♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Indra Egan,
who is a pianist and a vocal coach based in Vancouver.
Among her multiple musical activities, she produces and performs in
Epilepsy Awareness concerts.
You can find the resources mentioned by Indra Egan during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
♪ Spring Waters - Jamal Al Titi and Indra Egan ♪
Welcome to this new episode.
Today, we are with Indra Egan, who is a pianist and a vocal coach.
She describes herself as a passionate multi-genre musician.
I'm going to let her present herself. Welcome, Indra.
Hi, Diane. Thank you so much for having me.
Yes, you described me, just as I often describe myself as a musician.
I am a pianist and vocal coach currently based out of Vancouver.
I'm currently a young artist at the Yulanda M. Faris program at Vancouver Opera,
where we're currently working on a production of Carmen that will
open at the end of the month. Very excited about that.
I have done a lot of musical projects in a lot of different genres.
Right now, of course, working mainly in opera, but I also love everything from
musical theatre, jazz, classical, even have done some rock stuff, all over the place.
My main passion is just collaborating with others in whatever form of music that happens to be.
And I am here because I am a musician living with epilepsy who would like to
make this musical community a more disability friendly space.
Thank you so much and welcome.
Thank you for having this conversation with me.
I'm very excited about our conversation today.
I'm very excited that you invited me.
Can you describe yourself?
I have epilepsy.
I've had epilepsy since I was 11, and I've been playing piano since I was four.
I've lived with both for a long time.
I have Tonic-clonic, or what are sometimes known as Grand Mal seizures.
They've been throughout my life anywhere as frequent as twice a week
to sometimes I've gone months at a time.
In my teens, I went two years without a seizure.
We thought I might have grown out of the seizures, and I did not.
I have been balancing music and epilepsy for quite a long time.
Thank you so much.
What is your story?
When did you start playing the piano?
I know you traveled a lot here and there in Canada, so what brought you
to travel all over these places?
Well, I was born in a small town in Northern BC.
It's called Houston.
It's not the one in Texas.
On my bios, I always have to put from Northern BC because if people
see Houston, they will assume Texas.
But I was born in Canada, small town, 3,000 people.
I started traveling for piano lessons when I was four years old.
We traveled 45 minutes to a neighbouring town for piano lessons.
Already from there, I was traveling from the age of four, eventually was traveling
three and a half hours for lessons and to play violin in an orchestra
in the nearby town, I think more becoming a city now, of Prince George.
And then when I first started university, I actually started in
political science in Prince George.
I thought I wanted to become a lawyer.
And pretty soon into that program, I realized that I did not,
not so much that I wasn't interested in the field of law anymore, but that I was
taking so much enjoyment from the musical things that I was doing on the side.
So I would be at school going to class from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, roughly.
My courses would be in that window.
And then 5:15, I would be on a bus to leave the campus and go
to downtown Prince George and do all sorts of musical things,
from teaching to accompanying to singing, all sorts of things.
And I realized that I was looking forward to the end of the day so much and that
I did not want to live my whole life looking forward to the end of the day.
I wanted those things to be my day.
And so I finished the first year, but then the following year, I took a year off
stayed in Prince George and just worked.
I look back on that year, it's kind of a blur. I don't know.
I did so many jobs in one year, but I was saving up to go do my bachelors,
and it was really important to me.
So I was accompanying multiple choirs.
I was playing for ballet classes.
I was teaching.
I think I had about 20 students.
I was waitressing.
I was playing all sorts of side gigs.
So I was singing in a choir.
I was taking voice lessons myself.
Then I auditioned for a Bachelor's of Music
at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, which is the next place that I moved.
I auditioned for piano and for voice, and I wanted to go for voice,
but I only got in for piano.
So I decided to go anyway.
And my plan was that in my second year, I would transfer
into a degree in voice, that I would re-audition.
And then about a month or two into my degree, I saw this incredible concert
featuring soprano Tracy Dahl and pianist Laura Loewen.
I saw their performance, I was blown away, and I realized that -
Well, that I was inspired by both, I realized that what I actually wanted to do
was do what Laura, the pianist, had done in that concert,
that what I really loved was the vocal repertoire, but that
I would rather be a part of it from the piano.
So I stayed in the piano degree. I'm very glad that I did.
And then I was planning to do...
