Reflecting on her time in the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio (2010-13), Braid describes it as, “an intense experience. We would do three shows at one time… [with] five teachers at one time. It’s a lot of hands, a lot of ideas. It was a truly fascinating thing to negotiate, trying to figure out who you are as a singer and as a performer. When you have so many people telling you these ideas… just truly being you is the most challenging, but most fulfilling, quest.” A recurring theme of our conversation was the idea of sounding “like me”. The strong link Braid has created between vocal identity and sense of self is clear. This comes across in her performances. We see and hear her telling the truth. She says, “it can take a lifetime and some people never achieve it… To truly sound like myself, I went away and just did that work.”
The work of which Braid speaks was earlier in her career, a reaction to the “mind game” of the industry, paired with vocal challenges and burnout. “When you’re a young artist starting out, you’re not getting all of the gigs,) in Arizona. She arranged to sing for legendary Violetta, Romanian soprano Ileana Cotrubaș, “only one Vitellia aria. Once. She told me to cancel everything I had in the calendar and move to Athens to study with Marina Krilovici. I did not cancel my contracts. I needed the money. One day, a few months later, I was walking to a coaching in London and the thought of Marina and Greece popped into my head. I emailed her. By the time I came out of the coaching, there was a response with about nine hundred exclamation points:
