What: Back to Back: Richard Margison and Lauren Margison
When: Oct. 3, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Alix Goolden Hall
Admission: $50 adults, $40 seniors, $25 students at eventbrite.com (keyword Margison) or 250-419-4533
Lauren Margison took her first step into the family business in a hotel-room closet.
That’s where, at age eight or nine, she sang for hours with her new karaoke machine at the same time that her father, tenor Richard Margison, performed with the Metropolitan Opera.
“I would close myself in there, all day every day, until I decided I was ready to come out and perform,” said Lauren, now 22.
Richard said Lauren waited until they returned home to Toronto to show her progress, in a kitchen concert of pop hits.
“There was a lot of Celine Dion, things like that. She nailed all the high notes,” Richard said. “Actually, we were quite blown away. It was a phenomenal, emotional moment.”
Although their music careers have taken them in different directions, the father-daughter duo will sing together for a special concert Friday at Alix Goolden Hall. For Richard, who has roots in Victoria, there’s something different about sharing the stage with his daughter.
“I don’t think there’s anything that quite compares,” he said.
“We have a wonderful bond on stage, you can sort of feel that.”
Lauren describes her upbringing as atypical. She regularly took weeks off school to go on tour with her parents (mother Valerie Kuinka is a stage director and violist), maintaining regular contact with her private-school teachers through conference calls.
As a child, separating her father from the characters he played on stage could be difficult.
“Because of his voice type, he was always the romantic lead. Nine times out of 10, that meant getting murdered,” Lauren said.
“For certain shows like Tosca, my mom would have to take me out of the theatre because I was so upset.”
Lauren believes her musical education began in utero.
“My mom was playing in the orchestra of the opera in Toronto while I was in the womb, so perhaps I heard so much music before I was even born that it just kind of sunk in,” she said.
Lauren joined the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus at age seven and was quickly promoted to the principal chorus, usually reserved for singers at least five years older than her.
But while she continues to study and sing opera, Lauren has made a decision to pursue pop and jazz opportunities, as a way of forging her own path. She has performed at events like the TD Toronto Jazz Festival and shared stages with Gordon Lightfoot, Rufus Wainwright and more.
“I definitely did want to, in the beginning, almost validate myself by making somewhat of a name for myself outside of the world that would know who Richard Margison was,” she said.
Richard’s own upbringing was a musical one. His mother was a piano teacher and his father was an amateur singer with a strong baritone voice, who also played viola with the Victoria Symphony early on.
Richard said that as parents, he and Kuinka never pushed Lauren into a music career.
“The business can be brutal, it can be wonderful and it is a life journey. As long as somebody is happy doing what they’re doing that’s the main thing,” Richard said.
Friday’s concert will be the first time Richard and Lauren have shared a Victoria stage since 1998. That’s when Richard sang as Riccardo in Pacific Opera Victoria’s A Masked Ball, Kuinka directed the Verdi classic and Lauren made her operatic debut as Amelia’s daughter.
In this case, the concert will represent the breadth of their musical interests, ranging from opera to Broadway, folk, pop and jazz standards. Richard named among his favourite songs in the concert Send in the Clowns, while Lauren said she enjoys Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now.
As parents, Kuinka and Richard have offered plenty of lessons to Lauren. But Richard said he has learned some things from his daughter, too.
“Probably patience,” he said.
“And I love her attitude. That there’s nothing to worry about; it’s going to be great. She doesn’t seem to get rattled like some people who have been doing this much longer.”
Lauren described her mother as her best friend and confidante and her relationship with her father as closer to a brother-sister relationship.
“We really tease each other,” she said.
“And then the moment we get on stage, all of that falls away and we can be very open with each other and with the audience.”