I did end up doing a master's in collaborative piano, but I
didn't do it directly out of my undergrad because I was actually on a waitlist
for an epilepsy brain surgery.
And I thought, a master's degree is only two years long.
And if I get in for the surgery and I have to take even three to six months off.
That's a big chunk of your masters.
So I stayed at the University of Manitoba to do a post-bacc
diploma in jazz piano studies.
And a month in, I got the call that I had gotten in for the surgery.
So I was like, Oh, excellent life decision to wait for the masters.
I went to London Ontario for this surgery.
It was supposed to be an intracranial EEG, just an exploratory brain surgery.
And in the first week, they hook you up to an external EEG.
So that's just on the outside of your head
without cutting into the bone, without doing the surgery.
And they keep you monitored like that for a week, and they induce some seizures,
and they obviously want to double-check everything before they go into your skull.
And then at the end of that week, it turned out that the initial test
that had been done three years prior when I was on the waitlist
for the brain surgery had been...
They were incomplete, and they had not been completed properly,
and that I was not actually a candidate for brain surgery, even though I was still having
seizures despite having tried, I think at that point, 11 medications.
So I went back to Winnipeg.
I was understandably very depressed.
I wondered if I even wanted to keep going with music
because I thought, Okay, if I'm going to have seizures the rest of my life,
how am I going to be a working musician, especially as a pianist, especially as
an accompanist in the way that I collaborate with people.
There are other people depending on me.
I took some time with that.
I think I had, for a long time, viewed my disability as something
that would eventually end.
And so when we reach that final point of, you know,
there's not really anywhere to go from here that would be as effective as a brain surgery, it needed some time.
And I almost missed the deadline to apply for a master's because I was so down
and I didn't think I wanted to do it.
But with one day to go, I wrote up my cover letter
and I sent everything in on some encouragement from a mentor and from some friends.
And I got into
the collaborative piano program that I hoped to, and then spent two years in...
Then COVID hit, actually. Let me... Covid hit.
And so I took another year of break before going to do my master's.
I stayed in the Post-Bacc Jazz program during that year so that I could keep
my health benefits through the school.
Everyone with disabilities knows just how important that is.
Then I went to Toronto, had a wonderful time, met so many new people,
had just the most wonderful teacher.
Then I was applying for jobs and young artist programs to
start after my master's.
One of them was for an opera company that I'm going to leave unnamed,
but it was outside of Canada.
It was a very exciting opportunity.
They offered me a two-year Young Artists program in March of 2023, and I took it.
I was so excited. I'm going to go to a new country.
And two months later, or a month and a half later,
I reached out to them asking about the kind of medical insurance that they offered.
I had been in touch with an epilepsy organization from that region
and was checking in, seeing what health care is in this country and
what support am I going to need? How do I find a neurologist?
They were fantastic. They were helping me work through that.
But they said, Ask your employer what medical insurance
you need in order to do that.
They said they would get back to me, and I told them why I was so keen to find out
what medical insurance they offered.
I also told them I was in touch with that organization and that I was already preemptively...
I was even on on a list for a neurologist.
Then two weeks later, I got an email saying that they did not think I would be
a good fit for their company.
They invited me to...
It was a really crushing and infantilizing email.
At the end, they invited me to reapply if my seizures settled down sufficiently.
That was a really rough time of the intersect of music and disability.
I didn't know what I was going to do.
I was supposed to leave to move there in a month and a half,
so I had thrown things away.
I had canceled my lease.
I felt like my whole world was falling apart.
Then I reached out when I heard that Vancouver Opera had not yet filled
their position for a pianist for the Young Artist program.
I sent them videos and my resume and had an interview,
and here I am in Vancouver, working at Vancouver Opera.
Not exactly the path that I expected things to take
when I started my bachelor's 10 years ago at the University of Manitoba, but
I've worked with some fantastic people along the way, and I'm really happy here.
Wow. That's such a journey with all the up and down.
That's... wow! I'm very glad that Vancouver was able to offer you this position.
Yes, me too. It was a huge relief.
I really just felt like a fish out of water because I thought that I had
the next two years of my life planned out starting July 2023.
But no, it was really fantastic that they were willing to take me for this.
I met some fantastic people here
and had the opportunity to play some incredible music.
