BIOGRAPHY

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Mia Harris is a multi-disciplinary contemporary artist who works with voice, movement, performance art, theatre, film, and most recently painting and sculpting.  She was born in 1979 on an apple orchard in Cawston, British Columbia, Canada, where she fell in love with nature and the imagination.  After studying classical voice and opera at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, Mia returned to Penticton where she now lives and works.  

As a classical singer Mia enjoyed working with the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, Bumbershoot Theatre, Opera Kelowna, Musaic Vocal Ensemble, Vivace Chorale, Aura Chamber Choir, Soundstage Productions, Penticton Community Concerts and the West Coast Symphony in Vancouver.  She has had operatic engagements with Toronto Operetta Theatre, Opera in Concert (Toronto), Saskatoon Opera, Burnaby Lyric Opera among others.

 

In 2013 Mia began to explore her voice outside of the classical context and wrote, directed, produced and performed a solo performance art piece entitled “Biography of a Voice” which featured vocal improvisation, theatre and movement. She enjoys learning new works and sang in White Wines, a radio play based on a work by Gertrude Stein for the Radio Free Stein project in Vancouver. She also appeared in the opera excerpts at the Vancouver New Music 40th Anniversary Retrospective. She has been a part of concerts at the Dream Cafe and sang in a Leonard Cohen Tribute concert with internationally known poet, Shane Koyzan. 

 

Mia is the artist in residence at the Penticton Art Gallery where she will be exploring themes for her next performance project is “Vocal Improvisation and Motion-activated Electronic Sound Interaction” (VIMES Interaction). The aim of this project is to research our relationship with technology and question our definition of nature using voice, gesture controlled sound, interactive costuming, sculpture, installation, theatre, movement, speech synthesis and to write the first draft of a performance piece.