Measha Brueggergosman says she’s literally the poster child for anything and everything that can go wrong with your heart.
It’s hard to disagree.
In 2009, the Fredericton-raised opera star had emergency surgery in Toronto to repair her aorta.
In June this year, she had double-bypass surgery in Calgary. While she was waiting for the operation out west, her father, Rev. Sterling Gosman, back in Atlantic Canada died from the exact same condition.
Some people, when life gives them lemons, make lemonade. Brueggergosman defiantly makes a sparkling mojito.
This week, she’s done four holiday pops concerts over three days with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. She’s also in the final stages of preparing an album of more contemporary material.
Fittingly, she’s also using her voice to promote a Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada campaign focusing on women’s heart health.
“The thing is this: There is a massive gap that exists between the research that we have available to us for men’s heart health and women’s heart health,” Brueggergosman said during an interview in Halifax.
“Up until this point, the research has essentially treated women as miniature men, which of course is ludicrous.”
The intent of the initiative is to fund research to bridge that knowledge gap.
“Until we have the information, this is what women need to cling to: they need to cling to the fact that they know their own bodies, and they have to advocate for themselves,” she said.
“The needle just needs to move a little bit in the female direction.”
Brueggergosman, who has based her busy, globetrotting career from her Falmouth home for several years, said her heart has never been stronger.
“I honestly am a medical lottery winner consistently.”
That’s certainly one way of looking at it, but she prominently espouses her Christian faith as the ultimate support system.
“I, of course, have a very strong faith, and I know that I’ve been put in this world for a very specific purpose and a destiny that can only be fulfilled by me, so things as trivial as rebuilding my body or death or worrying or anxiety, none of that stuff is of any interest to me.”
Brueggergosman, 42, keeps an old-fashioned journal that she said she uses every day, crediting the habit with making her a more empathetic person and a better mom to her two young sons.
But she kept her fans updated on her progress in Calgary with lengthy Facebook posts, a longstanding practice that she sees as a real-time extension of her 2017 autobiography, Something Is Always On Fire: My Life So Far.
“The reason I like putting those posts up is because I wrote a book about my life. It was an incredibly intimate book that I’m terribly proud of, and I didn’t know that I would reveal so much.
“Yet, I knew that it was in telling the truth and being very specific about my own experience, it’s that specificity that makes it universal. Now I understand that writing that book granted me licence to be constantly open.”
The recent heart procedure kept her off the stage for three and a half months. Her first concert performance was in October in Ontario.
“I needed some time, and I also needed a goal,” she said.
“I went and did a week-long intensive, practising thrice-a-day yoga course in the south of Spain just to reopen my body.”
Her body is her instrument, and she was confident her voice would still be there after she healed.
“I know what singing is supposed to be,” she said.
“What you work to build is the machine that makes the sound.”
She’s wasting little time getting up to speed. Brueggergosman’s forthcoming album started taking shape in the fall of 2018 during a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta. To be titled Measha Jazz, it will shine a light on black women of the 20th century like Nina Simone who had backgrounds in classical music but weren't able to pursue careers in that field.
And while Brueggergosman might look like the dictionary definition of a diva, she insists she doesn’t just wake up like that. Knowing that a photographer would be on hand for the interview, she arrived prepared, sporting sparkling earrings that would make impressive dollhouse chandeliers, as well as lush, expertly enhanced eyelashes.
And, just like a regular person, the idea of a ticket or tow can spur her into action. News that the street parking rules were about to change brought the Q-and-A to a quick close, along with a request to take her keys while she gathered up her stuff.
“OK, listen, I’d better go. Will you go stand next to my car?”
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