The Echo of Silence: Finding Voice with Carole Côté
With a simple guitar, paintbrush, pencil, and her beautifully expressive voice - Carole Côté contains multitudes.
A few weeks after starting at my job at Vancouver Opera, I had the honour of meeting the amazing Carole Côté over the phone - singing her heart out over a scratchy phone line. I was blown away.
Carole graciously agreed to visit us at VO and shared songs, poetry, and hard-won insights. I think you’ll agree that she is someone every special.
Carole Côté will be performing on December 7th at The Kettle Choir’s Holiday Concert, with guests Highs & Lows Choir. The performance runs from 2:00pm to 4:00pm at The Kettle’s Recovery Cafe, 620 Clarke Drive, Vancouver.
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I sat on a rock amongst the trees.
I looked above, the leaves were falling.
I stretched out my right arm gracefully to one side to catch a leaf, but I couldn't.
So I stretched out my left arm gracefully to catch a leaf, but I couldn't.
My hands, my arms, danced between the fall of the leaves, swaying in and out.
Then I put my right arm to my heart and felt my soul was in flight.
A dancing silhouette in between the breeze that felt like the wind against the feather I had caught between the leaves, lighter than a feather.
Ah, air.
I orchestrated a nature sound next to the ocean, as I sat on a rock, amongst the stream and the river, where the sand lay softly grounded to the earth.
- Carole Côté
Ashley Daniel Foot:
The human voice is at the heart of everything Vancouver Opera explores and does. It represents the very essence of what opera is. Today, we're talking with Carole Côté. Carole is a fascinating individual, who has had a range of disparate life experiences. Carole is an incredible singer and a poet and a painter and an artist. She talks about finding the beauty of art every day, as a therapeutic and restorative practice.
My name is Ashley Daniel Foot, and this is Inside Vancouver Opera, a very special episode with Carole Côté. Tell us about that beautiful poem that you just read for us.
Carole Côté:
This is part of who I am and my background. I honour those who have gone before us. White Birch Home, which is basically where I come from, white birch trees, most striking, at a lake first thing in the morning. I saw antlers sticking out of the sand in the middle of the forest. That was a piece of art.
White Birch Home
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Wow. The white birch, tell me about that and your memories of it.
Carole Côté:
The white birch trees surrounded me in the forest. I felt safe, amongst the wildlife, the bears, the moose, the partridge, the beavers, the clear water lakes where you could see the bottom, untouched, pure. I felt protected all the time. As I see what we have, there's white birch everywhere. The trees are the stronghold, like the Tree of Life.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
When I first met you, I heard you sing over the phone. I had just started at Vancouver Opera, and the ravages of COVID had changed all of our programming and sent them online. You're a member of The Kettle Choir. Because of COVID, everything had had to move online, and you performed over the phone. I heard your guitar over the phone, and I was already blown away, and this is over a scratchy phone line. Then I got to meet you in person and discovered just how remarkable you are. But for our listeners who don't know, what is the Kettle Choir?
Carole Côté:
Kettle Choir is like the beginning of an open book. Often, the inspiration is drawn in from within yourself. My experience with the choir, they have been very inspirational from the very beginning, and they've been there all along.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
What do you think makes the Kettle Choir unique?
Carole Côté:
They have gifts. Every one of them have gifts. Every one of them are artists, and music heals the soul. Music is a gift. Music is an art form. I feel whole when I'm amongst them.
I have something else to read:
The Enchanted Forest
What an enchanting sound to hear your voice from afar, a warmhearted message from a familiar chat, enriched by insight, oh nature's beauty, yet unveiled in secrets of the soul.
Oh, messenger await.
Play me a place where the lullaby is played the most.
Shimmering highlights of colours dancing in view, in nature's wonder, patiently waiting for our next encounter where hope is a belief and life is ongoing, the echo of your warmth in a forest that is always moving.
Although no one flows the same way, like waters that surround us,
let us just be.
Let us just be.
Await for your reaching vision, aware the stream goes to a subtle flow, where the footsteps have a pace of extinction, to be joined in a place where one can see, but from an aerial view, where one's breath is in between the breezes, and the still waters flow.
Soon, I'll be no more.
I'll be in the small forest, where the valleys are long, the skies light are dimmed in nature's wonder, where the percussion of creatures stepping on branches and moss, where your enchanting voice is the echo of silence, and again, to wait to hear your voice from afar.
What an enchanting sound.- Carole Côté
Here's to my ancestors, family and relatives, and friends, and I'm honouring someone so greatly. This coincides with the song, if you know a little bit about me, and I'm quite sure you do.
