LESLIE BRADLEY

 

 

Leslie Ann Bradley, formerly of Port Perry

Port Perry’s Leslie Ann Bradley is rapidly becoming a sought after soprano. In such a short career, so far she has sung her way all across Canada and Europe and has won numerous international awards.

“Sometimes I’m standing in awe of my career and amazed that I am getting paid for enjoying singing the music I love,” she marvelled.

Leslie graduated from Port Perry High School in 1996 and went on to the University of Toronto where she received her training in opera. Since then she has studied voice in the United States and Europe.

Her vocal talents have earned awards in Canada, the USA and France including the prestigious New England Metropolitan Opera Competition in Boston, Massachusetts.
Leslie has profound appreciation of her education here in Port Perry, particularly her music teacher at PPHS, Charles White.

“He is so dedicated to music. Although Charles’ interest is mainly jazz, in choral music he included classical music. Charles was a huge influence on my musical interests,” she said.

“I always seemed to be drawn to classical music. I suppose that was due to my grandmother.” Leslie’s grandmother is Betty Stone who is known locally for her talent as church organist and accompanist.

Leslie’s parents recognized her talents and encouraged her to take singing lessons with local music teacher Eleanor Bailey. That led to her involvement in the Scugog Choral Society and the Miller Lites, led by Dr. Tom Miller and his wife Catherine.

“I had such a happy time in my first real show when I sang in the Scugog Choral Society’s production of South Pacific. A wonderful experience,” she added.

As a student at Port Perry High School and for her first two years at university she worked part time at Brock’s Department Store. This helped to pay some of her costs for attending university. She has fond and vivid memories of sitting pricing shoes with Claudette Brock.

Leslie Ann Bradley

Recently Leslie was attending a master singing class in Chicago. Her teacher was Brian Zeger, a singing coach at the Julliard School of Music in New York and the prestigious Metropolitan Opera. He was impressed by her skills and commented that she must have come from a professional music family.

Leslie informed him that she had come from a farming background and that the closest to a professional musician was her grandmother who played the organ at church.
Zeger commented, “tell your grandmother I said ‘hello.’”

From Town Hall 1873 to the opera houses and concert halls of Chicago, Boston, New York, Montreal, Berlin and Paris is an amazing accomplishment of which she is truly proud. Although she acknowledges that travelling has its drawbacks.

“At one point last year I lived in 14 hotels in 22 days. That was difficult,” she said.

One of her dreams is to sing with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York.

Leslie is a great fan of American soprano Renee Flemming. “She is such an inspiration and has worked hard and for a long time to achieve fame. She is now recognized as being among the best in the world today. “Patience and hard work pays off,” says Leslie. “It certainly did for Renee,” she adds.
Getting into the music world is costly and demanding.

“You have to have patience and determination. You have to be at the top of your game. There are so many good sopranos in the music world. For every hundred singers, more than sixty of them are sopranos. This makes it extremely competitive,” she stated.

She is presently living in Montreal and uses that city as her base, although she is now in the process of moving to Toronto where the musical world has more to offer.

When asked if she has had time to develop any romantic interests, she responded with a glint in her eye. “All I will tell you is that with the difficulty of travelling as much as I do, this presents complications in trying to develop long term relationships, but I can assure you that my long distance phone bill is excessively high.”

Her operatic career so far has focussed on the Mozart heroines but she also loves the music of Strauss and is giving a Lieder Concert in January.

She has met Canada’s leading internationally recognized tenor Ben Hepner on several occasions, who she says is a warm hearted gentleman and is very generous with his time.
“He has given me a lot of good advice. He’s a great teacher.”

If you want to see Leslie, she will be performing in the Durham Region Concert series at the Oshawa Little Theatre on Russett Avenue on Saturday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m. She is singing with baritone Alexander Dobson.

Leslie explained that the first half of the program is mainly operatic while the second half is made up of familiar Broadway and musical excerpts. “It’s a fun evening of great music and drama,” she adds.

If you can’t catch this show, Leslie will be giving a solo concert at Walter Hall at the University of Toronto on January 12. This concert is a result of her winning the James and Charlotte Norcop Song Prize earlier this year.

Leslie concluded our chat with the comment, “I am so lucky to have come from a small town where there is so much support and encouragement from friends and family.”

By Paul Arculus
Focus on Scugog