SL: Born in Lebanon, where you spent the first 14 years of your life before moving to Canada with your family. You graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor in Biomedical Engineering in the Spring of 1997, a few months later, you won First Prize at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition. Two career paths were opened to you: you chose music.
IB: It was not a tough decision. I just wanted to do music! The only thing I’d say could have been at the back of my mind was the stability. There is no job security for singers… My intuition has always been a beautiful guide for me throughout my life and I remember clearly the question that came up: do you want to be in your forties and say I wish I had? So I just said: Jump! Leap! What have you got to lose?
I was jumping into something so new, so different. Music has just been so far in every sense a passion. There was nothing attached to it: no agenda, no hopes,
