Mary Morrison
While Morrison was an RCMT Senior School student she returned from Toronto to sing in one of the Kelvin productions. In the cast with her was a young local tenor called Jon Vickers, whom she helped persuade to move east for further voice study and operatic training at the RCMT. She herself studied there 1945-8 with Myrtle Rose Guerrero (piano), Ernesto Vinci (voice), and Emmy Heim (Lieder) and was coached in 1948 by Greta Kraus and Weldon Kilburn.
Youthful Toronto debuts with orchestra (TSO 1947) and in both radio opera (CBC, 1948, as Eurydice in Gluck's Orfeo) and live opera (Royal Cons Opera School in 1949, and Opera Festival in 1950 as Mimi in La Bohème) established her quickly. Her success in these roles and the prestige, in 1951, of reaching the finals in the CBC's 'Singing Stars of Tomorrow' and 'Nos Futures Étoiles' presaged a long and busy Toronto-based career as a freelance artist. For the CBC Opera she was Micaëla in Carmen (1949), Liù in Turandot (1950), Mimi in La Bohème (1948, 1951), Lucie in Arthur Benjamin's A Tale of Two Cities (1954), the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro (radio and TV, 1956), and Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (1958). She also was heard as soloist on the CBC's 'Northern Electric Hour,' 'Startime,' 'Sunday Strings,' The Stage series, and 'Showtime.' For the COC she was Marguerite in Faust (1951), Pamina in The Magic Flute (1952), Marie in The Bartered Bride (1952), Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (1953), Felice in Wolf-Ferrari's School for Fathers (1954), the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro (1955, 1960), and Sara Riel in Louis Riel (1967).
During those same years Morrison was a soloist in innumerable symphony and oratorio performances, eg, the TSO-Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Bach Festival of 1950; the CBC's 80th (1962) and 85th Stravinsky birthday celebrations, conducted by the composer, with the Festival Singers (of which Morrison was an original member and, frequently, a featured soloist); and the TSO-Toronto Mendelssohn Choir performance of Britten's Cantata academica and Spring Symphony (1967). In Winnipeg, she sang the Verdi Requiem (1951) with the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; in New York, Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (1968) with the New York Philharmonic; and, in San Francisco, the Bach Magnificat (1973).
Morrison's particular contribution to Canadian musical life, however, has been her advocacy of 20th-century music. With notable poise and generosity of spirit and with manifest enjoyment of the material, she has contrived successfully to banish its bogies and reveal its not always readily apparent charms. Composers have been quick to appreciate this, and to devise new works for the clear, resilient soprano voice on which it all depends. The list below shows the premieres in which she has sung.
Much of her work in contemporary music has been as a member (with Robert Aitken and Marion Ross) of the Lyric Arts Trio, with which she has toured in North America, Scandinavia, Japan, Iceland, France, Poland, and England. Both as soloist and as trio member she has performed often with the SMCQ in Montreal and Ten Centuries Concerts and NMC in Toronto, usually in Canadian works or in Canadian premieres of US and European works (Berio, Birtwistle, Cage, Crumb, Peter Maxwell Davies, Globokar, Ligeti, Pousseur, Takemitsu, Xenakis, etc).
Among the milestones of her career Morrison cites the CLComp concert of 1953 (works of Papineau-Couture and Morawetz), the premiere of Somers' The Fool (1956), the Ten Centuries Concerts presentation of Schafer's Geography of Eros (1964), the Canadian Concert (1968) at the Sigmund Samuel Canadiana Building of the Royal Ontario Museum, and concerts with the Lyric Arts Trio at Expo 70 (Osaka 1970), the ISCM festival in Reykjavik and the Musée d'art moderne in Paris (both in 1973), the Warsaw Autumn in 1978, and the Soundstage Canada '81 performances at the Zagreb biennale and Pierrot Lunaire at the University of Toronto (both in 1981). She gave her final public performance at the University of Toronto in 1985.
