Wheat City opera star publishes memoir

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This article was published 07/05/2020 (2181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lifelong musician and opera singer Leo Evason added “author” to his resume last month after publishing his memoir, “Brandon Boy,” on April 4. 

The 87-year-old vocalist told the Sun last month that this book covers the first big chunk of his life, from his upbringing in the Wheat City to performing with the Canadian Opera Company throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

Evason said he started working on this book approximately five years ago at the behest of former McClelland & Stewart senior editor Lily Poritz Miller, who helped him along with the publishing process. Despite never undertaking a writing project of this magnitude before, the singer found picking through the highlights from his early career and formative years surprisingly easy.

“My memory’s just like a movie … so as it came to me, I just wrote everything down,” he said. “They’re little episodes of what happened to me as a child and later on in life.”

Evason’s childhood features prominently in the first half of the book, since he views his time in Brandon as foundational to the career path he would eventually pursue later in life. 

Not only did he begin taking violin lessons at the age of 10, but he also started training his voice professionally at 18, being inspired by famous Hollywood singers like Nelson Eddy and Mario Lanza.

“I did quite a bit of paid violin concerts here in Brandon, where I was going to school, and I also did some singing concerts, too,” he said. “So everybody was encouraging me to go on.”

After graduating from Brandon College in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Evason moved to Toronto to pursue his dream of becoming a professional opera singer.

He eventually achieved this goal in 1964 by joining the Canadian Opera Company, making his debut as a soloist three years later in a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “The Troubadour.”

From there, Evason began booking larger and larger gigs, including solo performances in Montreal and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Unfortunately, his career came to a halt in 1973 when the singer was admitted to the hospital suffering from jaundice, an illness that caused him to leave the Canadian Opera Company for seven years. 

“I ended up losing my gallbladder and spleen, and then eventually I lost my whole stomach,” he said. “I lost 100 pounds, and that put me on the sidelines for a while.” 

Miraculously, Evason recovered from this medical setback and returned to the stage at the end of that decade, continuing to dazzle audiences with the depth and range of his voice.

Even though “Brandon Boy” cuts Evason’s story off in the early 1980s, the singer said there’s still plenty more material he could write about in a followup book.

This includes his performances in Ukraine that took place before (1990) and after (2001) the country’s split from the Soviet Union.

This second phase of Evason’s career is also when he gained a reputation for singing bass and tenor in the same concert, a feat that, he claims, hadn’t been accomplished up until that point.

And even though Evason is currently sequestered in his Thornhill, Ont., home, the 87-year-old singer still has the drive to perform publicly once the COVID-19 pandemic blows over.

“I can still sing with a big, beautiful sound, professionally. There’s not many people (my age) who can do that,” he said. “So I’m hoping to do a concert tour when all this stuff clears up and we can go out and sing again.”

Digital copies of “Brandon Boy” can be ordered through Amazon.ca.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com  

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