Bio

STELLA WALKER

PRODUCTIONS

BIO

Stella Walker is a multi-disciplinary powerhouse. She's a professional singer, writer, performer, producer, director, painter, comedian, songwriter and voice coach based in Toronto, Canada.

Born in Vancouver, her family’s background is a mix of Red River Anglo-Métis, Eastern European and British Isles.

As a writer, performer, producer and singer, Stella has many national broadcasts to her credit. Her work as a writer and performer has been broadcast nationally on the Comedy Network, Women's Television Network, CBC, CTV, and Bravo!

Her one woman comedic musical: Stellavision - the 3 D World of Stella Walker was produced in 2018 at the John Candy Box Theatre at Second City Toronto and at Keno City, Yukon for their centennial with support of the Yukon Arts Council and the remote community of Keno City, Yukon.

She starred in an episode of CBC television's COMICS! shot in Toronto and at the Just For Laugh's Festival in Montreal.

In association with Insight Productions, Stella produced and starred in The Merman-Off, a one-hour comedy special for the Comedy Network. The over-the-top tribute to the spirit of Ethel Merman features twenty-three performers and a singing dog. Her short Hydro Wire Girl aired on the Comedy Network's Canadian Comedy Shorts.

Stella's short Hydro Wire Girl aired on the Comedy Network's Canadian Comedy Shorts.She reported on media and technological trends on the CBC TV show Undercurrents in commentaries. Stella posed as a pundit on CBC's Straight from the Hip and Not Just the News, and chatted on Open Mike with Mike Bullard where she was alternately charmed by Mike Bullard and alarmed by a boa constrictor.

Her absurdist style of comedy involves multiple characters, sight gags, original music, elegant vaudeville, and cardboard props - earning her the title "The Goddess of Oddness".

Her work has been broadcast on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves, RadioSonic, Sunday Showcase, Morningside, Radio Noon, Definitely Not the Opera, Later the Same Day, Realtime, and Madly Off in all Directions.

Works include an opera libretto Sirens and her first one woman play - The Goddess of Oddness Investigates the Science of Romance directed by Andy Jones. She appeared as Trix the Aviatrix in the hit musical The Drowsy Chaperone at Theatre Passe Muraille.

Stella makes a brief appearance in the Rhombus Media television show Slings and Arrows and can be heard warbling on Nancy White¹s C.D. Stickers on Fruit. Stella wrote lyrics to new jazz compositions with her father - jazz drummer and business maverick, the late Mickey Walker.

Stella has appeared in the Ashkenaz Festival, Lisa Merchant's March of Dames, The Frostbite Music Festival, Milk International Children's Festival, Dancing on the Edge, Women in View, Du Maurier World Stage and Banff Television Festival.

For writing and presenting works for the stage, Stella has received grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council, and The Laidlaw Foundation.

Stella is currently recording her first album of original songs "Earthling Sings, The Songs of Stella Walker" at Kensington Sound in Toronto and writing a memoir about her childhood for publication with the working title "Dreamland Motel".

Stella's paintings are widely collected.

Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Stella came from a musical family. Her father Mickey Walker was a jazz drummer and entrepreneur. Stella loaded in the drums at his gigs and hung out in jazz clubs into late nights as a child. Her mother, Lillie Holeksa had a beautiful singing voice and was a natural harmonizer. They sang together on the soundtrack of the award-winning film A Feeling Called Glory.

Stella began voice study with Agnes Stieda at age 16, continuing with Dr. Jacob Hamm, and later intensively with Romanian opera singer Lucia Constantinescu. Stella sang four seasons in the Vancouver Opera chorus before moving to Toronto in 1993. Stella sings in many languages and is considered an expert voice coach, specializing in repairing damaged voices.

Stella's late mother Lillie was likely Jewish. Stella has specialized in Jewish music, particularly Yiddish art song. She has worked with North America's finest musicians and premiered new works in Yiddish by Srul Irving Glick, Helen Greenberg and Beyle Schaechter Gottesman. Stella has worked with many singers and Klezmer bands including Dave Wall and the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band and Beyond the Pale.

Stella was a member of the professional choir at Beth Sholom Synagogue for a decade, under the direction of Brahm Goldhamer, with Cantor Eric Moses. She has studied cantorial music with Cantor Maissner at Holy Blossom Temple with support from The Toronto Council of Hazzanim and the Art Vogt Memorial Scholarship for Voice. Stella studied with Cantor David Rosen at Beth Radom in Toronto where she had an opportunity to lead services. She trained privately in Jewish studies with Frieda Forman.

Stella studied the Cree language at the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver, then at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, where she studied N & L dialects, volunteered, was an Elder's Helper and substitute Cree teacher. She was given her name in ceremony.

In July 2012 she attended Cree Immersion through First Nations University of Canada at University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, studying the Y (Plains Cree) dialect. She continues to learn the Swampy Cree/N dialect which is the language of one branch of her ancestors.

Stella is a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation through her paternal grandmother's lineage. Her father's mother, Dorothy Blanche Rebecca Dolina Rebecca McLeod, (known jokingly in the family as "She of Many Names") was descended from a significant lineage of marriages between Hudson Bay Company employees and Cree women.

Stella was one of twenty-four artist educators selected from across Ontario to participate in a pilot Artist Educator Course - an Indigenous perspective on arts education, with the support of elders, the Royal Conservatory of Music, The Ontario Arts Council, and the Debajehmujig Theatre Group on Manitoulin Island in May 2014.

Stella's first show biz appearance was as the poster girl for Taffy Toppin', a product you may have seen in the dairy section of your neighbourhood IGA in 1966. Her life story includes surviving a bohemian childhood, leaving home at 17 to work in a silver mill in Keno City, Yukon, a stint as a cook's helper at an oil rig in Alberta, sailing a 42' catamaran off the West Coast built by her French ex-husband, working as a Customs Inspector, and manning the emergency phone lines at the R.C.M.P. Amazingly, Stella was once security-cleared to the secret level.

Her show biz low point - at the Pacific National Exhibition, she played Diamond Lil accompanied by a mechanical guitar-playing pig. Judged "too operatic" by her boss, she was fired. It was all uphill from there.

Canadian Actor's Equity, ACTRA, SOCAN

Citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation

Rabbit Magic

2008

12" x 36"

"Bend" is social media not yet invented.

Stella in the Midway

Photo: Derek Stryland

The Toronto Star

"A virtuoso vocalist in her own right"

Leatrice Spevack

The Toronto Star

"Walker never, never, never (did I say never) bores...she may sing, dance, joke, gab, psychoanalyze, or a mix of all of the aforementioned, but she'll never do what is expected of her."

Andrew Clark

The Evening Telegram

"Take a classically trained opera singer, a comic actor, a dancer, a satirist, a cook, a psychoanalyst, a puppeteer and a watcher of the weirdness of society and condense them into one person. What do you get? Stella Walker.

Mark Vaughan-Jackson

"Tragic victim of her own pear-shaped tones"

Canadian jazz singer John Alcorn

(anecdotal)

The Muse Review,

St. John's Newfoundland

"Stella Walker ...

the Goddess of Oddness

has mastered the art of multiplicity."

Melissa Murphy

The Vancouver Courier

"A diamond in a colossal coal pile"

Mike Usinger