{"id":117263,"date":"2025-09-05T08:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T12:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=117263"},"modified":"2025-09-03T23:32:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T03:32:16","slug":"interview-artist-leslie-ting-combines-classical-violin-theatre-in-a-performance-about-self-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2025\/09\/05\/interview-artist-leslie-ting-combines-classical-violin-theatre-in-a-performance-about-self-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW | Artist Leslie Ting Combines Classical Violin &#038; Multimedia In A Performance About Self-Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_117267\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-117267\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-117267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Copy-of-INTERVIEW-100.jpg\" alt=\"Leslie Ting - the Violins (Photo: Noah David Smith) \" width=\"1200\" height=\"628\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Copy-of-INTERVIEW-100.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Copy-of-INTERVIEW-100-300x157.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Copy-of-INTERVIEW-100-1024x536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Copy-of-INTERVIEW-100-768x402.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-117267\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leslie Ting &#8211; the Violins (Photo: Noah David Smith)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Self-discovery, finding your real calling, and family blend into a story about transitions. What Brings You In is based on the life and experiences of Leslie Ting, who made the leap from practicing optometrist to a musical career.<\/p>\n<p>Performances run from October 17 to 27, 2025, with a special one-night-only installation of 40 violins to kick it off.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s part of Theatre Passe Muraille\u2019s 2025\/26 season, and a co-production between Passe Muraille and Leslie Ting Productions. You can find more about the other offerings of the Passe Muraille season, which kicks off with Butch \/ Femme on September 20 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.passemuraille.ca\/25-26-season\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From Leslie Ting\u2019s Speculation:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/U_MkmGQXFAo?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<h2>Leslie Ting<\/h2>\n<p>Leslie Ting has fused a unique performance practice that combines the various elements of her life: her background as a classical musician, theatre, new media \u2014 even her experiences as a former practicing optometrist.<\/p>\n<p>She has been artist-in-residence at Eastern Front Theatre (Dartmouth, NS), MITU580 (NYC), and the Durham Art Gallery (ON). Collaborations have included Diane Borsato at the National Arts Centre SPHERE Festival (Ottawa), experimental publication Caddisfly Project (NYC), and Race Cards (in Two Acts), a co-production by Prime Mover Theatre Company and Selina Thompson LTD (UK).<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s been performing music-driven interdisciplinary performances since 2014 which have garnered multiple award nominations.<\/p>\n<p>Leslie currently leads an arts practice research project called Anchoring Accessibility and is a mentor for Why Not Theatre\u2019s ThisGen Fellowship.<\/p>\n<p>We spoke to her about the intimate and personal project.<\/p>\n<h3>Leslie Ting: The Interview<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been playing since I was four,\u201d Ting says. \u201cThe optometry part for me was the detour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reasons for that detour will sound familiar to many. \u201cI wanted to be a violinist, and my parents didn\u2019t want me to do that for all the clich\u00e9 reasons,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease do anything but music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She was patient. \u201cHonestly, it was a feeling of biding my time until I could get back to what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ting studied violin performance at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al, and obtained her Masters degree.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an easy transition,\u201d she says of going back to school. \u201cIt was hard to be an older student. Classical music is really ageist. There\u2019s a real belief that you \u201cwon\u2019t make it\u201d if you are too old,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not like optometry school was a walk in the park.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While she was taking that detour into optometry, she was trying to keep her musical chops up. After six years of university, and then two years of working as an optometrist, she went back to music. As she points out, though, those years in your early 20s are when most classical musicians are beginning to build a career.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI came back with a laser focus on catching up. That\u2019s not how life really works \u2014 but boy, did I ever try.\u201d Ting performed as part of the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony several years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Around that time, however, her mother was losing her sight. Ting was developing a show about her relationship with her mother.