Morrison married the composer Harry Freedman in 1951 and is the voice heard in his scores for the films The 700 Million, The Roots of Madness, and The Pyx, and for the ballets The Shining People of Leonard Cohen and Romeo and Juliet.
Morrison was a member 1972-5 and 1982-5 of the advisory arts panel of the Canada Council and artist-in-residence in 1976 at Simon Fraser University. She taught singing 1976-84 at the University of Western Ontario and 1976-9 at McMaster University, and in 1979 she began teaching in the five-week course at the Academy of Singing at the Banff CA. She also began teaching at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto in 1979. She has taught occasionally 1987-9 at the Atelier lyrique de l'Opéra de Montréal. She is in constant demand as a competition juror, festival adjudicator, and examiner. She has served on several boards including those of NMC, the Sir Ernest MacMillan Memorial Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Awards. She received the Canada Music Citation of the CLComp in 1968, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1983, and was awarded a medal of service from the City of Toronto in 1985. In recognition of her contribution to Canadian new music, Morrison was named an ambassador of the Canadian Music Centre in 2009.
Morrison's sister, the Winnipeg soprano Kathleen Morrison Brown (b Winnipeg 5 Sep 1928), has enjoyed a durable career in Winnipeg as a soloist in oratorio, operetta, and concert, and has been heard often on the CBC.
Premieres of Canadian works in which Morrison has sung
Anhalt La Tourangelle, 1975
Applebaum Algoma Central, 1976
Barnes Nocturne for flute and voice, 1963
Beckwith The Trumpets of Summer, 1964; Canada Dash - Canada Dot, 1967
Beecroft From Dreams of Brass, 1966; Rasas III, 1974
Buczynski How Some Things Look, 1967
Buxton, William Tribsanden, 1972
Callon, Gordon Three Songs, 1975
Cherney Mobile IV, 1972
Davies Musical Circus, 1981
Dolin Drakkar, 1973; The Golden Section, 1981
Fisher Behind the Ranges, 1976
Freedman Two Vocalises, 1954; Toccata, 1968; Fragments of Alice, 1976
Grimes, David Sotto Voce, 1975
Heard Three Comings, 1971
Naylor On Mrs. Arabella Hunt Singing, 1971
Ridout The Ascension, 1962; In Memoriam Anne Frank, 1965
Schafer Five Studies on Texts by Prudentius, 1963; Geography of Eros, 1964; The Enchantress, 1972; Arcana, 1974; La Testa d'Adriane, 1978
Somers The Fool, 1956; Twelve Miniatures, 1964; Louis Riel, 1967; Kuyas, 1967
Steven, Donald The Transient, 1975
Symonds Autumn Nocturne, 1960; Opera for Six Voices, 1961
Wilson Angels of the Earth, 1967
Morrison also has participated in premieres of works by Garant, Mather, Pannell, and Tremblay.
Discography
Beecroft From Dreams of Brass. Morse narrator, CBC Toronto SO and Chorus, Avison conductor. 1967. RCI 214/RCA CCS-1008/4-ACM 13
Garant Anerca (chamber ensemble of Ten Centuries Concerts, Cable conductor) - Mather Orphée (Mather piano, Wakefield percussion) - Somers Twelve Miniatures (Fiore fl, Buczynski spinet, Whitton violoncello). (1967). RCI 217/RCA CCS-1011/(Anerca) 4-ACM 2/(Somers) 10-ACM-7
Schafer La Testa d'Adriane. Macerollo accordion. 1978. Mel SMLP-4034
- Arcana. Ens of NMC, Hodkinson conductor. (1977). RCI 434/5-ACM 3
See also La Tourangelle and Discographies for Festival Singers; Lyric Arts Trio; SMCQ; Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
Author Kenneth Winters
'Canada Music Citation 1968,' Mcan, 17, Mar 1969
Morey, Carl. 'An interview with Mary Morrison,' PfAC, Fall 1972
Pitman, Walter. Music Makers: The Lives of Harry Freedman and Mary Morrison (Toronto 2006)
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