A digital production available online only, presented by the Chan Centre

Read about the virtual experience here.

 

The “brilliant and ambitious” (NPR) music of composer, pianist, and classically trained operatic tenor Jeremy Dutcher is like nothing you’ve ever heard. His bold compositions layer sublime vocal melodies atop cascading piano lines, weaving a rich dialogue between the old and the new through vibrant reimaginings of the traditional songs of his ancestors.

A member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, Dutcher studied music in Halifax before taking a deep dive into the archives at the Canadian Museum of History where he began transcribing forgotten songs from 1907 wax cylinders. “I’m doing this work because there’s only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left,” he says. “If you lose the language, you’re not just losing words; you’re losing an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world.”

Full of reverence for his roots and teeming with the urgency of modern-day struggles of resistance, Dutcher’s debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa earned him a 2018 Polaris Music Prize and a reputation as one of the brightest lights in Canada’s Indigenous renaissance. His bold compositions and raw, affecting performances celebrate the power and importance of a scarce and sacred language—Indigenous Futurism at its finest.

 

 

"Beautiful, celebratory and very much alive."

Exclaim Magazine

 

Filmed in Montreal, Quebec in August 2020.

 

This virtual event is presented in collaboration with UBC’s Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the UBC School of Music as part of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts.