When NACO and the Canadian Opera Company asked Métis composer Ian Cusson to write a new soprano aria for Louis Riel, they gave him a nearly impossible task. I can just imagine how that offer was presented: “Oh, hey Ian, we want you to come
You’ve noticed that the world is a bit chaotic at the moment, right? Apparently the animation profession has noticed as well. At least that’s artistic director Chris Robinson’s observation about the 2,400-plus entries for this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival, running Sept. 25-29. Reviewing those entries, “I
On Sept. 19, something that is not being performed on the Southam Hall stage is at the centre of an important precedent, says a Queen's University professor who is leading a push to have Indigenous songs repatriated from archives and museums to the communities from
Susan Aglukark was just back from her home town of Arviat on the shore of Hudson Bay. Arviat is the very first Inuit community north of the Manitoba border in Nunavut. She had spent some time on the land gathering cloudberries, watching for beluga whales in
The City of Ottawa has revealed this year’s finalists for the 2019 Ottawa Book Awards and Prix du livre d’Ottawa. The awards recognize the top English and French books published in the past year by local authors. Seventeen authors are on the list. 2019 Ottawa Book Awards
The author Graeme Gibson has died, according to announcement by his publisher Penguin Random House. He was 85. Gibson had been confronting Alzheimer's disease in recent months. His books were published by the imprints McClelland & Stewart and Doubleday Canada including his non-fiction, The Bedside Book of
If you’ve been tracking the buzz around the inaugural season of NAC Indigenous Theatre, you’ll know that Finding Wolastoq Voice, by New Brunswick’s Natalie Sappier, opens Sept. 21. What you may not realize is that this is the first play Sappier has ever written. The solo
There's nothing the mezzo-soprano Marion Newman likes better than embarking from the Toronto Yacht Club with her partner on their Contessa 26 sailboat and spending a day or more on Lake Ontario. Nothing, except singing a piece of music that connects her to her heritage as an Indigenous
Barbara Croall is an Odawa First Nations composer who is also a teacher and a performer. Her work is rooted in traditional Anishinaabeg teachings while exploring European musical traditions and styles. On Sept. 19, her work, Zasakwaa (There is a Heavy Frost), will be performed
No two ways about it: Opening night of Marie Clements’ play The Unnatural and Accidental Women at the NAC was significant. It marked the revival of a respected writer’s story about murdered Indigenous women that, including its premiere in 2000, has had only a couple of
