bio

Photo by Jeremy Minmagh

Fides Krucker specializes in contemporary vocal repertoire. After training at the Banff Centre in the mid-eighties she performed the Berio Folksongs extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East with such orchestras as the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, Il Maggio Musicale in Florence and the Opera de Lyon.

Krucker is known for her performances of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer’s works – among them Arcana for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC), Melusina in Hermes Trismegistos (performed inside Union Station), and Ariadne in Requiems for the Party Girl for which she received a Dora nomination. Part of her standard repertoire includes a staged Pierrot Lunaire which she has sung in Britain, Canada, Belgium, Holland and Israel. She has also premiered new operas by several dozen composers both at home and abroad and is particularly interested in bringing extended vocal techniques into the development of new work.

Fides has been recorded extensively by the CBC for the broadcast of new electroacoustic works and chamber works. Highlights of this aspect of her career include Jappements a la lune by Christopher Butterfield with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Massey Hall, solo works by electroacoustic composers Daniel Scheidt, Michael Maguire, Gavin Bryars, Wende Bartley and Susan Frykberg (picked up in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto) and chamber works by Schafer, Ravel, Shostakovich and Respighi.

Her interdisciplinary work has included work with dance theatre company Jumpstart!, hologram artist Mary Alton and writer/director Thom Sokoloski for the music drama Artaud’s Cane (for which she received a Dora nomination in composition).

Fides Krucker is a founding member of and producer for the interdisciplinary female collective, URGE, which was featured in a one hour television documentary on the CBC’s Adrienne Clarkson Presents for their piece She promised she’d bake a pie…. URGE’s creative process has been written about in Opus Magazine and Musicworks. Their fourth collectively created show, Trousseau/True Nature, was remounted at Factory Theatre in 2002 after premiering at Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo and the DuMaurier Theatre in Toronto in 2000. It was nominated for two Dora Awards. URGE was invited by Theatre Direct Canada to create a piece on young professional performers for and about grade 7 and 8 girls. And by the way miss… workshopped through the 2003/4 season and premiered November 25th, 2004, at Harbourfront. It won creation and performance awards and a cash prize for Theatre Direct in the 2005 Dora Ceremonies. Fides was lead director on this project.

Fides Krucker’s writing on voice/body work has been commissioned and published by the Canadian literary journal Descant and her teaching has been profiled in magazines such as Chatelaine. She has been a speaker at the Subtle Technologies conference at the University of Toronto and was featured on Peter Gzowski’s “Some of the best minds of our time.” She has been nominated for a K.M.Hunter in Music at the OAC.

In the spring of 2002 she produced, through her company Good Hair Day Productions, The girl with no door on her mouth. It featured a new piece created by Krucker from Ann Carson’s texts with music by Wende Bartley along with a restructured version of Rainer Wiens Down Here on Earth called Mercy Suite” and Gavin Bryars The White Lodge. This electroacoustic interdisciplinary piece ran for three weeks at Theatre Passe Muraille to sell-out audiences and won two Dora awards.

In the fall of 2003, along with pianist Sageev Oore, percussionist Rick Sacks and director Mark Christmann, presented a two week run of A little rain never hurt no one…. This visceral cabaret included music by Schoenberg, Waits, Cohen, Jobim and Prince and was named one of the top ten shows of 2002 by NOW Magazine. The music from the show was recorded in June 2003 for cd release and was nominated for a Dora award. NOW also named Krucker one of the top 10 theatre artists for 2002.

Fides was in Rome for seven and a half weeks in the fall of 2003 creating and performing in The Wings of Daedalus – an electroacoustic cyborg opera by composer Maurizio Squillante. It toured France at that time and a second time through Italy in the fall of 2005.

In January 2004 she wrote, directed and produced CP Salon – an intimate rhythm and blues piece about a man and love and his disability – with performers Kazumi Tsuruoka and Sageev Oore, choreographer Kathleen Rea and designer Laird Macdonald. CP Salon toured to Regina and Vancouver in May of 2006 along with a diverse abilities workshop taught by Fides. In 2008 it was invited to Whitehorse for the Pivot Festival where Fides has also sung as a solo performer. CP Salon toured three university campuses in Toronto this past season. It is now an NFB film directed by Lawrence Jackman and focusing on the history of Kazumi and Fides’ relationship and process.

In fall 2005 Fides premiered two new operas in Montreal. The electroacoustic opera L’archange (composer Louis Dufort, librettist Alexis Nouss) was directed by Pauline Vaillancourt for Chants Libres and A Chair in Love (composer John Metcalf, librettist Larry Tremblay) was directed by Keith Turnbull for Le chien qui chante and toured Wales and Ireland.

In January 2006, Fides’ Yours to Break premiered as part of Theatre Passe Muraille’s season. This interdisciplinary piece is about instinct, intimacy and love and uses the languages of pop music, boxing, movement and excerpts from Helen Humphreys’ novel Wild Dogs. It featured Danny Wild, Fides Krucker, Allen Cole, Rick Sacks and Rob Clutton with the creative assistance of Mark Christmann, Tristan Whiston, Kathleen Rea, Laird Macdonald and Stefano Pirandello.

Fides has been working over the past two years in Rome on the creation of arias for her character, Olympias, in Maurizio Squillante’s new opera “Alexander.” This work will tour in Italy during the spring of 2011. She has also commissioned a new opera to be premiered in Toronto in the fall of 2011. It is by librettist Tom Walmsley and composer Louis Dufort and called Julie sits waiting. It received its first public sing through in January 2009.

Fides trained the dancers of the Kaeja d’Dance company vocally for two years. They premiered Abattoir in the spring of 2008 in both Vancouver and Toronto. Fides created the vocal material that the dancers sang live and on tape (using extended through to bel canto techniques) and composed and recorded arias for the piece with composer Edgardo Moreno.

In 2010 Fides created a voice and movement driven work for the 3rd year graduating class at Humber College with Heidi Strauss and Alex Fallis. She also facilitated the work of choreographers Peggy Baker (for Vancouver performances at the Paraolympics) and Susan Lee (for her Masters programme at York University). In Whitehorse Fides is working over several years with the women of Ynclude – a diverse abilities collective of artists – to create a full length evening work based on vocal portraits and interactions. Her work includes recent collaborations with composer/writer/performer Nik Beeson for Doors Open Toronto and Word on the Street through Diaspora Dialogues. Together they create multilayered performances through which to view the complexities of relationship. They are currently working with Richard Sanger as “The Mermaid Collective” on a new hybrid piece, Lighea, for 2 male actors, female singer and tape.

As a teacher Krucker is in high demand for private and group voice classes in Toronto by singers, actors, dancers and non-performers. She teaches regularly at Humber College in the theatre department, for ISIS Canada’s 2nd year expressive arts therapy students and in Halifax for the dance company Verve Mwendo and for Catherine Frazee, founder of Ryerson’s Institute for Disability Studies and former Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Fides’ expertise in teaching groups has taken her frequently to Vancouver, Regina, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Zurich, Whitehorse and Rome. She has eight apprentices who are taking this work into their own teaching, healing and performance practices. She has taught several times at the European Graduate School in Switzerland and served for three years on the Toronto Arts Council Theatre Committee. Fides has just received a Chalmers’ Fellowship to write a book about her artistic practice, vocal innovation and pedagogy. She has two teenaged daughters.