I also know that you are doing a lot of work with Epilepsy Canada,
including some benefit concerts.
Can you talk a bit about these benefit concerts?
Well, I've done three epilepsy awareness concerts so far, working on a fourth,
which I can chat about later.
But yeah, I've done three of them.
They weren't actually benefit concerts per se because I wanted the concerts to be free.
I wanted full access for anyone who could go.
And the first two concerts were at the University of Manitoba.
So I'm not even sure if I would have been allowed to raise money.
But for the third one, it was during the pandemic and it was online.
And so that was completely my own project, not on someone else's venue.
And so I asked people to donate to Epilepsy Canada when watching that concert.
And so I partnered with Epilepsy Canada. They were so incredibly supportive of my concert.
They did an interview, they featured it widely.
So they really helped me with promoting it, which was great because
anyone in the world could watch it.
So there were people watching the concert who actually had...
It was a mix of music, but it was primarily classical music.
And we also had jazz and musical theatre and some folk.
So there was a mix of things, I think primarily classical and so there were
people watching because they wanted to support an event with epilepsy and
not necessarily because they were in my musical circle with the other concerts.
It was really cool to see comments on this video like, Oh, I've never heard -
I've never listened to music like this, and I really enjoy it.
And then, likewise, there were people watching the concert
because they wanted to support the musicians in it or support me, musically,
who said, Oh, I'm learning so much about epilepsy watching this concert.
That was one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done.
I'm so glad it was a live stream because I just had tears in my eyes
the whole time watching people comment.
It felt like such a wonderful collaborative experience
because of the livestream element.
That's very good.
In the first week, it had 2,000 views, and Epilepsy Canada wasn't able
to give me any specific number for privacy reasons as far as their donations,
but they said there was a spike that week.
So that was so wonderful to hear.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I couldn't have done it without all the wonderful - I mean, everyone in the concert
agreed to perform for free, and they were all of an incredibly high caliber.
They brought such wonderful performances.
It was all prerecorded and then put together.
We had - I asked some incredibly prestigious people being like,
The worst thing they can say is no. I wonder if they will be in this.
You have incredibly famous people who are like, Oh, yeah, no,
I absolutely want to support this. I'll totally do this. What would you like me to perform?
It's just wonderful to see how many musical communities came together.
I can never forget the incredible videographer and audio -
Just...
Person who works on audio. I can't remember.
The audio designer? I can't remember.
The people who helped me put together the concert digitally.
We had Allan Cabral, we had John Anderson and Elliot Lazar,
who did all the stuff that I could not.
We had one number at the end of the concert that featured
almost 100 singers performing all together, which was so cool.
It was to an arrangement of Carol King's You've Got A Friend.
We had four soloists, and then singing most of the song, and then
a final chorus that featured almost 100 singers from all over Canada.
And that also just made me tear up.
When I was watching it, it was amazing.
So these were all so many people who took time out of their lives to
be a part of this project.
So that was a big project for our digital team, but they came through.
And as I said, everyone did this
throughout the concert for free.
I would hope in the future, as I do more of these concerts, to be able to
apply for funding and pay people for their work.
But I was incredibly grateful that people thought this was a project that
was worth dedicating their time to.
Is this video still available?
Yes, the entire concert is still available.
I can send you the link.
It's on YouTube.
The concert is called Unshakeable.
I love puns.
The very first concert that I did for epilepsy awareness, I called Seize the Day.
I thought that was too cheesy, when I switched to yet another cheesy
but slightly less cheesy name, it was Unshakeable.
That's what I'm calling them now.
I will I'll post this link to- Oh, wonderful.
ArtsAbly's website.
Speaking of puns, I know that you also have a satire site
called Stay Tuned with Indra, right?
Yes.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah.
I've always loved writing, and I have always loved comedy, and I read a lot of satire,
and I just really love the genre.
I thought, wouldn't it be cool if...
And I'm sure there are others that exist, but - I know there are others that exist,
but I wanted to lend my own voice to musical satire,
specifically classical music.
Satire, I'm really inspired -
It's very much inspired by Reductress, the feminist satire magazine.
I believe my first one, my first article was about a
pianist who is a collaborative pianist who is crying because they were called an accompanist,
who was just soul crushed because a singer called them an accompanist,
which for me I made because I think the name collaborative pianist is,
in my opinion, a bit redundant.
