By CHERIE DONNELLAN
AN opera singer and a jazz pianist walk into a restaurant – it sounds like the beginning of a joke but when the musicians are Donna King and Kym Dillon then the diners are in for a treat.
King told the Independent her performance concept of fusing opera and jazz intrigued Dillon when they met through friends.
The pair were now enjoying surprising audiences as their show switched between jazz and opera “with fair ease”, she said.
“It’s like playing two different characters and I do that with opera anyway.”
King and Dillon will showcase their talents at Empire Grill’s Jazz Goes to the Opera dinner show next month.
King said she was initially reluctant to learn opera as a 13-year-old when she began training under renowned Geelong opera teacher Marcelle Menzel but eventually “grew to like it”.
“I think it took me a year of lessons to appreciate it but after that I decided that’s all I wanted to do.”
“In the early days, like up until I was 18 or 20, I was purely focused on performing to whatever the composer wanted. Turning 40, having children and being more confident in myself I’ve realised I don’t really have to focus on the difficult operatic songs.”
King said she could have pursued the classical route professionally but would probably have ended up performing in the choruses of shows at opera houses.
“I could have spent six hours a day learning arias and had to fight for sparse places in opera companies.”
King said one of the benefits of her formal training was in now understanding how far she could “push” her voice but moving into jazz with Dillon had helped her singing “loosen up”.
“It’s helped me to express songs better having that jazz repertoire.”
Collaborating with people like Dillon, who she descibed as a “brilliant” painist, allowed King to create and control her music career, she said.
“It’s liberating.”
