Our featured artist today is Renee Fajardo, a Filipino mezzo-soprano based in Vancouver, Canada. Renee is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the University of Toronto’s Opera Performance program. She is the education manager at Gateway Theatre and an artistic producer for Sound the Alarm: Music Theatre.
From far away in Canada, Renee answered our interview questions and here is that conversation.
Could you share your story and your journey as an artist?I always did performing arts-related things as a kid because my parents found out my twin sister and I could sing pretty early on. I took violin lessons when I was 8 and then got into the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) as a violinist when I was 13. I guess in a lot of ways I started loving the arts then. As a Makiling student, I was doing music and watching shows all the time, and I spent a lot in CCP.
After PHSA, I decided I wanted to do classical singing. I was lucky enough to meet Camille and Pablo Molina, who showed me how much fun opera and performing could be. Because of them, I started doing professional opera gigs at 18, which gave me professional experience even before I realized how important it was.
Being in the Molina’s studio felt like being in a family and looking back at it now, I couldn’t have asked for a better space to have started as a young artist. As I was graduating with a voice degree from St. Scholasticas College in 2016, they supported me in auditioning for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, which was how I got to learn and live abroad.
Being in Guildhall and living in London was an experience of a lifetime; I was only there for three years but I learned quickly how rich and beautiful but also difficult life in this profession is. My family supported me through my studies, but to help with making ends meet, I applied for scholarships, kept applying for additional funding whenever I could, and worked as a bar cloakroom attendant, a theater usher, a singing teacher, and as a receptionist for a botox clinic.
Graduating from Guildhall in 2019, I knew I wanted to be able to continue living and working abroad, so I weighed my options. I have an aunt who lives in Toronto, and had met a Canadian singing teacher I wanted to work with, so I thought why not Canada? Canada was a little more generous with their immigration programs than the UK, so I applied for the Masters in Opera program at the University of Toronto and moved again. I’m happy to say that after five years, and a lot of immigration-induced anxiety, I am now a permanent resident.
I had been in Toronto for just five months when Covid hit, halting the Performing Arts industry. This created space for discussions about the challenges faced in the Arts, especially as livelihoods were threatened. The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 reignited social justice movements in North America, placing racism at the forefront.
Opera, being an elitist and Eurocentric art form, came under fire, and as one of the few non-white, immigrant singers in the Opera Masters program, I faced many questions and felt compelled to engage with the empowerment emerging from artists of color. While I still loved to sing, I became more aware of how systems of oppression impact artists of color, particularly Black and Indigenous artists. I realized that performing alone wouldn’t grant me access to decision-making spaces regarding equity and artist support, so I sought opportunities in producing and administration.
In 2021, I got funding to do an internship as a producer with Against the Grain theatre, a small independent opera company in Toronto, where I started to learn little by little how opera companies worked. I learned more about the strength that comes with leaders who care about people, are not afraid to ask questions, and also not afraid to admit when they don’t have answers.
After my internship, I applied for administrative positions in arts companies across Canada and landed a job at a theatre here in greater Vancouver, working in the Education and Venue rentals departments. I also started working as an Artistic Producer for a local independent music/theatre company, where I now primarily help organize national concert tours and review and implement company practices of care.
I now manage a full theatre education department, which serves over 180 students a year, I help produce national concert tours and build new shows, and I also sing and do shows as a performer. There are a lot of people who may say all of this means I’m not really an artist, but I think they are very lucky and privileged indeed, those who can just be performers and feel fulfilled creatively and financially.
How do you keep Philippine nationalism alive and share the Philippines’ rich heritage with Canadians and others?There is a vibrant community of Filipino theatre artists here in Vancouver and throughout Canada. Filipino artists write, produce, and perform such rich and diverse stories, so there is no shortage of opportunities to support Filipino works and share about who we are. In my own singing, I perform kundiman and Filipino songs whenever I can, and in my places of work I talk about home and my experience within the diaspora a lot.
I am also currently producing a digital presentation of the song cycle I commissioned called “Liham,” written by Riley Palanca who is based in Montreal, and composed by Juro Kim Feliz from Toronto.
“Liham” talks about experiences within the Filipino diaspora, and highlights a few of the hard realities brought by the political situation back home.
What career highlights have had the biggest impact on where you are now?First is commissioning Liham, my song cycle. It was the first time I got to really connect with other Filipino artists abroad, and the first time I felt I could tell my stories in a song project. As opera performers, we often do works that other people had made long ago, so getting to work with other artists to create something new and important to us felt empowering. It was also the first project that allowed me to understand how being organized and resourceful is important to give life to a new music. Artists work hard and need to get paid to create, so its important to learn how to get money and support and make sure one’s collaborators receive compensation that meets their dignity and integrity.
Second is singing Flosshilde in Edmonton Opera’s “Das Rheingold” last May. I never thought I would sing in anything by Wagner, and I had a really fun time being a Rheinmaiden. I also got to work with Peter Hinton, who is one of the preeminent theatre directors here in Canada, and he had such a rich vision and a lot of patience and kindness. He was firm but he always trusted the performers to explore and follow their instincts in storytelling.
Finally, becoming Education Manager at Gateway Theatre is my first foray into a grown-up leadership position in the arts. It’s teaching me skills not just in running youth programming but also in what it means to really prioritize caring for artists and the community that the theatre serves. It’s also teaching me that there has to be space for both clear boundaries and compassion in any leadership role, but more especially in the arts.
