Don't Waste Your Breath
Mezzo-soprano Katie Bray wrote and performed 'Don't Waste Your Breath' in response to her conversation with Martin O'Brien
This is how she got there...
Winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World 2019, British mezzo-soprano KatieBray has become known for her magnetic stage presence and gleaming, expressive tone.
She sings regularly with Opera North, Welsh National Opera and Garsington Opera. She also recently performed in a staged cabaret of ‘songs banned by the Nazis’, Effigies of Wickedness, at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, in collaboration with English National Opera.
Equally at home on the concert platform, Katie Bray has performed in prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, and the Holywell Music Room.
The 2021 season will include her role debut as Isolier in Le Comte Ory (Rossini) for Garsington Opera. Other highlights include Judas Maccabaeus with RIAS Kammerchor, and concerts with the Dunedin Consort, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Bach Choir, The English Concert, and at the Oxford Lieder Festival. Further ahead, Katie will make her role debut as Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia for Potsdamer Winteroper.
Martin O’Brien is an artist, thinker, and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art in order to examine what it means to be born with a life shortening disease. His writing also reflects on the experience of illness and the ways in which other artists have addressed it. A book of writings about Martin, Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O'Brien was published in 2018 by the Live Art Development Agency. His performance work has been shown throughout the UK, Europe, US, and Canada. His writing has been published in books and journals on performance, art, and the medical humanities. Martin is currently lecturer in Performance at Queen Mary University of London.
we are experts in breathing
Your work is a tuning of the breath in a really amazing way - it reminds me of the story of the child who tried to hold his breath for his whole life out of fear of dying, and who hated singers because they used so much breath!
on breath, resonance and pain management
on tracing the lungs, mucus and celebration of breath
What does the gold leaf signify in your performance piece LAST(ING)?
coughing in opera
I play on the interruption of the cough in my work, but I wonder how coughing works within your work in the opera?