Live at Aeolian Hall

Jeremy DutcherJump to Info for Jeremy Dutcher

With Special Guests

Jeremie Albino Jump to Info for Jeremie Albino

Wednesday December 12, 2018
8:00 pm   |  Doors Open @ 7:00 pm
$30 Advanced    $35 Doors   

This event has passed

2018 Polaris Music Prize winner jeremy dutcher
 

Performer, composer, activist, musicologist — these roles are all infused into his art and way of life. His music, too, transcends boundaries: unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home,and teeming with the urgency of modern-day struggles of resistance.

A member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, Jeremy first did music studies in Halifax before taking a chance to work in the archives at the Canadian Museum of History, painstakingly transcribing Wolastoq songs from 1907 wax cylinders. “Many of the songs I’d never heard before, because our musical tradition on the East Coast was suppressed by the Canadian Government’s Indian Act.” Jeremy heard ancestral voices singing forgotten songs and stories that had been taken from the Wolastoqiyik generations ago.

As he listened to each recording, he felt his own musical impulses stirring from deep within. Long days at the archives turned into long nights at the piano, feeling out melodies and phrases, deep in dialogue with the voices of his ancestors. These “collaborative”compositions, collected together on his debut LP Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, are like nothing you’ve ever heard. Delicate, sublime vocal melodies ring out atop piano lines that cascade through a vibrant range of emotions. The anguish and joy of the past erupt fervently into the present through Jeremy’s bold approach to composition and raw, affective performances enhanced by his outstanding tenor techniques.

“I’m doing this work because there’s only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left,” he says. “It’s crucial for us to make sure that we’re using our language and passing it on to the next generation. If you lose the language, you’re not just losing words; you’re losing an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world from a distinctly indigenous perspective.”

  

Expand

Jeremie Albino is a natural storyteller and an old soul. Despite a childhood spent in the urban sprawl, the call to a simpler life couldn’t be ignored. Fuelled by a rambling heart, Jeremie left the hustle and bustle and made a life in the countryside. It was this countryside where he nurtured the rusty blues that were the soundtrack of his experience. You might think it cliche, but far from the city smoke he found himself, he found his sound, and he took his lessons from the folk legends that preceded him. With his timeless sound, Jeremie takes storied genres worn thin by the years and makes them new again, makes them his own. Past and present all wrapped up in one storytellers words, future’s looking bright.

Expand