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a very difficult time for my family,\u201d she says. \u201cI was witnessing her go through this sensory experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She couldn\u2019t help but reflect on the irony of the situation, in that she was turning from optometry to music at the same time. \u201cOur relationship was quite difficult. I was processing a lot of things at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s when a creative opportunity came along. She was considering a community concert project, and connecting with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Ting got help writing the grant proposal, and the grant writer asked her at one point why she was doing the project. Leslie opened up with details of her life story. The writer made the connection, but in the end, Ting at first rejected the idea that her performance was linked to her life experiences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy reaction was no, I\u2019m just playing Beethoven; I don\u2019t want to talk about it,\u201d she says. \u201cAlthough I had this clinical experience of optometry, the experience of watching someone lose their sight is quite different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That led to a kind of revelation, and a change in thinking about the audience experience. She began to incorporate lighting and other elements of staging into her musical performances. Dubbed a \u201ctheatrical concert with immersive visual design\u201d, she worked on a performance project called Speculation for about seven years, supported by Theatre Passe Muraille.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLearning about theatre and how theatre operates was a real learning curve,\u201d she says. \u201cSomeone had to explain what a stage manager did,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n<p>Another revelation was that classical music and theatre audiences were quite different.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThings on stage have a lot of meaning,\u201d she points out of theatre. For a concert, anything on stage is largely functional. \u201cIt\u2019s been really interesting to learn about how those pieces fit together\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>She added an emphasis on new media to her repertoire of skills during the pandemic. \u201cThere were a lot of grants with the word digital in them,\u201d she laughs. She\u2019d wonder, if someone is alone with a laptop, how do you make it a meaningful experience?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat does it really feel like to be at home?\u201d Accessibility adds another layer to that thinking. \u201cAccessibility has always been a big part of [what I do]. Even in my last show, I was thinking about how people who are blind experience the show.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As she notes, audio description in its traditional form doesn\u2019t feel so connected to the material.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPoetic audio description is something I worked on a lot,\u201d she says. Leslie says that she tested out her ideas on a variety of audiences of blind people over the years. \u201cApproaching it as a creative problem to solve rather than an add-on obligation is a very different thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She was trying to consider the experience for blind people in her digital projects as well. \u201cWe went through several iterations of an online show.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leslie Ting and Matt Smith produce\/perform composer Julia Mermelstein\u2019s folds in crossings for solo violin &amp; electronics:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SfpqfTho0eI?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<h3>Leslie Ting: What Brings You In<\/h3>\n<p>The basis of the show revolves around experiences Ting had undergoing therapy. Throughout the show, she uses a variety of music, including a piece by <strong>Linda Catlin Smith<\/strong>. Smith offered her 2006 piece Dirt Road for What Brings You In. Percussionist <strong>Germaine Liu<\/strong> performs with Ting in an improvised piece titled \u201cWhat is the most yourself you can be with another?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA third piece is called Sand Play.\u201d It\u2019s based on sand play therapy, which uses a table with a layer of sand outfitted with contact mics, so the movement of Germaine\u2019s hands in the sand are audible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt sounds like an ocean,\u201d Ting says, calling it \u201cASMR on steroids\u201d. Sound designer <strong>Matt Smith<\/strong> adds electronic sounds to the mix.<\/p>\n<p>Ting also commissioned two new works for violin for the show from composers <strong>Rose Bolton<\/strong> (Beholding for solo violin &amp; electronics) and <strong>Julia Murmelstein<\/strong> (folds, in crossings for solo violin &amp; six-speaker surround sound electronics).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe piece by Rose is about the idea of the black box of the mind,\u201d Leslie says. \u201cWith Julia, we talked about sound as a kind of representation of collective consciousness,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt\u2019s all very conceptual.\u201d She\u2019s conceived of it as surround sound that flows around the audience, representing the connection between them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then the pandemic really shut that down fast.\u201d The project had been in workshop stage. \u201cOkay, we\u2019re digital project managing now.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Transitions &amp; Accessibility<\/h3>\n<p>Along the way to developing the project, she can see advantages to the position she originally thought of as a weakness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s kind of liberating to be an outsider.