Ty Koch is doing scales.
“Zee-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh,” he sings, starting at middle C.
“Zee-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh,” he sings, moving up to D major.
Higher and higher he climbs until he reaches the world of countertenors, the male equivalent of a mezzo-soprano.
Underlying each of the notes is a strength and a timbre that belies their stratospheric range. Instead of getting weaker the more he pushes himself upwards, Koch’s voice is gathering power with each successive scale.
When he stops at high A, his face relaxes into a smile and he’s back to being an 18-year-old kid doing something he enjoys. Singing is fun.
On Dec. 2, Koch will be a guest soloist at the Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s performance of Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Joining them for an evening that also includes works by Gustav Holst, Anton Bruckner and Alice Parker, are Lani Krantz on harp and choir accompanist Barry Yamanouchi.
Koch has been singing since he could walk but began getting serious about music at the age of 10 when he joined the British Columbia Boys Choir. A graduate of Eric Hamber secondary school, he’s now enrolled in the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Academy of Music’s opera program, studying for his Bachelor of Music degree through a joint online academic program with Thompsons River University.
“It’s not just a passing fancy,” Edette Gagné, one of his voice teachers (and the artistic director of both the Vivaldi Chamber Choir and the British Columbia Boys Choir), says of Koch’s commitment to music.
“He wanted to make music his career and by finding his countertenor range, we found a way to do that,” she says. “It’s a long haul and he’s eyes wide open but he’s also passionate enough to put in the time and energy to make the magic happen.”
Most boys lose their ability to sing high notes when they hit puberty. Koch was lucky in that not only did his voice change at an early age — 13 — but his transition into falsetto stabilized quickly, giving him a jump start to exploring his voice’s high range.
Inspiration, however, didn’t first come from listening to some of the great countertenors such as the late Alfred Deller and modern superstar Andreas Scholl. Instead, the early influencers in Koch’s love of vocal pyrotechnics were Prince, Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire, and Jeff Buckley.
“I idolized them and loved their sound,” he says, admiring how they could reach “these ridiculously high notes with such ease.”
A natural baritone, Koch also loves the blues for the depth of their emotional range; in fact, his first recording is a soon-to-be-released self-titled EP of his own blues songs.
“I’ll spend hours upon hours listening to old recordings,” he . He learned how to play the slide guitar by listening to Elmore James and Duane Allman records.
As serious as he is about classical music, Koch will never turn his back on this other musical love. He can’t. “I’d feel incomplete if I wasn’t doing both of them,” he says.
Gagné says members of the Vivaldi Chamber Choir have been deeply impressed by Koch’s talent. At a performance this past weekend on the North Shore, a friend of hers was sitting in the pews as Koch joined the procession singing its way to the church nave. “She said she could feel the power of his voice when he walked by,” she says. “The sheer power of the voice coming through the male aperture but at the soprano range is exhilarating and, for some people, a little overwhelming to start with.”
Countertenors aren’t men who sing in a woman’s range. In early music, it was the other way around. Women weren’t allowed to sing in public so all songs were written for male voices only. Although a young boy could start off singing those high notes, puberty usually signalled the end of such angelic range. For centuries, countertenors were often castrati — men who were castrated before their voices lowered. They were stars of the music world.
Today, becoming a countertenor is achieved by dint of sheer will and practice. And when you love what you’re doing as much as Ty Koch does, that’s not a sacrifice at all.
The Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s A Ceremony of Carols takes place Dec. 2, 8 p.m. at St. Helen’s Anglican Church, 4405 West Eighth Avenue.
