MCO, OPERA STAR CARNEGIE HALL-BOUND
Morley Walker

Winnipeg Free Press
Aug 25 2008
Canada

The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra has found the way to Carnegie Hall —
and it wasn’t just by practising hard.

The Winnipeg-based classical chamber group will perform with
Toronto-based soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian for a six-concert tour of
the North American East and West Coasts in October.

MCO general manager Vicki Young said Monday that Bayrakdarian’s
agent made the request after an arrangement with a European orchestra
fell through.

"She and her husband came to see us when we played in Toronto this
summer," Young said. "This will provide excellent visibility for us."

The tour, over two legs, will land in San Francisco, Orange County,
Calif., and Vancouver Oct. 5-7 and Toronto, Boston and New York
Oct. 17-20.

The New York date is slated for Zankel Hall, a secondary performance
space of Manhattan’s fabled Carnegie Hall.

An Armenian born in Lebanon in 1974, Bayrakdarian emigrated to
Canada as a teenager and has become one of the country’s hottest
opera singers, with four Juno awards to her credit.

Her vocals were featured in the Hollywood movie hit The Lord of the
Rings: The Two Towers and in Toronto director Atom Egoyan’s movie
about the Armenian massacre, Ararat.

She is slated to make her Winnipeg debut with the MCO in March 2009.

Young says the Bayrakdarian people are picking up the tour costs
for all 19 MCO musicians, string players who include core members,
alumni and regular freelancers.

Most of the 22 regular MCO musicians are Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra
members, four of whom will be going on the tour.

"The WSO has been very co-operative," Young said.

The concerts will be conducted by Washington-based Anne Manson, who
was also on the podium for three MCO shows in Ottawa and Toronto in
late June.

Manson will conduct three of the MCO’s nine Winnipeg concerts this
season, including the Sept. 17 opener.

The 36-year-old MCO has toured on its own several times in Canada
and once to Italy.

The group has been without a full-time music director since Roy
Goodman resigned in 2004.