\u201d You can ask really basic questions without fear, for example. \u201cWe would talk about the texture of sound and the engineer would say, I have no idea what you\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It became an exercise in learning each other\u2019s specialties, and the pandemic offered the time to do it in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe focused on building this online show for two or three years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She was careful to focus on engaging the audience, and the music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomething I think about is the relationship between listening and sight,\u201d she says. \u201cIf something is too visual, my feeling is that listening takes more and more of a back seat. It was an interesting balance to find.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She worked with a software engineer, a sound engineer, and then finally blind Chicago-based media artist, writer, performer, and Disability advocate <strong>Andy Slater<\/strong> joined the project.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a few interesting conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The online project was built so that cursor interactions were guided by sound, and viewers could follow along based on the sounds alone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was a creative decision driven by accessibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Improvising For Authenticity<\/h3>\n<p>Along with the multimedia elements, Leslie wanted to focus on delivering a high level of performance of new music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGermaine comes from an improvisation background,\u201d she notes. \u201cWe spent a lot of time talking about improvised music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s one of the aspects of playing classical music as a professional musician she had questions about. She wanted to focus on being herself as an authentic artist, and when it came to music, performing and creating a sound only she could make. \u201cWhat does that mean when you\u2019ve spent 30, 40 years looking at a score?\u201d she wondered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was terrible,\u201d she laughs of her first efforts at improvisation. \u201cI could tell that I was really blocked.\u201d Germaine assured her that she didn\u2019t have to throw out her entire history in music in order to dive into improvisation. It was a matter of evolution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe process of making the show was a bit meta,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>There have been several versions of it that have appeared online over the last six years or so. It\u2019s available to stream or download in an audio-only version <a href=\"https:\/\/peopleplacesrecords.bandcamp.com\/album\/what-brings-you-in\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. The Limited Edition &#8220;What Brings You In&#8221; Black Box is a 3D printed cube with braille writing that includes a QR code to download the album in stereo and binaural versions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Find tickets and show details [<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.passemuraille.ca\/what-brings-you-in\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HERE<\/a><\/strong>].<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Are you looking to promote an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/advertising\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #0e101a;\"><u>event<\/u><\/span><\/a>? Have a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/masthead\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>news tip<\/u><\/a>? Need to know the best\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/events\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>events<\/u><\/a>\u00a0happening this weekend? Send us a\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><a href=\"mailto:anya@ludwig-van.com?subject=Let's%20chat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em><u>note<\/u>.<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"western\"><em><b>#LUDWIGVAN<\/b><\/em><\/h3>\n<p class=\"western\"><em>Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"western\"><em>Sign up for the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! \u2014 local classical music and opera news straight to your inbox <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/583e6ce0-dfd0-48be-8a33-61256b3c58e3.mlbtlr.com\/p2\/Fbd8jWoWQQ6CdBcLIvut3Q\/02E3cYaETqaj4Xm087cpSg?contactid=S3HHYfHY5rZv5f94S15MnA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/583e6ce0-dfd0-48be-8a33-61256b3c58e3.mlbtlr.com\/p2\/Fbd8jWoWQQ6CdBcLIvut3Q\/02E3cYaETqaj4Xm087cpSg?contactid%3DS3HHYfHY5rZv5f94S15MnA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1695737525351000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0QTqKRwRJQFGK3KoJYigxX\">HERE<\/a>.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Brings You In is based on the life and experiences of Leslie Ting, who made the leap from practicing optometrist to a musical career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":117267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41660,18,19,29,4780,38,62,63],"tags":[42238,37699],"yst_prominent_words":[6715,7064,6616,26289,12489,11678,10495,10171,8973,26288],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/Copy-of-INTERVIEW-100.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-uvl","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117263"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117269,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117263\/revisions\/117269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117263"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=117263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}