The Tenors: Fraser Walters On Vocal Group's Global Success, Covering Queen And Adele's 'Special Voice' [EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW]

The voices of The Tenors have rung out from stages across the globe, with the vocal quartet holding concerts in five continents and making more than 150 worldwide TV appearances. They have sung for the Obamas at the National Christmas Tree Lighting and for Queen Elizabeth at the ITV Diamond Jubilee Show and at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. They have shared arenas with a staggering list of superstars including Paul McCartney, Andrea Bocelli, Sting and Elton John.

The group - Victor Micallef, Clifton Murray, Remigio Pereira and Fraser Walters - has connected to an ever-expanding audience thanks to the singers' virtuosic abilities to deliver everything from a classic aria to a beloved pop tune. On The Tenors' fourth album, "Under One Sky," the group worked for a year and a half in Los Angeles, Nashville and Ontario with a whopping seven producers including David Foster (Michael Buble, Celine Dion), Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Alice Cooper) and Keith Thomas (Blake Shelton, Luther Vandross). The process paid immense dividends, as the record debuted atop both Billboard's Classical Albums and Classical Crossover Albums charts upon its release in June and finds the group continuing to perfect that balance.

"We'll go from a list of 300 songs, literally, and everything from well-loved favorites like some that ended up on our record like 'You Are So Beautiful' that Joe Cocker made famous or 'Lean On Me' or the Queen song 'Who Wants To Live Forever,'" Walters recently told HNGN. "And then there's also original songs on that list and songs that have been written for The Tenors by other songwriters as well, so there's quite the range of music in the end, because have something from 'Besa Me Mucho,' a very well-loved famous Spanish song, or a song like 'Granada' from the operatic repertoire, all the way to songs we've written ourselves, something with a driving dance beat like 'Drowning In Love,' so it's pretty cool to see the range."

Walters recently chatted with HNGN in the midst of a tour that will take them across the U.S. and their native Canada (they were previously known as The Canadian Tenors) about how his sports career intersected with his musical career, crafting an epic video for "Who Wants To Live Forever" and his love for everyone from Debussy to Dave Matthews Band.

The title track, "Under One Sky" was intended to be a theme song for the PanAm Games. How was it inspired by your experience on Canada's national track team?

That song kind of took on a life of its own. The idea was to compose something that reflected that values of the PanAm Games. It was something I experience in my athletic life. I was fortunate to run on the national team in Canada, I ran the 400-meter hurdles and was involved in the PanAm junior games, and so it was really just thinking how the world comes together for these events, whether it's the Olympics or the PanAm games. The record company really loved it and it ended up becoming the title track of the album, and the lyrics do take on a bigger meaning when thinking about some of the chaos that's in our world.

A lot of our fans have often listened to The Tenors because we inspire maybe a change in their life or they're going through a tough time. The feedback that we receive is really incredible on social media and through our website and so on, so we know that our audiences take comfort in the music that we create, and we're very fortunate that they use it as a catalyst for change in their own lives or just as a friend to sort of lean on.

You recently released the video for "Who Wants To Live Forever," which is really dramatic. Tell us about the making of the video.

We were pretty excited about that one. We went over to Europe for some shows and played the O2 Arena in Prague, and while we were there, we hooked up with a great film company who have done some great work. They're a young crew of people and we sort of took a chance on each other and said we want to make this epic 6-and-a-half-minute video for "Who Wants To Live Forever." It's obviously an incredible song from Queen and it's very hard to try to beat Freddie Mercury and Queen's version of it, so we wanted to make it our own and it's a pretty sweeping arrangement that involves classical tones, some fugueal material that you might hear in Bach, and it's quite a virtuosic piano part that Victor plays, and Remi is on classical guitar and actually he plays electric guitar live as well.

We were thrilled to be joined by Lindsey Sterling on that track, she's a YouTube sensation who's got millions of subscribers, and she agreed to join us on that track. We met her at a night called One Night For One Drop with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas a couple years back and said, hey, it would be great to work together at some point. And this was the perfect project, because if you see her videos she loves to dress up and sort of do that fantasy world type of treatment, so it was the perfect location, we were at a beautiful castle on the outskirts of Prague.

What was it like singing "You Are So Beautiful" with your wife Kelly Levesque on the album?

It was a very special one. Walter Afanasieff arranged that song with us, and he's a real genius when it comes to tonal harmonies and different colors in an arrangement. He called my wife up on a day that I was leaving Los Angeles and asked her to come in and put a demo down for this track, so she only did one or two passes of a vocal, but when it was sent to all of us and we heard it, it was pretty cool and pretty unanimous. Everyone was saying wow, we need to include that. So she essentially sang herself onto the record. which was a pretty amazing thing.

How would you describe your concerts, particularly on the current tour?