I don't think we call any other musicians
collaborative violinists or collaborative cellists.
I also don't mind being called an accompanist because I feel like when you
accompany someone on a walk to the park, you are just going with them.
Anyways, it started from there, it was quite the hit,
so then I kept writing, and it's been really fun.
Everything from a Barbie with a perfect pitch to a cellist who's able
to put a down payment on a house with all the exposure that he has saved up.
I try to keep them timely. We had one during the pandemic about a flutist who said,
Sorry, my sound is not coming through on Zoom very well,
but in real life, she sounded the exact same.
She was using the Zoom sound as an excuse.
I try to keep some of them timely, and then others were just ideas that I had.
You can check out the website at staytunedwithindra.com
and I also have - part of that page features my Unshakable Concerts.
Okay, it will be posted.
Thank you.
I want to come back to these concerts,
the epilepsy awareness concerts.
You talked about an upcoming fourth one that will happen.
Can you give us more details about this one?
I will have to see what it ends up being.
I have a very strong idea of what it is in my mind.
This is because it almost It happened last month.
I had scheduled a concert to be performed through
Vancouver Opera's recital series, free recital series.
I thought, This is perfect. I've always wanted my concert to be free.
Then I'm in a new city where I will struggle to market it
the way that I did when I had lived in Winnipeg for a while,
and that I really appreciated that
Vancouver Opera was going to let me host a recital for that series.
But in January, I broke my shoulder in a seizure fall.
I was supposed to be the pianist for the concert, and it just didn't end up
working out in order for me to accompany the concert, and so it was cancelled.
Not sure if it will be through the same organization when I do it next,
but I hope that I can ask those musicians again to join me in Vancouver at some point.
The list of musicians for the concert was going to be soprano Sawyer Craig,
who I've known for eight years now.
It was very cool that our lives have -
we've crossed paths again in Vancouver.
mezzo Emma Parkinson,
violist Roxi Dykstra, who is from the same town as me in Northern BC, that same 3,000-person town,
and who is an incredibly -
She's left that town to be an incredibly established musician
and is an inspiration to us in Northern BC.
And tenor Benjamin Butterfield, who is also an incredible musician
who sings all over and currently teaches at UVic.
And I met him eight years ago as well when I was studying
at a program where he was teaching.
So I was really excited to collaborate with all these people.
And I hope that if I'm able to do another concert
in Vancouver, that if they're still in town still available, they'll join me
for the next Epilepsy Awareness concert.
I try to time them for...
I think the others had been on International Epilepsy Day.
And then in this case, with the timing of Vancouver Opera's shows, I decided to
schedule it in March, which is, as you know, Canada's Epilepsy Awareness Month.
So it probably would be rescheduled for sometime early 2025,
but still - the wheels are moving.
The project is definitely still in the works.
How is your shoulder now?
It's not 100%, but it's better.
I mean, much, much better.
Initially, I couldn't move it.
I was in a sling for six weeks.
It was the longest I have ever not played the piano.
It was crazy.
Longest in my entire life, well, no, other than, you know, my infancy
that I had not played the piano.
I'm back to playing. I have been playing on our current production of Carmen.
I've been playing a reduced schedule, and
I've appreciated that I've been able to do that at Vancouver Opera.
I look forward to when it's fully healed.
I also have a fantastic physiotherapist who has been very understanding of
not just how to heal my injury, but how my injury impacts my work and my everyday.
So we're making good progress.
In this time where you were healing and you were unable to play the piano,
did you do other musical activities or other things that would
allow you to continue progressing in your career without playing the piano?
Well, in the Young Artists program, some of my work is often observing.
So once I was able to leave the house, I went back and I was observing rehearsals
and going to the shows that were happening.
But actually, my recovery process was really intense.
I was on full doses of morphine for two weeks after the injury,
so I was really out of it.
I remember the first day after it happened, I thought,
Oh, I'm going to go to...
I was always either in a lot of pain or really out of it,
depending on where I was in the drug cycle.
The first day after the incident, I thought, Oh,
I'm going to go to rehearsal.
I'm going to keep going and just watch. And I'm in pain anyway. It'll be a distraction.
And then very soon I realized, Oh, this is a terrible idea.
