Introducing Lara St. John's

I discovered a violinist worth checking out, Lara St. John's. There are music clips on her web page that show an amazing sensibility. Like many other young, female virtuosos, St. John's struggles to define herself as a woman and a performer within the constraints of traditional interpretations of womanhood.



"Symphony on the wild side"

Times Colonist, Oct. 19th, 2006

Lara St. John's life sounds more like that of a jet-setting rock star than a serious classical musician. She dropped out of school at 13, toured the world playing concerts, went on a spiritual journey with gypsies in Russia at 16, scandalized her genre by posing "topless" on an album cover at 24 and when reached by cellphone, she's scaling cliffs in the Las Vegas desert for a photo shoot. "I'm pretty much always on the go. That's my life," says St. John, 34, one of the most sought-after concert violinists, who will perform with the Vancouver Island Symphony in Nanaimo this weekend.

Meditation on Thais

Jules Massenet (1842 - 1912) was the most prominent French composer of the late nineteenth century.
Thais, based upon the novel by Anatole France, combines passion and religion. Set in Coptic Egypt. The opera was groundbreaking in its departure from metric rhyme in the text.
The Meditation is the entracte between acts 2 and 3 represents the spiritual
awakening of Thais.
More people are familiar with the “Meditation” from Thais than with the opera itself. It is a shame, because the story is an engaging one. Simply told, the opera’s plot traces the life journeys together of two unlikely characters – Thais’s from a courtesan to a saint, and Athanaël’s from a pious monk to a love-obsessed lunatic. Along the way, the two meet with worldly temptations and spiritual quests set to Massenet’s supremely lyrical, often intoxicating, music.