Though Jonelle Sills isn’t exactly new on the scene, the Toronto-based soprano has had quite the list of firsts this year. Most notably, she was named among the CBC’s top 30 Classical Musicians under 30 in August, the same month Vancouver Opera announced she’ll be one of six participants in their Young Artist Program—pandemic schmandemic.
In a year that has temporarily relegated opera performances in Canada to—wherein Jonelle sang Samuel Barber’s and narrated Courtney D. Ware’s text in by Carlos Simon—she describes the experience as “Everything I’ve ever wanted. with an orchestra is totally different than singing it with a piano, especially in a socially distanced context where the orchestra is even more spread out, and especially with Alexander Shelley as the conductor, who is super generous, super kind, and really supportive.”
