Better known outside Olympia, Cyndia Sieden sings at Arts Walk

Those who love Arts Walk, Olympia’s twice-yearly celebration of the community’s creativity, know to expect the unexpected.

Shops and restaurants turn into galleries. Streets become stages. And at the 53rd Arts Walk, a wastewater treatment plant will serve as a concert hall.

Internationally acclaimed soprano Cyndia Sieden will sing Friday (Oct. 7) at the WET Science Center, part of LOTT Clean Water Alliance’s downtown plant.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what to put on social media about the venue, because it’s so unusual,” said Sieden, who’s sung at London’s Royal Opera House and at the Met in New York City. “I’m not sure people would expect that.”

“There are tremendous acoustics in that room,” said Jennifer Bowman of Olympia, the Juilliard-trained pianist who’ll accompany Sieden.

The biggest surprise about the concert is not the venue, but Sieden, who rarely sings here publicly though she’s lived here for nearly 30 years.

“Cyndia Sieden is one of those Olympians who’s better known outside of Olympia,” said Arts Walk organizer Stephanie Johnson. “This is one of those don’t-miss kind of things. I’m super excited.”

In a 2011 review of the New York City Opera’s “Monodramas,” an evening of short operas, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini called Sieden’s performance “dazzling” and praised the “uncanny focus, impressive stamina and ethereal beauty” of her singing.

“Singing beautifully is one thing,” The Washington Post’s Anne Midgette wrote in a review of the same production. “Sieden went the next step into artistry by imbuing every phrase with significance — not self-consciously, but with genuine urgency.”

Sieden came to Olympia to study at The Evergreen State College. She graduated in 1976 in the college’s first graduating class. She then lived in Seattle, San Francisco and New York before returning to Olympia in the late ’80s with then-husband Charles Pailthorp, an Evergreen professor whom, ironically, she met in New York.

But most of her career has been in Europe, where she’s sung with companies in England, France, Germany and Austria, among others. She’s also performed in Asia and Australia.

She’s featured along with the Helsinki Philharmonic on the premiere recording of Finnish composer Sunleif Rasmussen’s Symphony No. 2 “The Earth Anew,” which was released Oct. 1.

She performs often in Seattle, where she’s sung with the Seattle Symphony and the Seattle Opera. She’s an adjunct professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, where she’ll sing Saturday with the university’s Regency Voices.

On Friday’s program are songs by Camille Saint-Saens and Richard Strauss.

“Strauss is kind of a specialty of mine,” Sieden said.

“I won’t be singing opera arias, but I’m deploying all my colors of singing as an opera singer would. I’m singing some great songs.”

She’s particularly excited about three songs by American composer Lee Hoiby. Each is a poem set to music, including Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”

“In your mind, ‘Jabberwocky’ is kind of sing-songy, but the way it’s set, it becomes this dramatic theme,” she said. “I find it riveting the way a song can transform a lyric. It’s really quite wonderful.”

It’s appropriate, too, she said.

“ ‘Jabberwocky’ is totally in honor of this ridiculous election we’re having.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 2:30 AM with the headline "Better known outside Olympia, Cyndia Sieden sings at Arts Walk."