.jpg)
One of Winnipeg’s busiest violinists is asking, ‘What nourishes you?’ with the music on her debut album.
Elation Pauls set out to answer that question back in 2020 when she was forced to confront a life without consistent music performance in the face of the public health lockdowns.
“I was really searching, really asking myself, ‘What am I doing as a violinist? Am I serving at all in this capacity?’ she said in an interview on Morning Light.
The answers came in the commissioning and performance of music from a wide variety of Canadian composers, each piece speaking to different meanings, understandings, and approaches to the things in our life that sustain us through the difficult moments as well as in day-to-day mundanity. Those pieces came together for Pauls’ debut solo album, appropriately called Sustenance.
“This idea came out of that really deep searching, what I personally could do to make a difference,” says Pauls.
Pauls inititally reached out to four composers – Kelly-Marie Murphy, Iman Habibi, Cris Derksen and Karen Sunabacka – to share the idea of sustenance with them in the face of musical starvation. While Sunabacka and Habibi already had projects in progress that fit with the theme, Pauls had no idea what Murphy or Derksen would contribute, but trusted that their vision would be a valuable part of the musical garden she was growing.
“I’ve never felt like, ‘Oh no, this isn’t going to work,’” Pauls says. “I just always had this faith that it would go forward in a really beautiful way and I’m totally happy with how it all came together and worked out.”
As Sustenance was being created and recorded, Pauls says that she herself experience a transformation, almost a metamorphosis that occurred as she and her music emerged from the heights of the pandemic. “Previously, I have really devoted a lot of my time and effort into just being in a supportive role,” she explains, noting her work in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and as artistic director of the Rosamunde Summer Music Academy and Festival. “I’ve really had to put myself out there in a completely new way with this project, and it’s taken a lot of courage, but it’s really helped me to grow.”
Pauls’ courage in taking the spotlight came from her collaborators, whose encouragement means the world to her. “You need those kind of cheerleaders in your life,” Pauls smiles. “I’m very good at being other people’s cheerleaders, but it’s very special to have people close to you who will say, ‘Yeah, absolutely, you should be doing this, just validating my work.”
“I think some people maybe seek out the spotlight and desire it more than I do, but when it’s the right reason to be there, then... yeah.”