I'm in a lot more pain sitting upright, and I can't focus on any of this.
So no, I spent the first couple of weeks mostly in bed, very out of it.
I remember wanting to rewatch a show that I watched a long time ago
as a distraction, and it's a very - Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
A very simple show. I could not follow the plot.
It was too complicated for me.
So all that to say, I did not get a lot done during that time,
but during the first half of it, I would say.
But then the second half, yes, I was observing rehearsals.
I eventually was taking notes and stuff on our March show and preparing
as much as I could through the score, our next opera, Carmen, before I was able to play it.
As a vocal coach, what are you doing exactly?
That's such a good question, and we get asked it all the time because
the thing that I get asked all the time, very specifically, is,
Isn't a vocal coach just a voice teacher?
And no, it is actually not. It is very much not.
I do not tell anyone how to sing when it comes to vocal technique.
Absolutely, that is between you and your teacher and your vocal cords.
So vocal coaches are pianists who work with singers
who will generally talk about things like diction or the musical side of things or
the dramatic acting side of things, discussing the poetry,
finding - we don't teach people how to sing, but we can definitely make it easier.
Someone may bring something to a vocal coach and say, I'm really struggling with this.
I might say, Well, have you tried looking at the phrase this way?
Or maybe, Have you tried really making sure that that vowel is very pure?
Have you tried singing this section with a lot of rest?
Just legato all the way through and taking them out, putting them back in.
Do you feel the phrase is now...
You're feeling the longer phrase now, even though there are stops in the music.
That's the thing that I do as a vocal coach.
I find it incredibly rewarding.
I tend to specialize with the dramatic side, especially with my history of
performing as a vocalist and also playing for a lot of shows, musical theatre,
having done some straight theatre.
That's my favourite, it's delving into the poetry, whether -
if it's art song, delving into the characters, if it's opera, and
giving as much attention as we can.
Again, the collaboration between me and the singer.
I like to ask what they're thinking and then build on that.
It's really the definition of collaboration,
it's working together on producing something.
Absolutely.
I have a question that I like to ask all the interviewees.
As an artist with disability working in the musical field,
what does accessibility in the arts mean for you?
That's a big question and an important one.
At my stage in my career, because I've worked professionally
a lot, but I've also been in school, as you heard, quite a lot.
For me, a huge priority is making arts education, in my experience,
music education much more accessible because
I struggled with this a lot in my -
particularly in my undergrad, for my entire studies.
It's very hard to get degrees and have a lot of seizures at the same time,
particularly when they're tonic clonics that -
Let me tell your listeners that a tonic clonic seizure is the type
that a lot of people think of when they think of a seizure where
you lose consciousness and you convulse.
At the end of that seizure, the rest of the day is a write-off, and
probably also the next day depends.
And then also sometimes I've been injured.
I would say the shoulder injury is the most severe one I've had,
maybe tied with the time that I fell on a metal grate and broke two teeth.
So yeah, one of these is deconstructed and one of them is just missing.
So all that to say, yeah, that has...
I've really struggled with having seizures and going to school.
And it wasn't that people didn't want to help me.
It was that they really didn't know how.
I would really love to help educate people on how they can support a student
trying to go to university for music.
I received a lot of poor treatment that I now realized
was mostly just a lack of knowledge.
It was not as it felt at the time.
It was not pointed, it was not malicious.
A lot of it was really just based in ignorance.
I think we can change that.
I think we can make that a lot better.
I think if we can show people what sort of accommodations can be made for students.
And my experience at the University of Toronto, in a master's
in a freer program, I actually realized that a lot more accommodations were possible than
what I received in my bachelor's.
It was also a bigger school that just, I think, had seen a bit more of this.
When I was at the University of Manitoba, which is a wonderful school with a wonderful faculty,
there was - I was just this rogue student having seizures,
and they didn't know what to do. They didn't know how to grade me if I couldn't perform at certain things.
I remember at one point talking to a disability advisor who...
The disability advisor worked for the entire school.
There wasn't something just for the music faculty.
He would be in touch with my professors, trying to set up accommodations, figure things out.
I remember saying to him, I said, Why is this so hard?
Why doesn't anyone know what to do?
There's 40,000 people at this university.
And he said, As far as I know, you have the most severe case of epilepsy,
as far as how it is impacting your daily life.
