What: Musical Bouquets for Emily
When: Today, Friday, Aug. 28 and 29, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Emily Carr House
Tickets: $15 at Emily Carr House or 250-383-5843
What: Christ Church Cathedral summer recital series
When: Saturday, 4 p.m.
Where: Christ Church Cathedral
Admission: By donation
A life in the arts seemed pre-ordained for Müge Büyükçelen-Badel. Her parents were architects, her grandfather was an opera singer and her aunt, cousins and their husbands all danced in the ballet.
“We sort of colour the arts spectrum,” she said. “I did ballet a little bit when I was a kid, but I chose to play the violin. I just loved it as an instrument and the sound and I guess I wasn’t too physical.”
Born in Istanbul, Büyükçelen-Badel has lived in Victoria since 2001. She is a member of the Victoria Symphony, the Emily Carr String Quartet, the Galiano Ensemble and the Aventa Ensemble. This week, she has a string of concerts scheduled with both the quartet and as a featured performer at Christ Church Cathedral.
After picking up the violin as a child, it wasn’t long before it became a vocation for Büyükçelen-Badel.
“I started it when I was nine and, from then on, it was professional,” she said.
She attributed it to the education system in Turkey in the 1980s. If you played an instrument at all, you tended to study it seriously. For Büyükçelen-Badel, that meant attending the conservatory, where music took a front seat ahead of all other studies, from middle school through university.
Despite having a strong path laid out for her from a young age, she said she never had any doubts about pursuing life as a musician.
But staying in Turkey was not in the cards for her, one reason for that being the political climate.
“The political situation in Turkey is kind of scary nowadays, especially for our job,” she said. “Cultural things are kind of in danger.”
It was also about opportunity. Büyükçelen-Badel moved to Toulouse, France, to work as a teaching assistant with the Toulouse National Conservatory and played as a member with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra and the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra. When her teacher, Burkhard Godhoff, got a job as head of strings at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, she followed him. She planned to stay for a year.
“When this opportunity came up, he said, ‘I’m taking you with me to Canada.’ I didn’t even know where Victoria was, I had to look it up on a map,” she said.
“After I moved here I liked it a lot, so here I am.”
Meeting her husband, trumpet player Bryn Badel, played a role. The couple now has twin two-year-old girls.
Since settling here, it’s only appropriate that Büyükçelen-Badel fills her family in on West Coast culture. She gave them a book of Emily Carr’s work as a gift, soon after forming the Emily Carr String Quartet almost 10 years ago with fellow Victoria Symphony members Cory Balzer (violin), Mieka Michaux (viola) and Alasdair Money (cello).
This week, her parents, brother and sister-in-law are in town to watch her perform.
The Emily Carr String Quartet will perform two sets of concerts today and Friday and Aug. 28 and 29. The quartet has selected works for the “Musical Bouquets for Emily,” that are inspired by Carr’s art and writing, as well as work by her contemporaries. Among them are Feathers: Emily Carr and the Birds, a work that the quartet commissioned by composer Tobin Stokes and The Bird by Haydn.
Büyükçelen-Badel will also perform a recital with longtime friend and pianist Kelly Charlton, in the final concert of Christ Church Cathedral’s summer recital series. They will perform works by J.S. Bach, Eugène Ysaÿe and Johannes Brahms.
“This is purely a pleasure concert, so it’s the music I like,” she said.