Naming My Angels
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Do you remember when you started to write your own music? What brought that about?
Carole Côté:
I guess that must've been a gift that I had from the very beginning. I've always loved writing, ever since the beginning of time with me. It's very deep-seated, and I'm always writing, but sometimes I just have to stop because it just, it's always ongoing. I honour everyone that I've encountered in my life with this music. They've been my greatest inspiration in my path, and I've got a long ways to go still, and so do they.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
With your journey from the white birch to writing the way that you do and singing the way that you do, how did Vancouver come to be a place where you reside?
Carole Côté:
Here's my next song, From One Town, it explains it all.
From One Town
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Carole Cote right here on Inside Vancouver Opera, nicely, nicely done, beautiful. How did you learn to play the guitar?
Carole Côté:
By ear. When I was very young, I was brought into a little store, and in a toy section, there was plastic wrapped around a plastic ukulele. I went right to it. I grabbed it off the shelf, and I ripped it open. I had this little ukulele in my hands, and I started playing. I've always been drawn to a ukulele, I guess, at that time. I'm just learning a little bit about it right now, because it was the introduction to the guitar. I actually have that original guitar. It's a wooden guitar, but it's not worth repairing, they said, so I still have it as a memory. I'm self-taught, and it's been like that all my life.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
When you sing, I feel that you share so much. Where does music take you?
Carole Côté:
It takes me with my insight. It was given for free from the Creator, just like my soul. Music heals your soul, for a lot of people, I for one. I love to write. I love to do art whenever I have a chance to do it. That's also done by observation, since I was wee. I don't think I'm ever going to stop.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Thank you for this gift today. I have so many questions, but I really want if you could play again. That would be so beautiful.
Carole Côté:
One more.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
One more. Please, one more.
Magnitude of Your Sound
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Wow. What a blessing to have you with us today on Inside Vancouver Opera. For an opera company, we center the human voice at all of our experience. When I hear your voice, it reminds me why we need to keep doing that, so I want to thank you for your gifts and for sharing them with us. If you were going to give us all one piece of advice as to how we could continue to all use our voices in a good way, what do you think that piece of advice would be?
Carole Côté:
Be yourselves in unison to one another. Let music be a healing circle around all nations.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Thank you. Carole will be performing on December 7th at The Kettle Choir's Holiday Concert with guests the Highs & Lows Choir. That's on December 7th from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. That's at the Kettle's Recovery Café on 620 Clark Drive in Vancouver. We'll be sharing details on this beautiful concert.
I really encourage listeners to go and seek out more of Carole's beautiful art, because I think we're all going to be better because we did so. Music has the power to change, has the power to heal, and I believe that today we were healed and moved by Carole's beautiful storytelling and her songs.
As always, I am grateful to our audio producer, Mack McGillivray, and to the Kettle Choir and the Kettle Society, and Coreen Douglas, who helped facilitate this interview.
I hope you'll join us again soon. We have more stories and more music and more celebrations of the human voice, right here on Inside Vancouver Opera. Of course, vancouveropera.ca is the home of all things, where you can buy tickets and discover more. I'll see you at the opera.
Solitude in Thought
It was never so pure as love's embrace, touch with no shame.
It was then I thought I felt free.
I left behind moments, which are now memories, like a grasshopper leaping for every glance of morning sun.
"It's love," I said.
Clouds that pass by, so smooth, so transparent, but yet so intense, and in a warmest feeling of anxiety, "That's love," I said.
Like the wind gave life to your breath, and you were instantly alive, the blood rushing through your heart, pumping seconds of thoughts, thoughts of togetherness, nothing bashful, nothing selfish, never wishing to be apart.
"That," I say, "is love."- Carole Côté
Inside Vancouver Opera is hosted by Ashley Daniel Foot, Vancouver Opera’s Director of Engagement and Civic Practice. Boundlessly creative and fascinated by the way that art is created and presented, Ashley has guided arts organizations across Canada to craft messages and tell unique stories. At Vancouver Opera, Ashley carefully develops all programming that takes place off the mainstage and looks for unique and unexpected ways to highlight the power of opera in the community. He also manages all education, community partnerships, and guides the company’s commitment to justice, equity, reconciliation, and diversity. He’s particularly proud of his recent collaborations with with the Vancouver Public Library, BC Alliance for Arts and Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Rumble Theatre. He is also the co-chair of the City of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Advisory Committee.
Mack McGillivray - Audio Producer