Getting a head start in your chosen career is often as simple as being in the right place when the phone rings. Take conductor Lydia Adams, for example. She was a student at the Royal College of Music in London, England, and was scooting through the lobby one evening when the pay phone rang. The commissionaire answered the phone then asked: "Does anybody here play the piano." "I was the only one there," said Adams. "So I said, `Yes, I do.' "He said, `Somebody wants you on the phone.'" The call was from a light opera group whose pianist was sick and who had a performance that night of The Merry Widow. Adams stepped in —"I didn't know it at all" — but performed so well that she continued to play with the group until she left England in 1981. Nowadays, Adams is the respected conductor of two of Toronto's leading choirs — the 20-voice, professional Elmer Iseler Singers and the 100-voice, amateur Amadeus Choir. She will lead the Elmer Iseler Singers in a performance of Handel's Messiah at St. James' Cathedral tomorrow. Soloists include soprano Kathryn Domoney, mezzo-soprano Wendy Hatala Foley, tenor Nils Brown and baritone Marc Boucher. The Amadeus Choir, meanwhile, is in action on Saturday, Dec. 20, with compositions from the winners of its 18th Christmas carol and Hanukkah song-writing competition, as well as other seasonal music. Adams, artistic director and conductor of the Elmer Iseler Singers since 1998, only conducted her first Messiah about five years ago, but has sung it many times and was familiar with it from childhood. "It was one of the scores that my mother, who was a piano teacher, very discreetly put on the piano when I was a kid. "I used to play through it and sing it over and over again, doing all the arias. I really loved it from the beginning." With 20 singers, their Messiah will lean toward a leaner approach. Not that Adams feels any one approach is necessarily the right one. "I believe that the music overrides everything," she says. "I love the authentic performances and I love the big choir performances and I love everything in the middle. It works if it creates an experience for the listeners." Adams is from Cape Breton and from a musical family; her father worked in a forge in Glace Bay and her mother was a nurse as well as piano teacher. She remembers getting up early when her father went to work and practicing conducting in front of a mirror at age 8. Adams studied piano and voice in London, playing in bars and restaurants as well as accompanying many singers and choirs. Her last engagement before returning to Canada in 1981 was singing with a choir at the wedding of Charles and Diana. Her association with the Elmer Iseler Singers dates from that time and she has led the Amadeus Choir for 17 years. Both choirs are extremely open-minded and sing every kind of music, she says, a touch of pride in her voice. Singers in the Amadeus Choir come from many different professions — they include doctors, nurses, police and social workers — some of which are extremely stressful and difficult. "But they are able immediately to leave all those troubles behind and come together with a unified voice to say something very magical. "You could use the choir as an example to society at large; if everyone could speak with a unified voice, you could create all kinds of wonderful things and perhaps bring a bit of peace into the world. "Making music is one of the most powerful forces I can imagine."
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