I said, There's so many people here. How is this possible?
How is this possible I have the most severe one?
Or comparably, about one of the most severe ones.
And he said, Well, most people with epilepsy as severe as yours
are not going to university.
That hit me really hard, and that is something that has really stuck with me.
I know that it would have been...
There were definitely times that I thought about dropping out because it was so hard
and because sometimes I felt like I didn't fit into the musical community
as someone who had seizures.
I would wonder about whether I would ever be hired as an opera pianist,
for example, by a company that knew that I could have a seizure at any time.
Of course, we saw that with the company I spoke about earlier that
took my offer of two years of work off the table after they found out I had seizures.
There was something in that email even that said that there was a danger of me having...
that me having a seizure in the rehearsal room would be dangerous.
Again, that's, I think, partially a lack of knowledge and also a very narrow lens.
Whereas I think if people were more educated on what to do if someone has a seizure,
how it manifests, what care and accommodations the person needs afterwards,
there could be a lot more inclusivity.
All that to say, that's a huge goal for me,
is making music education more accessible for people with epilepsy.
Obviously, for all people with disabilities, but I can only speak to my own disability community,
I feel, when it comes to specifics.
Then as a professional, I think one of the things that we all learned from COVID
as a disability community is how many accommodations you can actually make
when able-bodied people will need them.
And suddenly, you were able to submit assignments or complete work things over Zoom.
And yes, it was just as useful as going to...
And just as valid and got the same marks or at work, you were paid
the same amount of money for doing something over Zoom as in person.
So it was a very small silver lining in a huge tragedy
was that we saw ways in which accommodations can be made.
I really hope that we can stick to some of those for those who need it.
Yeah, in the professional sector, I think just continuing
to push for accommodations.
I once had someone say that an opera company would
probably never hire me knowing that they needed to also hire a backup
because the money is just not there.
Whenever someone says the money is just not there, that just means they don't want to spend the money on it
because they have a pool of money and they were - there -
What if you were to say, Well, you know,
we don't have a first aid attendant on hand because the money is just not there.
They say, Oh, well, you need a first aid attendant. It's mandatory. It's by law.
Well, so clearly, when we actually have to do things, we find the money for them.
I think there are a lot of accommodations that can be made that just aren't.
And a final thing that's really important that I'd like to share is
that I'm planning on, I'm not sure in what way,
but I'm planning on eventually sharing my story of
being fired by that opera company
because I think it's really important that people with disabilities stand up for themselves.
Also because the second half of that story is that I sued the company.
That was a huge, very harrowing journey
because it had happened in another country.
I had to find a lawyer in another country.
I was really fortunate that a close friend of mine has a family member who was
an employment lawyer in Canada, but part of a
global alliance of employment lawyers.
It took me, I think, three lawyers to find someone who would help me.
It was a team of two incredible female lawyers who were standing by me.
It took months. It took a lot of money.
There was a very kind person who donated the money for me,
who eventually donated the money for me to sue because I was very
afraid of putting money into this and then nothing happening because, of course,
I'd already lost money on the job.
I had to go through, document everything, proof the affidavit,
give them a very clear timeline of everything that had happened.
It's really - It's a really harrowing process, especially
for me, having no idea whether it would even be worth it.
From the time that I started looking, which I believe was June,
until I received - We ended up settling in court.
That was in October.
It was a long time to be working at this and to be stressed about it,
not know if that was going to happen.
But through working with lawyers, I learned that even in a country
whose laws I didn't know, yes, there are so many laws against disability.
If you push back, I know that not all people have the means to do so.
I didn't, and I was really fortunate that someone kind came forward and helped me out.
But for those who have the means to do so, for those who could set up a GoFundMe or
something like that, I strongly encourage people to fight back
when they are discriminated against in the workplace.
I want to raise awareness for what our rights actually are.
It's so easy to just be dismissive.
I've been discriminated against in the workplace in countless ways.
This was just a very, very large life-changing one.
It really made me think, and it makes me stand up for myself more even now.
Well, that's a very good point because a lot of people don't know how to do that
and struggle to find the information, to go through a process.
But I think we all, in a certain time, period of our life,
experienced a level of discrimination, either at school,
because as you mentioned, the character of being kind of unique,
you're treated like someone different instead of being included with the other students.
