The 2023/2024 season brought a number of prototypes of projects to life, including the devised work Belladonna (Fawn Chamber Creative) and an autoethnographical multifaceted series entitled Project T with its first public performance in New York (ChamberQUEER). Teiya was noted for their “bright, rich tone” and “always pitch perfect” (La Scena Musicale) as the soprano soloist in Verdi’s Requiem with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

For the 2022/2023 season Teiya was a resident artist with re:Naissance Opera’s Indie Fest, developing new works including Imaginarium; Inferno, a new hip hop opera by Omari Newton and Amy Lee Lavoie; and Eurydice Fragments. He also covered the title role in Salome with the Canadian Opera Company, and returned to the COC to perform the Priestess and Bartender in the premiere of a new queer opera, Pomegranate. Notable performances were also the soprano solos in Beethoven‘s Symphony No. 9 (Vancouver and Kingston Symphony Orchestras) and Orff’s Carmina Burana (Amadeus Choir). 

During the global pandemic (2020-2021), Teiya also created their first video series 19 VIDEOS FOR COVID-19 which garnered them the nickname, “the balcony soprano” (Toronto Star). Other content during this period included the digital debut of the ongoing Butterfly Project (Confluence Concerts, Amplified Opera), and various digital offerings including S.O.S. Sketch Opera Singers (Tapestry Opera), Electric Messiah (Soundstreams), and Symphonic Pride (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra). 

Within his own artistic practice Teiya explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race using elements of opera, theater, and electronics, as both creator and performer, noted in their first original work The Queen In Me which had its world premiere in June 2022 at the Canadian Opera Company (with co-producers Amplified Opera, Nightwood Theatre, and Theatre Gargantua). The Queen In Me was a sold-out success and was nominated for five Dora Mavor Moore awards (2022), and has since toured to the Belfast International Arts Festival, and had a sold-out run at the National Arts Centre (2023) where it was praised as “a radical, innovative piece of operatic art.” Click here to learn more about The Queen In Me.

Head over to Teiya’s website to learn more about his work as a creator, including Little Mis(s)gender, 夜 Yoru (or When the Night Becomes One Sound), and River Island; as co-founder of Amplified Opera (Canadian Opera Company’s first Disruptor-in-Residence), and as a consultant and vocal clinician.