave with music?
I’ve discovered that bravery is subjective – what is brave for one person can be a normal way of existing for someone else. I have seen it to be true that often others will see bravery in you when you’re not being brave, and when you are making a massive effort to be brave it’s entirely missed. At times, being brave in music for me has been 1) not being afraid to cause goosebumps in your audience despite the possibility of sounding too aggressive or un-stylistic to those who “know how music should go.” 2) Making performance decisions again with the audience first in mind, at the expense of your colleagues thinking you’re strange or wild. 3) Proposing your idea to the room even when in the past nobody has understood it until they’ve seen the final product. Finally, being brave in music means 4) traveling the world with one suitcase, alone, for months, and leading rehearsals where you don’t understand the language, navigating bi-monthly changes in cultures/currencies/accomodations/transport systems/rehearsal locations/colleagues/bosses, while making sure you’re at your professional best, while people who you thought understood you tell you how lucky you are and that your life looks like a lavish vacation. Being brave in this profession can mean that you alone will understand the sacrifice, strength and bravery that it takes to do what you do. And that has to be enough. Perhaps the biggest bravery is to be at peace with the fact that we will often be misunderstood, misquoted, and misjudged. We must have grace. After all, sometimes we don’t even understand ourselves.

The music industry is tough, and filled with rejection. How do you cope? Does it get easier?
If I can manage to be a musician but keep music from being my sole identity while at the same time not being able to imagine myself without it, then I’m in a sweet spot to be vulnerable with it without that vulnerability destroying me. Often, I can’t consciously distinguish “tough” from normal in this industry, because my devotion to it blinds me. I think as musicians we keep saying “yes” despite the unkind times, because our greatest passions, ambitions and goals are so entwined in it all. I also don’t think we are consciously aware of how large or outrageous the sacrifices are that we make to keep at it because music in all its glory, power, (toughness and rejection) has become the only goal. Rejection loses meaning for me over time, because I’ve built a perspective which affords me to trust that there is life after it, and despite that, there is nothing else I’d rather do. I take comfort in the fact that rejection can’t harm my artistry, and if my identity is broader than music itself, it won’t hurt my feelings either.