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The classically trained musician is an intriguing specimen. They hone their skills in a regimented world of scales, sheet music and often-stoic discipline, far removed from your average do-it-yourself music-maker. Vocal powerhouse Katie Stelmanis knows this dichotomy all too well, having experienced both the risers of choir practice and the dingy stages of indie-rock clubs. As a young soon-to-be university student, the Torontonian made a whirlwind transition. She declined her spot to study opera at McGill, turning her attention to something completely foreign to her music school senses — her post-riot grrl band, Galaxy.
“Switching from classical music, I feel like the only way I could have done it was to do it the most drastic way possible,” she says. “It was a totally DIY band, and we had no idea how to play the guitar, no idea how to write songs in a band and no idea how to sing any other way than classically. I pretty much learned how to do all the DIY rock stuff with Galaxy. That fuelled how I do my own songs.”
With her 2008 solo offering, Join Us, Stelmanis is taking yet another turn, focusing on MIDI-keyboard-driven tracks that highlight her unique, heavy vocal abilities and deep-seated interest in arranging highly orchestrated audio landscapes. She says her electronic dabbling is not just a new sound for her, but a new tool for achieving her overarching musical goals.
“My main instrument is the piano, so working with a computer makes me able to channel any instrument I want through the [keyboard],” she explains. “I wanted to be able to write music for an orchestra, and I’m able to do that without having the theory behind me.”
This musical direction has also allowed the chanteuse to recognize the close connection between electronic projects and her musical bread and butter, the baroque style. The regimented tempos, conservative dynamic contrasts and formulaic approach in the genres serve as common ground. Despite the rigid, occasionally robotic undertones, Stelmanis’s lyrics are fluid and open to interpretation, something she says is also a product of her musical upbringing.
“I listened to a lot of opera in high school, and I never really understood what they were saying, but I found the way they were singing made me able to respond to it in a certain way,” she recalls. “For me, writing songs, I didn’t even think about words for a long time, because that’s not what it was about. It was about being able to convey certain emotions and certain feelings specifically through the music.
“When I listen to music, even though I’m not going through an emotional heartbreak, I like to feel emotional,” she adds. “I like to listen to songs where people are grieving, or going to movies that make me cry, because I like the feeling of my emotions being all riled up. When I’m making music, that’s generally the way it goes.”