This happens to a lot of universities and a lot of schools in general.
Then as an artist, there is very few representations
of artists with disabilities in the mainstream media or around us
because we are just told not to do it,
or we're just told that it's too difficult,
or that It would be too dangerous for us to do it.
But some of us are willing to climb these few steps between
the ground and the stage or find ways to do it or ask for some support
to create some ways to go there.
But we need to have at least one or two or more persons who said,
Here's the way I did it.
It would be great if you could share share this experience and let us know how
we can support you in that. We can maybe share that on your resource page
and maybe on our communication later.
If you are willing to share that with us, then we will share it with the audience.
For sure. I think I will have to check and see exactly how much I am able to share.
I did not sign a nondisclosure agreement.
That was something that I told my lawyers in the first place that I would not do
because I did want to share this story.
I ended up settling in court because it financially did not make sense
to move forward to arbitration and spend more money to probably get less money.
But at least they had to come to court.
At least all of their board members were alerted and unhappy that
they had to come to court.
I also got to tell them to their faces over Zoom, because it was another country,
the way in which their ignorant decision had impacted me.
So yes, and I received some compensation.
It was not full compensation, certainly, for the work that I had lost,
but it was something, and that definitely felt like a win for me,
and that the process was over and then it was successful.
So yes, I'm happy to share as many of the details as I can.
I'll just have to go and check what those are.
Thank you.
I have a last question before we conclude this conversation.
It's about people who inspire you or who are important in your life.
So either in the artistic community or in the disability and the arts community,
if you had to think of one person who inspired you or guided you or were there
when you needed, who would it be and why?
I want to start by saying that there have been so many people who have supported me
through my disability and musical journey who I love and care about so much.
A person who comes to mind where the music and disability communities cross is
pianist and vocal coach and repetiteur, Liz Upchurch,
who runs the Ensemble Studio at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto,
the Ensemble Studio being a young artist program.
She is one of the most fierce, incredible people I've had the privilege to meet.
Liz is legally blind and yet has just
risen to these incredible levels in the opera world as being one of,
one of the top repetiteurs and pianists and vocal coaches.
I was inspired by her even before I met her in person.
I was so excited when...
I think this was my second year of my bachelor's,
was when I first met her in person.
She came to give some master classes, and I already knew about her because
there are so few people in the arts with disabilities that I knew of
that are not being kept more silent.
I was so excited to meet her.
Actually, our very first meeting one on one, I had asked if I could have a lesson with her.
She very generously said yes.
I showed up and the room was dark.
And she said, Indra, I'm so sorry, I have this horrible migraine.
I said, Oh, no, I'll leave. We don't have to do this.
And she said, No, I don't think I can do a lesson right now,
but why don't we just sit and talk?
Tell me a bit about yourself.
Tell me a bit about your goals.
So that was our very first one-on-one meeting.
From there, I've played for her
many times since then, both in auditions and also
at the Orford Musique Academy in Magog, Québec.
I worked with her for a couple of weeks, and she has been
incredibly supportive of my career prospects.
We've had some long talks about whether I can manage to pursue a career in opera
while living with epilepsy, and she has always very strongly said yes.
And
I remember talking with her about what happens if I have a seizure in rehearsal?
Is this just going to ruin everything?
She said, Well, first of all, there's a lot of different jobs in an opera house
that don't have to be playing in the pit on opening night or anything that
you feel is too high stress.
Actually, some people have triggers for their seizures. I don't have triggers for my seizures.
But even just if there was a lot of pressure, they felt someone...
If you yourself felt that you felt uncomfortable being in a high pressure situation
where they needed someone at that time and place,
there are other people who can do that. There are lots of jobs.
You can be vocal coaching. There's always another pianist in the house.
Absolutely, you would be able to work in this field.
She said the actual thing that ruins a rehearsal would not be something like a seizure.
It's actually a negativity.
That is also something that really stuck with me.
Being a woman, an LGBTQ person, and a person with a disability.
I see myself in her in a lot of ways, and she's been a huge inspiration.
Thank you so much.
It was a wonderful conversation.
Thank you for sharing your story with us, your projects,
and good luck with everything.
Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to speak with you, Diane.
Thank you for all the work that you're doing.
Very welcome.
Have a great day.
You too, thanks.
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