Motueka soprano offers a ‘musical hug’

A Motueka-born soprano is looking forward to returning to the town that first fostered her love of music.

Carleen Ebbs is performing in Motueka and Golden Bay this month, alongside Polish-born pianist Gabriela Glapska, and she is hoping for plenty of local support for her performance, which she describes as a “musical hug” for the senses.

The songs will be familiar to many – Carleen says they have worked on making the event “accessible so that everyone feels invited”.

She is now based in Wellington but spent her formative years here, attending St Peter Chanel School.

Her family moved to the Hawkes Bay when she was 12, and she jokes that “obviously I was forced to go with them”.

“I’ve still got lots of great friends in Motueka, and I’m just so fond of the region.”

She says that it has always struck her as a place that “really nurtures and supports” artists.

Singing has forever been a part of her world, and she reckons it helps that she grew up in a “pretty noisy household”.

Her mother was a dance teacher, so classical music reverberated around the walls, and her father is an Irish folk singer, so “singing songs was a very normal thing to do”, she says.

She was a member of the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir at 15 and went on to study Performance Music at Victoria University.

Following this was a 15-year stint in London working with international opera companies including the Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, the Royal Opera, and the National Theatre London.

Pre-Covid, there were a lot of opportunities abroad, but she returned to New Zealand after the pandemic and, despite the smaller pool of prospects, “I actually really loved it”.

Wherever she performs, she adores the way that music “gets to the core of human expression”.

“Singing really celebrates the way that text is expressed and meaning is conveyed,” she says.

“I hope that if people haven’t come to a classical voice recital before, they take the opportunity to do it, [because] it is very accessible music.”

Carleen and Gabriela are performing as “For Song’s Sake” at the Chanel Arts Centre on Thursday, 13 March, at 7pm, and at the Mussel Inn on Sunday, 16 March, at 7.30pm. Tickets are available here.