Stella Walker is a singer, writer, performer, producer, painter and teacher.
As a writer, performer, producer and singer Stella has many national broadcasts to her credit, specializing in a unique style of comedy involving music, vaudeville, and a whole lot of cardboard props - earning her the title "The Goddess of Oddness".
Her work as a writer and performer has been broadcast nationally on the Comedy Network, Women's Television Network, CBC, CTV, and Bravo!
For the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Stella wrote and starred in an episode of COMICS! shot in Toronto and at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal. She appeared as a girl reporter on the CBC media and technology show Undercurrents and 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 charmed by Mike and alarmed by a boa constrictor.
Her musical absurdism 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.
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.
A native of Vancouver, Stella began voice study with Agnes Stieda at age 16, continuing with Dr. Jacob Hamm, and later intensively with Lucia Constantinescu. Stella sang four seasons in the Vancouver Opera chorus before moving to Toronto in 1993. She studies in Toronto with pianist/coach Brahm Goldhamer, singing in many languages, and also coaches actors and singers.
Stella is a respected interpreter of Yiddish art song. She has worked with North America's best Klezmer musicians and premiered works by Srul Irving Glick, Helen Greenberg and Beyle Schaechter Gottesman. She has sung with the finest musicians in North America and has worked with many singers and Klezmer bands, including the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Dave Wall, and a trail of concerts in Florida with the band Beyond the Pale.
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. Works include an opera libretto Sirens and her 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.
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 23 performers and a singing dog. Her short Hydro Wire Girl aired on the Comedy Network's Canadian Comedy Shorts. 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. She harmonized with her brilliant mother Lillie on the soundtrack of the award-winning film A Feeling Called Glory and wrote lyrics to new jazz compositions with her father - jazz drummer and business maverick Mickey Walker.
Stella is a member of the professional choir at Beth Sholom Synagogue 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. Currently Stella studies with Cantor David Rosen at Beth Radom in Toronto and continues in Jewish studies with Frieda Forman.
She is slowly writing an illustrated memoir: Plastic Squeeze-Toy Carrot. Claims that she is learning to play the clarinet have been investigated and have proven false.
She is slowly writing an illustrated memoir: Plastic Squeeze-Toy Carrot. Claims that she is learning to play the clarinet have been investigated and have proven false.
Stella¹s 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 home-made 42' catamaran off the West Coast with her French ex-husband, working as a Customs Inspector, and manning the emergency phone lines at the R.C.M.P. Stella was 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.
In her next life, Stella will re-appear as a male accountant - family man Bob Smith, with a happy home life and delightful hobbies such as model trains and bird watching.
In her next life, Stella will re-appear as a male accountant - family man Bob Smith, with a happy home life and delightful hobbies such as model trains and bird watching.
Canadian Actor's Equity and ACTRA
Member of the Women's Art Association of Toronto
Member of the Women's Art Association of Toronto
"Take a classically trained opera singer, a comic actor, a dancer, a satirist, a cook, a psychoanalyst, a painter, a puppeteer and a watcher of the weirdness of society and condense them into one person. What do you get? Stella Walker"
The Evening Telegram
St. John's
Newfoundland
St. John's
Newfoundland
Photo: Kati Szephegyi 2008
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