A Conversation with Annabelle Chvostek (continued)

PM: Let me back up further, and ask what kind of a home and a family you grew up in, and what you were like in your early years, as a young girl, in school.

AC: Well, I mean, music was sort of the pastime, or hobby, or joy of my family. Everybody played. My mom had a huge repertoire of folk songs, a lot of Canadian folk songs, and British ones, and American ones as well. So she was constantly singing. There were always musical instruments around. My dad played mandolin and fiddle.

PM: Wow.

AC: They were professionals in the media as well. That was their professional life. My mom is a journalist. My dad was a television producer, retired now. But he still does photography.

PM: Wow.

AC: Yeah. But our idea of a good time was to have a bunch of people over and sit around and sing songs. So that was--

PM: What a cool family. [laughs]

AC: Yeah. And then, of course, they were really encouraging to my brother and I to pick up instruments--to take lessons, and take classical lessons. So I picked up the fiddle when I was quite young--well, the violin, I guess you would call it.

[laughter]

AC: Because I wanted to emulate my dad. And then I started taking lessons. And then my brother and I were both in the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus when we were very young, and that was a whole incredible experience of singing choral music, and as well, getting a chance to be in these huge productions at the Opera House in Toronto, and get to be inches away from these Grand Dames of opera, and hear their voices, and just sort of bask in that hugeness of sound that opera is.

PM: Wow.

AC: So that sort of infused me with a lot of incredible music. And also I got a love of being in front of people and the whole production--getting ready to go on, and the buzz of just being in front of people. So that started really early.

PM: What a unique preparation for singing in this kind of a trio as a grownup. That's amazing, to have in your background that level of ensemble singing as a child.

AC: Yes. I was singing the lower of the three parts in the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus from the age of 8 to 16. So I really developed a sense of finding the lower harmony in all kinds of music from opera to more contemporary material, and arrangements of songs. We always had a Christmas concert, for instance. That was definitely a firm foundation for me--that was really my life from my childhood. So I think that's what made it so natural for me to just jump into the lower register of the Wailin' Jennys. It was like, "This is easy. I know how to do this."

PM: Right.

AC: And it's fun, and it's different, because we get to arrange everybody's original songs, and it's a different genre. But still that foundation is there.

PM: Sure. I mean, like Coltrane said, "There's only twelve notes."

AC: Yeah.

PM: It all serves the other. Is your brother still playing? Is he a musician today?

AC: No, he's not. We'll still sing together sometimes when we have family gatherings. He's got a beautiful bass voice. And he was actually really good at the French horn. But no, he was also always fascinated by the internal workings of computers from a very young age. So he's sort of one of these like crazy geniuses with the computer, and was from a very young time. He's fully wrapped up in computer world, actually, which is interesting. He's a programmer.

PM: Wow.    continue

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