Leading up to our show at Celebration of Nations on September 7 we will be featuring each of our artists! Today’s second Artist Spotlight is Unsettled Scores’ Artistic Director, Composer and Librettist Dr. Spy Dénommé-Welch.

Dr. Spy Dénommé-Welch (Anishnaabe) is a multi-disciplinary scholar, composer, producer, and librettist/playwright. He wrote and co-composed the Dora Mavor Moore-nominated opera Giiwedin. Other credits (as writer and co-composer) include: Contraries: a chamber requiem (2018, premiered at the Royal Conservatory of Music), Sojourn (2017; commissioned by Signal Theatre for the dance opera Bearing, premiered at Luminato Festival); HATE MAIL & Irreconcilable Trolls (2017; premiered at Native Earth’s Aki Studio); Bottlenecked (2017); Victorian Secrets (2014, presented at Native Earth’s Aki Studio); Spin Doctors (2014); Bike Rage (2013). 

Spy’s academic research focuses on Indigenous topics in education, arts, and decolonizing through music and performance. He is Principal Investigator of two SSHRC-funded projects. His project, Beyond the Rainbow: Investigating representations of gender and sexuality in Indianist music and production, received SSHRC-Insight Development Grant funding (2016-2019), and examines the implications of gender and sexuality representation in historical Indianist music and cultural production. His second project, Sonic Coordinates: Decolonizing through land-based music composition, received the inaugural New Frontiers in Research Fund Award (2019-2021), and explores land-based approaches to Indigenous music, visual culture, and decolonization.  

Spy is Artistic Director of Unsettled Scores, an Associate Composer with the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the Canadian League of Composers and the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University.

Spy will be appearing in RADAR and Contraries: a chamber requiem as part of a presentation of Unsettled Scores at Celebration of Nations on September 7 starting at 7:30PM at FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.

Tickets are $5 for high school students, $20 for adults, and can be booked by visiting the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre website.