at the Chan Centre
Thu Oct 16 & Fri Oct 17 2014: 7:30 pm
Severn Cullis-Suzuki & Tanya Tagaq Telus Studio Theatre { Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC}
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Severn Cullis-Suzuki and Tanya Tagaq with Jesse Zubot, violin Tonight’s performance will be 70 minutes with no intermission, followed by a short talkback with the artists. The talkback will be moderated by UBC Graduate School of Journalism Assistant Professor Candis Callison, author of How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (available Dec 2014). Please remember to turn off your cell phones, and note that photography and/or recording of any kind is not permitted. Thank you!
Welcome to A Chan Centre series that explores the power of words in performance as an agent of social change and a means of igniting discussion. First, we would like to acknowledge that the Chan Centre is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. In this evening’s performance we present two fascinating women, Severn Cullis-Suzuki and Tanya Taqag, who are passionate about creating positive change and empowering others to do the same. Both use their respective voices in very different ways to explore pressing issues around justice, democracy and sustainability. With the Beyond Words series entering its third season, we decided to experiment with a “non-fiction” version combining music with words that would typically be presented in a lecture format. But not just any music could reflect the daunting challenges that face our society and our planet. The challenges that Severn addresses needed to be paired with music of the same intensity. A contemporary take on the ancient art of throat-singing, as dynamically interpreted by Tanya Taqag, was the perfect match. This performance is an exciting and completely new undertaking. When the Chan Centre conceived of this collaboration, we wanted these two artists to have the opportunity to work together without any influence from us or pre-conceived ideas of what the result would be. We are thrilled that they agreed to accept this challenge and that you are here tonight with us to see it brought to life on stage.
Wendy Atkinson Rentals and Programming Manager & curator of the Beyond Words series
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Severn Cullis-Suzuki Severn Cullis-Suzuki is an environmental and cultural activist and writer. A longtime activist for ‘intergenerational justice’, Severn founded the Environmental Children’s Organization with friends at nine years old, which culminated in her speech to the UN at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when she was twelve. Severn is an Earth Charter Commissioner (earthcharterinaction.org), and she and the Skyfish Project brought the ‘Recognition of Responsibility’ pledge to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2002. She attended Rio+20 as a We Canada Champion 2012. Severn has participated in four environmental speaking tours in Japan with the Namakemono Club. She is an Action Canada Fellow (‘04-‘05), has published several books in Japan, and is a co-editor and contributor for the book Notes from Canada’s Young Activists (Greystone books, 2007). She is host of the APTN TV series ‘Samaqan – Water Stories’, board member of the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society and the David Suzuki Foundation, and council member of Earth Charter International. She holds a B.Sc. in Biology from Yale University and a M.Sc. in Ethnoecology from the University of Victoria, where she studied with elders from the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations. Severn lives on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia where she is studying the Haida language (Skidegate dialect) with her husband and two sons.
“…the world is hungry to hear the truth, and it is nowhere articulated as well as from the mouths of those with everything at stake…” – Severn Cullis-Suzuki (Rio+20 speech, 2012)
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Tanya Tagaq Scream. Grunt. Growl, groan. Flutter. Quiver. Howl. Tanya Tagaq’s music isn’t like anything you’ve heard before. Unnerving and exquisite, Tanya’s unique vocal expression may be rooted in Inuit throat singing but her music has as much to do with electronica, industrial and metal influences as it does with traditional culture. This Inuk punk is known for delivering fearsome, elemental performances that are visceral and physical, heaving and breathing and alive. Her shows draw incredulous response from worldwide audiences, and Tanya’s tours tend to jump back and forth over the map of the world. From a Mexican EDM festival to Carnegie Hall, her music and performances transcend language. Tanya Tagaq makes musical friends and collaborators with an array of like-minded talents: opera singers, avant-garde violin composers, experimental DJs, all cutting edge and challenging. Tanya’s albums make for complex listening, but her string of JUNO nominations attests to her ability to make difficult music speak a universal tongue. Animism, recently awarded the 2014 Polaris Music Prize for the best Canadian Album of the Year, was produced by west coast shape-shifter Jesse Zubot (Dan Mangan, Fond of Tigers) with additional production by Juan Hernandez. The record features Michael Red (Low Indigo), a live programmer whose wild northern field recordings often serve as Tanya’s de facto backing band, percussionist Jean Martin and Belgian opera singer Anna Pardo Canedo.
“I don’t feel like a cultural ambassador. I’m just someone who’s doing something, and hopefully that brings other people to check out the tradition of it.” – Tanya Tagaq (Uncharted, 2014)
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Jesse Zubot violin Jesse Zubot is a three-time JUNO Award winning musician with avant-rock band Fond of Tigers, chamber folk-jazz ensemble The Great Uncles of the Revolution and roots instrumentalists Zubot & Dawson. A producer on Tanya Tagaq’s Animism which recently won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize, Jesse also won a 2010 Western Canadian Music Award for his work on the score for the short film Tungijuq. In the past decade Jesse has delved heavily into the world of improvised and creative music having worked with the likes of Peggy Lee, Evan Parker, François Houle, Eugene Chadbourne, Mats Gustafsson, Fred Frith, Eyvind Kang and Nels Cline. In 2005 Jesse started Drip Audio, an acclaimed record label dedicated to creative music. In addition to highly successful forays into the contemporary dance and classical music realms, Jesse is also sought after in the commercial music world. He has been a guest musician working with artists such as Dan Mangan, Hawksley Workman, Kelly Joe Phelps, Stars, Veda Hille, Alpha Yaya Diallo and Mother Mother.
O N E E A RT H T O U R
THURSDAY JANUARY 29 2015 8PM
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MYS TERY A groundbreaking new production that will take you on a voyage to a mystical realm of ancient creatures, legends and powerful taiko music.
“I’m yelling about all of this stuff ”: The Voice of Resistance in Tanya Tagaq’s Music By Aaron Pettigrew As part of a new initiative, the Chan Centre is working with the UBC School of Music’s Department of Ethnomusicology to engage students in writing short pieces connecting our presentations to pertinent ideas and concepts in ethnomusicology. In the first of this series, graduate student Aaron Pettigrew writes about the importance of Tanya Tagaq’s music in a cultural and political context. An excerpt of this article can be found below. To read the article in its entirety with detailed footnotes, visit the Chan Centre blog at chancentre.com/blog. As well as studying ethnomusicology, Aaron Pettigrew is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator and writer with a strong interest in jazz and improvised music. You can read more of his writing at aaronpettigrew.com. For the contemporary ethnomusicologist, it’s interesting to listen to Tanya Tagaq’s innovative mixture of traditional and modern musical techniques and to think about how her musical choices communicate her attitudes toward political and cultural change. Tanya Tagaq often talks about her music as a form of political activism. In interviews and recorded conversations, she speaks openly and passionately about the challenges that face Inuit and other Aboriginal people in Canada: forced relocation, residential schools, missing and murdered women, economic hardship, and the destruction of traditional Inuit cultural practices and identity. She says of her latest record, Animism, “This album is focused a lot on how I feel about colonialism, government and society… I’ve been singing about that my whole life, without putting words to it.” Though her songs are mostly wordless, they are certainly not without meaning. One can hear Tanya Tagaq giving voice to her political convictions in the music itself-the musical choices she makes reflect her convictions about how things should be. As a solo throat-singer, for instance, she brings a twist to an Inuit musical practice traditionally performed by pairs of women. For her, the choice to perform throat-singing alone is not only stylistic, but it’s political as well: “I’ve been through a lot of the stereotypical ideas of what Inuit people go through, so [throat-singing] is like protest music to me. I didn’t want to stand with a partner, nicely making some sounds… I don’t want to sound victim-y to people” (Up Here, 48). Audiences and critics tend to react strongly to the intensity of her singing style, often describing her music using terms like “visceral,” “force of nature,” “orgasmic,” “primal… guttural.” Her choice to include “harder” (i.e. metal- and punk-influenced) vocal elements in her recent work is not simply a stylistic choice either. She says of her songs: “I don’t want to see people being abused and I’m sick of it. I’m mad, I’m yelling about that, I’m yelling about being sexually abused, I’m yelling about all the pain that people are having to go through, I’m yelling about all of this stuff.” 6
Full article online at chancentre.com/blog
Upcoming Events Full details at chancentre.com. Events listed below take place at the Chan Centre unless otherwise noted. Fri Oct 17 at 8pm + Sat Oct 18 at 8pm: Adam Golka and Joshua Weilerstein Presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as part of the Classical Traditions series at the Chan Centre
Wed Oct 22 at 9:30am: Educating the Heart in the Early Years: A Dialogue with the Dalai Lama Presented by UBC and the Dalai Lama Centre. Only open to UBC students with valid student ID. FREE
Wed Oct 22 at 7pm: CBC 2014 Massey Lecture: Adrienne Clarkson Presented by CBC
Fri Oct 24 at 8pm: UBC Choirs Presented by the UBC School of Music. FREE Fri Oct 24 at 7pm: The Contemporary Roma Experience* Presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of Chan Centre Connects series. Space is limited. FREE *Please note this event takes place at the Vancity Culture Lab at The Cultch (1895 Venables Street). Sat Oct 25 at 8pm: Diego El Cigala Presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Pre-show film Opre Roma: Gypsies in Canada, at 6:30pm in the Royal Bank Cinema at the Chan Centre.
Sun Oct 26 at 7pm: Naomi Klein Presented by the Vancouver Institute. FREE Sat Nov 1 at 8pm: UBC Symphony Orchestra Presented by the UBC School of Music. FREE
Sun Nov 2 at 10am: G Day for Girls Presented by Lunapads Sat Nov 8 at 8pm: Jessica Yan “East Meets West” – Beating Cancer for Kids Presented by Canton Productions
Sun Nov 9 at 3pm: The Vertavo String Quartet with Paul Lewis Presented by the Vancouver Recital Society as part of the Classic Afternoons series
Fri Nov 14 at 8pm: UBC Bands – Borrowings Presented by the UBC School of Music. FREE
Sat Nov 15 at 8pm: The Gloaming Diego El Cigala
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Diego El Cigala Sat Oct 25 2014 I The Gloaming Sat Nov 15 2014 I Terri Lyne Carrington’s Mosaic Project and Cécile McLorin Salvant Sun Feb 15 2015 I Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock Sun Mar 15 2015 Zakir Hussain’s Celtic Connections Sat Mar 21 2015 I Gilberto Gil Sun Apr 12 2015 I Lila Downs Sun Apr 26 2015 I Wu Man and the Shanghai Quartet Sat May 9 2015
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