Award-winning modern re-arrangements of rare archival recordings of First Nations songs

This event has now passed

Canadian Indigenous composer and musician Jeremy Dutcher won Canada’s esteemed Polaris Music Prize for best album in 2018 with his debut Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa.

The soaring, emotive collection showcases Dutcher’s re-arrangements of rare turn-of-the-century archival recordings of First Nations songs, revivifying the recorded voices of his ancestors with post-classical piano arrangements and his rich, operatic tenor voice.

A Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, Dutcher studied music at Dalhousie University. With the guidance of his mentor, Elder Maggie Paul, Dutcher researched archival wax cylinder recordings of music by his Wolastoq ancestors, and was inspired to re-arrange the rare, often-dormant music into a reverential “avant-garde neo-opera” (The Guardian).

Singing in Wolastoqey language spoken by his mother and grandmother, Dutcher’s sonorous tenor recalls Zach ‘Beirut’ Condon, while his re-arrangements veer from Western classical and neo-operatic to jazz and trip hop, woven together with powerful samples of the original field recordings.

Running Time:75 minutes - no interval

Presented by Sydney Festival 2020 at City Recital Hall

“A remarkably passionate performance that was very 21st-century, with a deep nod to a century past… There is no one making music like this 27-year-old, classically trained opera tenor and pianist” – NPR 

4 STARS “A sinuous blend of folkloric and modern music” – Financial Times