Biography
Soprano Jane Leibel has earned praise for her "crystalline, strong soprano" (Opera Canada) "vibrant, sweet, fresh singing" (The Globe and Mail) and for her acting abilities: "It remained for Jane Leibel, as Diana, the outraged goddess, to steal the show with her finely tuned comic sense." (Opera Quarterly) Music critic of The New Yorker, Andrew Porter; "Jane Leibel, was the most polished singer". As winner of the Eckhardt-Gramatté Canadian National Competition for the performance of twentieth-century music, she performed a solo recital tour of Canada. Twice she has been a prizewinner in the Friedrich Schorr Competition and semi-finalist in the Belvedere International Competition in Vienna, Austria. She has performed operatic and concert roles with the Vancouver Opera, the Vancouver Symphony, Opera Pacific, the Regina Symphony, the Manitoba Opera, Opera Atelier, Opera in Concert, and The Vancouver Opera and Toledo Opera Young Artists Programs.
Collaborations have included work with award-winning theatre director Jillian Keiley; Robert Chafe; playwright; artist and poet Christopher Pratt and composers Clark Ross; Andrew Staniland; Jack Behrens; John Greer; and Clifford Crawley in the premiers and recordings of solo and chamber works for voice. Jane is committed to the commissioning, performance, and recording of new Canadian repertoire. She performed in the Magnetic North National Theatre Festival’s premiere production of Nightingale, a work she commissioned Jillian Keiley and Robert Chafe to write on the career of nineteenth-century opera singer Georgina Stirling. Her debut CD Songs and Sonnets was features the complete Schönberg Cabaret Songs, Rachmaninov’s Songs of Op. 38 and Canadian composer, Clifford Crawley’s Grey Island. Her Centaur Records label: Songs of the Bubble Ring: The Music of John Greer and Clifford Crawley (with the composer, John Greer, as pianist) and was prepared with both these Canadian composers. She has been featured in radio broadcasts in both the US and Canada, including nationally on CBC Two New Hours and locally on CBC MusiCraft.
Jane is a frequent recitalist in solo and chamber music repertoire. International performances include recitals with pianist Maureen Volk in Paris and at Bargemusic, New York, NY. She has performed recitals with MUN colleagues Christine Carter, clarinet; and Maureen Volk, piano at the Bösendorfer-Saal im Mozarthaus Vienna, Austria and at the Palffy Palace in Prague, Czech Republic.
A dedicated and inspiring teacher, Jane has adjudicated and delivered masterclasses across Canada. Her students have been accepted for graduate studies and opera performance programs throughout North America including The University of Toronto; Université de Montréal; New York University; The University of British Columbia; The Glen Gould Professional School, have performed with CO-SI Centre for Opera Study in Italy; Opera NUOVA; Contemporary Opera Lab; Opera Nuova, Opera on the Avalon; Canadian Operatic Arts Academy; St. Andrew’s Festival; Halifax Summer Workshop; and have careers as music educators across Newfoundland and Labrador, and throughout Canada.
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