Fuller comes home to cap SSO season with tribute to the Prairies
Maria Fuller has always been a prairie girl at heart. No matter where her career has taken her, conductor Maria Fuller always comes home to Saskatchewan.
Fuller is a rising star on the classical music scene for conducting. (The Walleye Magazine)
This rising star of the Canadian classical music scene was born on a 2000-acre grain farm near Earl Grey and finds her grounding in returning to the wide-open spaces of this province.
“The great Saskatchewan prairie has always been my hearts motivation for writing and performing music.”
“The great Saskatchewan prairie has always been my hearts motivation for writing and performing music,” says Fuller. “It means a lot to be asked to conduct close to home.”
It’s been a busy year for Fuller, despite the pandemic. This fall she represented North America at the La Maestra International Conducting Competition for Female Conductors in Paris – one of only 12 conductors chosen worldwide. Along with other guest conducting roles, she’s the resident conductor of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra.
Fuller will be the guide for the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra on its final adventure of the season. SSO Trip to the Country Saturday May 15th will feature Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, made famous by Disney’s Fantasia. The performance will also mark guest violinist Veronique Mathieu’s return to performance with a full orchestra with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending. The piece was inspired by Williams’ poem of the same name.
“This is really soothing work. It triggers beautiful images in the imagination reminding me of the green landscape and the mountains,” says Mathieu. “It inspires me. It will be amazing to be back making that big sound again.”
The final program of the 2020/21 season was designed to be a celebration of the prairie landscape and Fuller wouldn’t have it any other way.
“No matter what happens in our lives, the sun continues to rise, and our lands continue to support and sustain us,” she says. “Other composers have felt similarly. The connection that we as people feel to the land, our homeland which for us, as Saskatchewanians is the prairies. It’s very strong. This concert captures those thoughts so well. I am honoured to be a part of it.”