It's an exciting thrill ride, really. It starts with an incredible amount of energy. There are a lot of nuances. As we like to say, there are a lot of hills and valleys. We create builds and tension and great momentum, and then we bring it back down and make it really intimate. We have sort of campfire moments where you'll hear some almost folkier style of music with acoustic guitars, and it features us on instruments, which is a nice thing for this tour. We really have shown more of our musical side playing guitar, bass, piano, Wurlitzers, everything kind of under the sun. And it kind of amps up to a finish with us singing one of the most epic tenor arias, "Nessun Dorma," that The Three Tenors made famous, and of course "Hallelujah," which has been a huge song for us and what we sang on the Oprah Winfrey show when we really made our break in the U.S., and that's quite a powerful intimate moment. And then we finish with "Under One Sky," get everyone up and dancing.

It's a fun rollercoaster that everyone seems to be enjoying so much. Another important point is that we've taken a huge step up with regard to the production levels, so we've got a huge screen that we're carrying around North America in the back of 18-wheeler trucks, and we've got a couple buses, so we spared no expense on bringing the best experience that we could to our audiences far and wide.

The Tenors have shared the stage with so many legendary people from Andrea Bocelli to Paul McCartney to Sting. What are some of your top memories of those moments?

Well, I mean Sting was a thrill. I've always loved his music, both with The Police and his own music, which is kind of a cool mix of pop, folk and world music. He's got just a very kind of cool, chill energy, and to have such a long and prolific career in so many different styles of music and forms of art - he's done the theater thing and opera and obviously killed it on the rock scene for so many years. To be surprised by Celine Dion on the Oprah show has to be one of the biggest highlights of our career. We encourage anyone who's reading this interview to check out the YouTube link with Celine and The Tenors on Oprah, because it's chill-worthy when you see us turn and realize that we're being surprised by one of the world's greatest singers. It was enough to be on the Oprah show to begin with, and we were trying to keep it together and not fall over when we were so shocked that she was on stage. Paul McCartney, I mean, it's hard to say much beyond the fact that this guy is an absolute legend. To be able to meet one of The Beatles, let alone play on the same stage as him, that's definitely one that will go down in our books as one of the best days of our collective lives.

Who else would you like to sing with?

If we're thinking of someone younger, maybe Adele. She's such a special voice, and she's got such wonderful taste and she really knows her sound. I think that'd be a pretty thrilling combination. She'd be high on our list. Someone like Renee Fleming from the operatic world who we have a lot of respect for. She's been on the top of her game at the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala.

What type of musical background and training did you have?

My mom was a singer and an actress, so when I was about 5 I was introduced to the stage, and I was in the children's chorus of one of the musicals that she was in, and I sort of joke that it was just glorified babysitting because she needed someone to take care of the kids while she was on stage. But that musical bug stayed with me, because I ended up taking violin lessons and taking piano lessons and was lucky to manage a sporting career, playing soccer in college and also the national track and field team, so I was pretty busy going through school, and I studied in Australia for a time in high school as well, and when I was over there I did the role as Jesus in "Jesus Christ Superstar," so I've been very, very lucky over the years singing every year and toured since I was a kid and did a lot of classical and pop work growing up, so this is the perfect project to be able to show off those different colors.

What instruments do you play?

I play bass, guitar and piano.

What music do you listen to for fun?

It's across the board. One of my favorite bands growing up was Dave Matthews Band, kind of an acoustic rock jam band, but they just put on an incredible live show. I was actually at Coldplay's first show in North America where there was only like 200 or 300 people there when very little was known of them, so I was in sort of on the ground floor of watching them grow. Stevie Wonder, I mean he's kind of one of my icons that I look up to, he's just got such an incredible career and totally prolific and an incredible style with really upbeat songs but beautiful ballads as well. Like I mentioned, Sting. I love The Beatles. So there's quite a wide range of stuff. I used to sing Nirvana in a band when I was 13, so it ranges from that all the way to the classical stuff that I love to perform and listen to, classical piano stuff, Debussy and Chopin, so I've got probably one of the most random iTunes playlists that exists.

What's next for The Tenors?

We're excited for a Christmas song coming out called "When We Are Together." That one will be hitting radio in November and we'll have a video for that one as well. [Editor's note: The song was released Nov. 13.] Great touring for the rest of the year, this is a huge undertaking for us, we're covering 75 cities in North America and then going internationally as well, so we just want to share this new music with as many people as we can, and the feedback has been incredible so far, and we're just incredible grateful to do what we do. I think that's probably the most important point, that we feel blessed and we realize that every day before we go on stage. We do a huddle with the group just to get centered and to basically give thanks, and the audiences I think feel that energy, because they keep coming back for more, which is amazing.

THE TENORS NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

Wed 11/18 Pittsburgh, PA Byham Theater

Thu 11/19 Shippensburg, PA H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center

Sat 11/21 North Bethesda, MD Strathmore

Sun 11/22 Bethlehem, PA Sands Bethlehem Event Center

Tue 11/24 Toronto, ONT. Air Canada Centre

Fri 11/27 Ottawa, ONT. NAC

Sat 11/28 Ottawa, ONT. NAC

Mon 11/30 Peterborough, ONT. Memorial Center

Tue 12/1 Quebec City, PQ. Palais MontCalm

Fri 12/4 Hamilton, ONT. First Ontario Centre

Sun 12/6 Kingston, ONT. K Rock Centre