Month: November 2014

Congrats Nicholas! Another Amabile Alumni making music his career!

Your tea will never taste the same after seeing former Amabile baritone Nicholas Borg play Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty #UofTPinafore. Nicholas has recently joined the Master’s program in Opera at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music studying with Wendy Nielsen. In addition to Sir Joseph Porter, he sings The Man with the Shoe Sample Kit in Postcard from Morocco and Sir William Campbell in Footsteps in Campbell House. He also appears in Brush Up Your Shakespeare.

Born in London, Ontario, Nicholas recently graduated with a Bachelor of Music Voice Performance from McGill University under the tutelage of Sanford Sylvan. There he was featured as Peter Quince in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Curio in Giulio Cesare in Egitto with Opera McGill. He previously appeared with Opera McGill in Die Zauberflöte, La bohème, Don Giovanni, and L’incoronazione di Poppea.

Nicholas has been involved in several summer opera training programs across Canada. Recent engagements include Il conte in Le nozze di Figaro with the Halifax Summer Opera Festival, and Masetto in Don Giovanni withNuova Vocal Arts. Other experience includes Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Coppélius in Les contes d’Hoffmann with the Halifax Summer Opera Festival, and Simone in Gianni Schicchi with Opera on the Avalon. Nicholas was also a member of the Canadian Operatic Arts Academy in 2012, performing in concert with Orchestra London.

A standing ovation goes out to former Amabile Youth Singer, Lisa Helps who just became the Mayor of Victoria!

As a student at St Mary’s Choir School, Lisa joined the JAS in 1990 and moved to the AYS just a year later. Her fellow students at CCH remember her as very active in sports as well as music.

The focus and dedication she learned as a member of the AYS for half a decade would pay dividends when it came to education: Her academic work, includes a completed master’s and unfinished PhD on a history of housing, homelessness and the governance of poverty in Victoria.

In 2011, after more than 12 years of community leadership that has created affordable housing, new businesses, community facilities and gardens in Victoria, Lisa Helps, then the Founding Executive Director of Community Micro Lending Society, won a seat on City Council.  Lisa describes her politics as ‘people centred,’ She adds that she’s proactive, collaborative and has a “21st century” style of leadership.

In Victoria’s recent municipal elections, Helps defeated Dean Fortin, Victoria’s two-term mayor, winning by just 89 votes.

Bravo, Lisa. Amabile is so very proud of you!

(Photos from Facebook)