Crossing Borders:
Traversía Latinoamericana
Paul O'Regan Hall, Halifax Central Library
5440 Spring Garden Road
Oct 31, 6:30pm, free
H alifax soprano Maureen Batt launches her fourth Crossing Borders recital series here at home before heading to South America on tour. On Thursday, October 31, Crossing Borders: Traversía Latinoamericana will be presented at the Halifax Central Library. Batt is joined by Canadian-Colombian tenor Fabián Arciniegas and New Zealand pianist Claire Harris.
This is the fourth Crossing Borders tour, but the first one to go outside of North America (Batt has shows across Colombia filling her November calendar). This year's concert features Canadian, English and Latin American composers, with a focus on Colombian composers. "Since it's inaugural tour, the goal of Crossing Borders has remained the same: To have the composers of today heard and appreciated," says Batt.
Batt was living in Toronto in 2014 when she found that many singers performed predominantly traditional opera music. Her focus: contemporary music. "I would sing a new piece that was just written and after it was performed, then it was filed away and wasn't performed again. It was such a waste to have these pieces left on the shelf so I decided to resurrect some older pieces and tour them in different cities to give them a new life," she says. "That was how and why Crossing Borders was formed, to give the pieces the long life they deserved and for audiences to be exposed to different composers."