Barbara Hannigan, James Cameron win Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards

TORONTO — Barbara Hannigan has had what most people would consider a very busy year: dozens of performances across the globe, an album release and several prestigious awards.

For the soprano and conductor, though, it’s just another 12 months in the books.

“This is kind of what my years are like,” she says. “Every year is very full and always has been since I was a kid. It was full, when I was a child, of music lessons and community events and school concerts and then as I grew up and moved into being a professional musician, I’ve kept up the pace.”

Though the volume of engagements isn’t unusual, Hannigan is nonetheless being recognized for the year’s work.

She was announced Thursday as the recipient of the National Arts Centre award from the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. The prize celebrates extraordinary accomplishments in the previous performance year.

Meanwhile, the latest crop of lifetime achievement award recipients, also announced Thursday, are “Titanic” director James Cameron; Franco-Manitoban singer-songwriter Daniel Lavoie; set and costume designer Susan Benson; dancer-choreographer Sylvain Émard; and actor-producer Tonya Williams.

Hannigan said she was “extremely moved” to learn she had been selected for the award.

“It’s a wonderful thing to be recognized in this way by my own country,” she said on a video call from a hotel room in Cleveland, where she was preparing to conduct two performances.

But Hannigan, whose honours include the Order of Canada, a Juno, a Grammy and a variety of international awards, takes a pragmatic approach to prizes.

Take, for example, the evening last May when she received the Polar Music Prize, a prestigious Swedish award.

“I did my first day of rehearsal in Copenhagen. I flew to Stockholm. I went through this wonderful event of being honoured. And the morning after I got the award, at 7 a.m. I was on a plane back to Denmark and in front of the orchestra by 10,” she recalled.

“Back to work. The awards are wonderful, but the awards are for the work that I do.”

That work has evolved over the years. She started as a youngster, inspired by her family and music teachers, before training at the University of Toronto. She made her professional singing debut at age 19.

At age 40, she added conducting to her repertoire, pioneering a style in which she conducted and sang simultaneously — facing the orchestra while a camera broadcast her face to the audience.

“Because in classical music your engagements are booked two, three years in advance, I was just kind of fitting in conducting engagements here and there at the beginning, until at a certain point I was conducting more than I was singing,” she said.

Since then, she’s made an effort to book more singing engagements, because she wants to use her voice while it’s still at its strongest.

She’s also released numerous albums, most recently “Electric Fields” with pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque, which came out just weeks before Hannigan won the Polar Music Prize.

Over the course of her career, Hannigan has also focused on mentorship.

“I’d been giving masterclasses and teaching and helping out from a very young age,” she said, describing helpfulness as being in her DNA.

But as she became more established and developed relationships with institutions all over the world, she started to formalize that mentorship.

In 2017, she founded Equilibrium Young Artists, which offers professional development for young musicians. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she created another initiative, Momentum, aimed at platforming young artists at a time when performances were severely limited.

She takes leadership very seriously, she said. She has friends who are business leaders, Olympic-level coaches and pilots.

“We’re exchanging ideas (about) what is it to lead a team and what it is to want to better yourself individually and then make sure that you’re also looking after the whole team,” she said.

She’s now taking that leadership to the next level, as she prepares to become chief conductor and artistic director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra later this year.

“My responsibility as chief conductor is of course looking after my own programs and my own relationship with (the orchestra) as a conductor. As artistic director, it’s looking after everybody’s programs and looking after everyone that comes,” she said.

“It’s a very big responsibility.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2026.