Cellist and singer-songwriter Alyssa Wright adds “storyteller” to her resume, with her new one-woman (and musical friends) show “Music For The Changing Voice: my grandfather’s cello, and all the tiny pieces”, the evening of March 5 at Barrie’s Mady Centre for the Arts.

Produced as an artsLocal project by Talk Is Free Theatre, the show takes place on Sunday, March 5 at 7:00 pm, in the Park Place Theatre at The Mady Centre (1 Dunlop Street West, downtown Barrie). Tickets are $28 (including HST and fees), and are available through the TIFT box office (www.tift.ca or 705-792-1949) or the Mady Centre box office (www.barrie.ca/theatretickets, 705-739-4228, or in person at 1 Dunlop St. W., Barrie).

Music For the Changing Voice

“My grandfather’s cello was the first cello I heard or played. It now lies in several pieces, unplayable and unfixable. (My relationship with my grandfather didn’t turn out much better.)

But neither life nor art are about making everything perfect. They’re about taking the ‘imperfections’ you’ve been handed, and turning all those broken pieces into something whole and meaningful.”

Performing her original songs, music she was raised with, and even some tunes by the late Don Wright himself, Alyssa weaves together a tale about growing up in his musical shadow and under his silencing oppression — then eventually using the cello and other tools she’d inherited to find her own voice, heal from the past, and turn even the most shattered bits into art.

Filling out the soundscape are special musical guests Ray Dillard (NEXUS, Lion King) on marimba and percussion, and “one of the Canadian stage’s pre-eminent musical makers”, Leslie Arden,* on keyboard and lending her vocals.

Alyssa Wright

Alyssa is a Canadian cellist, singer, songwriter, composer, educator, writer and advocate. Combining the improvisatory soul of jazz with the technical facility of her classical training, she draws from a range of musical influences, including folk, pop, minimalism, serialism, pick-an-ism, klezmer, tango, barbershop, and the occasional operatic trill.

Since moving to Barrie in 2014, Alyssa has been involved in several productions with Talk Is Free, although it has always been from behind her cello (unless you count her most recent stint as the Wells Fargo Driver in this season’s “The Music Man”). Barrie audiences also heard both her strings and her voice last summer in Theatre By The Bay’s premiere of the musical “Faust”, composed by Leslie Arden (who is adding her talents to “Music For the Changing Voice”). Further afield, Alyssa created and performed the musical score and soundscape for Jeffrey Nisker’s play “Sarah’s Daughters”, which she toured throughout Canada, and for which she was nominated for the “Brickenden Awards for Theatrical Excellence in London”.

Non-theatrical career highlights include performing with Grammy Award-winning bassist Victor Wooten — who declared “She’s a virtuoso!” (a quote which shall appear everywhere possible, for the rest of Alyssa’s natural-born life, and perhaps even the unnatural) — and writing and performing with multi-award-winning acoustic blues singer-songwriter Eric Bibb. Her folk-roots duo, The Brights (with husband Don Bray) has toured extensively from coast to coast, including Hugh’s Room, The Carleton, Live From the Rock and Mariposa Folk Festival. As a soloist and ensemble performer, she has performed festivals and venues from Cape Breton to Vancouver Island, including Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, Molson Amphitheatre, Massey Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Stan Rogers Folk Festival, and the Banff Centre.

When not performing or writing, Alyssa produces a house concert series, teaches cello, voice, ensemble work and improvisation, and gives music and creativity workshops throughout Ontario. She is currently in the process of bringing the Katie Project to life: “giving a voice to the voiceless — using music to promote awareness of and healing from childhood sexual abuse.”

* An interesting and only-recently-discovered coincidence: Leslie’s parents both used to work with Don Wright, and at her mom’s first gig after moving to Toronto, he actually introduced her mom to her step-father!