Music: {allcanada} Soprano living life on high note

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

{allcanada} Soprano living life on high note

To say that Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman has been through some life-changing experiences in the last couple of years is a major understatement.

For starters, she divorced her husband, who she had been married to for a decade, had a June 2009 brush with death that led to open heart surgery, performed at the Vancouver Olympics opening ceremony in February and studied to become a Bikram yoga teacher during a nine-week spring course in Las Vegas.

Brueggergosman said despite having lost 150 pounds and practising Bikram for the last four years she couldn't escape her undetected heart problems.

"There was no warning," said the 32-year-old Fredericton-born, Toronto-based singer in Toronto prior to her three November tour dates in Canada including Wednesday night at Roy Thomson Hall.

"I think the reason most people die of a dissected aorta is 'cause it's hard to detect and even more difficult to catch before you die of internal bleeding. Essentially, I had ignored my blood pressure."

Brueggergosman, who is touring in support of her latest album, Night and Dreams, was waiting for a table at a Toronto restaurant with ex Markus Brügger (with whom she remains good friends), when she felt pressure at the base of her neck and started feeling numb in her shoulders and extremities.

She went to emergency at St. Joseph's Health Care Centre that night after her legs went out at home and they sent her home the next day with blood pressure medication. After her own doctor sent her to Toronto General, they did an MRI and she was in surgery four hours later.

"They open your sternum, which is where I have this nifty scar, which is the same as my dad's, 'cause my dad had quadruple bypass surgery with a blot clot in his aorta," she says.

"I don't think it's cliche to say that you take stock because you do contemplate what's important, you do start to prioritize. I've never been afraid of dying so it didn't bother me that I may have died.

"I thought it would suck for the people who loved me but I believe this life is but a flash. I grew up in a Christian home. But I thought, 'Well, you know, there's a few more things that I'd like to do.' I certainly wasn't apathetic about living or dying, I certainly had a preference. But it's a funny thing. And I'm still figuring it out."

Unbelievably, Brueggergosman was co-hosting Canada AM less than two weeks following her surgery and managed to sing at her friend Julie's wedding on July 4.

"It was painful and it was a good way for me to know I wasn't ready but I got one song out," she said. "And my first concert was I think the 20th of August on P.E.I. And then I rented a house for two weeks and my whole family came. I had a photographer come that weekend 'cause I wanted to mark the moment and we have been travelling (together) for the greater part of the year.

"It's a very important thing. I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with that -- the ability to leave so quickly, the ability to transition with no residue. I don't think that's healthy."

She said she knew about a year before the event that she would be performing at the Olympics opening ceremony and nothing was going to stop her.

"I would have sang that from the coffin, are you kidding?" she said. "They said 2.5 billion people (were watching). That's a lot of people. Oh, my gosh. I almost threw up. I was standing backstage with my neighbour Jim and we were looking at each other and trying not to cry 'cause it was so gorgeous, when we were listening to K.D. (Lang), and I was on right after, and that's when I was like, 'I'm not going to throw up. Just deep breaths and start walking.' For me, once it starts, I just go with it. I just had the greatest time."