Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony: Tanya Tagaq (throat singer) Edwin Outwater (conductor) at the Conrad Centre, Warnock MacMillan Theatre, Kitchener-Waterloo. Saturday, Feb. 6
[Originally published in the Toronto Star]
Kitchener-Waterloo–After being ushered to a cramped seat in a black-box theatre, I was surprised to find a room full of 20-somethings. Little kids were pointing at the tubas, a gentleman with a mohawk admired the cellos, and a fellow in the front row inexplicably wrapped himself in a Mexican blanket. While I sat there, my arm hair was raised. “Is this what I think it might be? A genuine classical music happening?”
The audience was buzzing when I overheard a proclamation: “Tanya!”
That Tanya, of course, was Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat singer from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, located on Victoria Island. Early success came when Björk tapped Tagaq for a collaboration. The creative floodgates opened further when she won the 2014 Polaris Prize, for her critically lauded album, Animism. She has since become a contemporary music superstar with the power to disarm even the most obstinate pair of ears.
Tonight was the second of two concerts as part of KWS’ Intersection Series, which explores multi-interdisciplinary collaboration. I recall the symphony’s Musical Director Edwin Outwater’s Rebel Music Ted Talk, where he argues popular music isn’t the music of rebels anymore; that classical music was. This proved true last night.
The first rebel came to us in the form of a ghostly drone seeping from a multiphonic sound system, surrounding the audience. Toronto’s Rose Bolton’s “Transported” opens like an ancient dithyramb undulating with gestures that pulled kindred spirits in from the cold, to dance among the oboes. Like a Houdini séance, we crossed over. Sprite gestures in the harp led to the strings; soft brass ushered in Penderecki-like tonal clusters. The balance between the pre-recorded material and the live orchestra seemed effortless, which is no small feat.
The second classical rebel rouser was Derek Charke and his “Cercle du Nord III”. It featured Tagaq grunting, gasping and harrumphing at the orchestra like a deep-sea diver coming up from a close encounter with a shark. The piece features Charke’s ingenious method of imitating bouncing katajjaq rhythms between the violins. The orchestra did their best to keep up but it was Tagaq’s show.
There was also Vancouver-based Rodney Sharman’s “Suspension”, which acted as an open musical bed from which to lay Tagaq’s extraordinary instrument. She conquered sounds that summoned wolves on the tundra hunting caribou, on their annual spring migration. Outwater kept the tempo regular and followed Tagaq’s lead carefully.
The most engaging moment came with Tagaq’s 15-minute a capella improvisation that evoked an audience member to start weeping mid-performance. As a mediator between people and spirits, souls, and mythological beings, Tagaq underwent a kind of vocal catharsis on stage. Somewhere between the terrifying and the beautiful, she was left on the floor, with her arms and fingers reaching like a tree towards the sky.
The only dead white guy on the programme (a rebel in his own right) was Grieg. The orchestra performed “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Suite No. 1 of the *Peer Gynt Suite* earnestly, but intonation issues in the winds kept it grounded.
Another was Linda Catlin’s Smith’s unlaxed “Wilderness”, which seemed to ask: if an orchestra falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? The piece was compelling at times, but I found the underdeveloped melodic material in the opening and closing solo violin kept the enchanted forest experience from moving beyond the treeline.
While the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony surprised me last night, Tagaq was the real delight. She seemed genuinely surprised at the long and frenzied standing ovation by the young sold out audience. Rebels, all.
#LUDWIGVAN
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