From the Northwest coast of Alaska comes an artistic surprise

by Kathleen McCoy  |   

Kira Eckenweiler

Kira Eckenweiler in a lynx parka. Her father caught the lynx and made the coat for her. (Photo courtesy of Kira Eckenweiler)

10-27-2015: Read the latest update on Kira's career at the end of this story.

Most Alaskans wouldn't link the word opera with Unalakleet, a community of 700 located just at the mouth of its namesake river on Norton Sound.

Maybe not, until now. UAA vocal performance student and coloratura soprano Kira Eckenweiler grew up in Unalakleet. Dad Gary Eckenweiler moved there to teach school more than two decades ago and married Willa, a local Inupiaq woman. Kira, 21, is the youngest of their two daughters.

Last month, while home working her third summer counting fish for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Kira was joined by UAA piano professor Tim Smith for a concert in Unalakleet's Frank A. Degnan High School gym; he on the piano, she at the mic. Together they performed selections from Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" and Mozart's "The Magic Flute."

Kira Eckenweiler performing in Unalakleet, her home village.

Performing in Unalakleet with UAA professor of piano Tim Smith. Local music teacher Timothy Wolcott turns pages whlle Kira sings opera selections. Smith and Eckenweiler timed the concert to perform for 300 Bering Strait School District teachers there for an inservice in August.

Smith and Eckenweiler planned the performance during a school district in-service training, a rare moment when more than 300 teachers from all over the Bering Strait School District would be in Unalakleet. They wanted to show teachers what's possible for a passionate and talented Alaskan from a remote community.

But it wasn't just schoolteachers who came. The bleachers were packed, "more than even at a basketball game," Gary Eckenweiler said. People were leaning in, "engaged with the music," said Timothy Wolcott, the local music teacher who arrived four years ago from New York to encounter Kira as a high school senior. 'They were really listening."

Tears followed the recital, but not from Kira. Smith, Wolcott and Kira's parents all recounted how community members moved toward the young vocalist, wiping their eyes. "I don't think people expect to hear opera come out of a village girl's mouth," Kira said later. "I am so glad people were touched by my music."

Some of that emotion may be linked to a custom Willa Eckenweiler shared with me over the phone from Unalakleet. "We have a naming process in Inupiat culture," she said, "a way to keep a name alive in the community."

Willa's mother and an aunt chose an Inupiat name for baby Kira-Apaachuaq. The woman who bore that name, a choir singer in church, had died shortly before Kira's birth. She'd been a community leader, bringing Inupiat songs into church services, and she was also a close friend of the two older women.

"I think, especially among the older people here," said Gary, "they see Kira, and they think of her."

A rural Alaskan comfortable with subsistence fishing and even calling and shooting her own moose, Kira has grown into an artist. "I want to sing opera for the rest of my life," she said this week between classes at UAA. "I want to go all around the world, singing opera."

Kira Eckenweiler

Rehearsing in a vocal master class at UAA. (Photo by Phillip Hall/University of Alaska Anchorage)

Mari Hahn and Kira Eckenweiler during a vocal master class at UAA.

Mari Hahn and Kira Eckenweiler during a vocal master class at UAA. (Photo by Phillip Hall/University of Alaska Anchorage)

She'll perform this season with Anchorage Opera. In December she has a secondary role in "Madame Butterfly." In April, she performs a lead role in Mozart's "Impresario," the tale of an entrepreneur auditioning two competing singers. He hires them both, but what follows is a battle royale over who gets top billing and the biggest salary. Kira plays one of those singers in this comedy about artists and vanity.

Her dad's voice has a hint of both pride and sadness over the phone from Unalakleet. "I think this may be the last summer we'll see her at home," Gary said. "She's set her sights on traveling."

Indeed, Kira is preparing audition pieces to apply for a summer music program in Europe. Italy is her goal; it gets her closer to learning Italian, the language of many operas.

All this, from the little girl who would sing her way through long family canoe trips. Who won the school talent contest in fifth grade by singing Disney's "Pocahontas." Who, in high school, set her mind to winning not just regionals, but statewide competitions for her singing, including earning one of only three "command performance" slots for vocalists her senior year.

That performance program from 2011 is peppered with names from big Alaska high schools: Dimond, Lathrop, West Valley, South, Palmer and Grace Christian. Unalakleet appears only once, next to Kira's name.

"She's probably, hands down, the most gifted singer I have ever worked with," said Mari Hahn, an associate professor of music at UAA. "She's got depth, strength, courage." Hahn acknowledged the power of supportive parents and a home community that will come out to hear her sing.

Counting fish, and singing opera, along a tributary of the Unalakleet River.

Counting fish, and singing opera, along a tributary of the Unalakleet River. (Photo courtesy of Kira Eckenweiler)

Opera is a hugely competitive field, Hahn said. She predicted Kira will spend the next few years at a larger music center, polishing her skills and preparing for a national or international career. "She has the inner strength and character to withstand all the pressures," Hahn said.

Besides, she quipped, "Kira's the only student who ever told me she needed to miss class to go hunt, then brought me back a big slab of moose for my freezer."

UPDATE: Kira's dream of singing in Europe came true in the summer of 2015. She enrolled in the opera intensive called Oberlin in Italy, based in Arezzo, about one hour from Florence. The intensive is run by the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. A highlight for Kira was learning to speak and sing Italian from native speakers in Arezzo.

This December, she will share the lead role in a new Inupiaq version of Hansel and Gretel to be staged by the UAA Opera Ensemble, in collaboration with Anchorage Opera. Called Aklaq & Nayak-an Alaska Native Adaptation of Hansel & Gretel, it features the adventures of brother and sister Aklaq and Nayak as they venture out into the tundra to look for food. The production will feature music by Englebert Humperdinck and an original libretto by Mari Hahn and Willa Towarak Eckenweiler. The show will run five times from Dec. 11-13. Find out more at the Anchorage Opera website.

A version of this story by Kathleen McCoy appeared in the Alaska Dispatch News on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014. Hear Kira talk about her music career in a podcast from Student Storyboard on KRUA 81.1 FM The Edge recorded Friday, Sept. 12, 2014.

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