We are pleased to share that our short video collaboration with Jay Havens will be screening as part of the ImagineNative Film Festival!
Maple Sugar Moon is a future imagining of a Haudenosaunee village witnessing the season of the maple sugar moon. This lyrical, animated short takes us through a longhouse, over fields of three sisters, and the maple syrup tapping grove.
The festival is online this year, so you can enjoy it all from the comfort of your home!
Maple Sugar Moon a short film with: Animation by Jay Havens Music written and performed by Unsettled Scores (Spy Dénommé-Welch & Catherine Magowan) Sound FX by Verne Good
Dr. Spy & Catherine spoke to Matt Homes on his show “Niagara In The Morning — Weekend Edition” about Unsettled Scores presents Contraries: a chamber requiem & RADAR at Celebration of Nations on September 7, 2019.
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.
Photo by Lady Luck Photography
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.
Leading up to our show at Celebration of Nations on September 7 we will be featuring each of our artists! Today’s first Artist Spotlight is Unsettled Scores’ Managing Director, Composer and Conductor Catherine Magowan.
Composer and bassoonist Catherine Magowan is principal bassoonist of the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra, the Southern Ontario Lyric Opera orchestra (SOLO), and regularly freelances throughout Ontario. Catherine is co-founder of the world’s first electric bassoon band, DFM, and has appeared at festivals including Pride Toronto, World Pride, Buskerfest, and the Northern Lights Festival Boreal.
She was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore award for the opera Giiwedin (Native Earth Performing Arts/Unsettled Scores, 2010) which she co-composed with her collaborator, Dr. Spy Dénommé-Welch. Together they premiered Contraries: a chamber requiem at the Royal Conservatory of Music in 2018, and their work for voice and orchestra Sojourn premiered at the Luminato Festival as the finale of the dance opera Bearing (Signal Theatre, 2017). Their chamber work Bike Rage took first prize by audience vote in Baroque Idol (Aradia Ensemble, 2013), and their comedy duo Professor Quack & Grunt has lectured at cabarets, poetry festivals, book launches, and universities. Magowan and Dénommé-Welch are currently completing their second full-length opera.
Together she and Dénommé-Welch have presented at conferences on topics such as
decolonization and intercultural collaboration in music, and run workshops for
youth and young adults on music creation and the politics of music.
Catherine is a member of the Canadian League of Composers, and an Associate Composer with the Canadian Music Centre.
She’s a doggy mama to hound dogs Maeve and Samson, and in her spare time she likes fidgeting with databases and spreadsheets, and her vegetable garden.
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 our Project Knowledge Carrier/Project Grandmother Jean Becker.
Jean Becker is Inuk and a member of the Nunatsiavut Territory of
Labrador. Jean has lived in Ontario for forty years and has been involved in grassroots
urban Indigenous community building throughout that time in Wellington and
Waterloo regions. As the Senior Advisor Indigenous Initiatives at Wilfrid
Laurier University, Jean is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction
of the university related to Indigenous activities. She continues to be involved
in Indigenous ceremonies and advocacy work for Indigenous people outside of the
academy and is actively engaged with local Indigenous communities.
Leading up to our show at Celebration of Nations on September 7 we will be featuring each of our artists! Today’s first Artist Spotlight is guitarist and Assistant Music Director Benjamin Stein.
Benjamin Stein is a singer, lutenist, pianist, guitarist composer,
music director and writer. He has played or sung for ensembles as such
Tafelmusik Baroque Chamber Choir, Opera Atelier, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir,
Elora Festival Singers, Toronto Masque Theatre and Soundstreams Canada. He has
an MA in Musicology/Theory from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Music
in voice and classical guitar from McGill University, and is currently pursuing
a PhD at York University, focusing on the re-emerging art of Western classical
music improvisation. He is the proud founder of Musicians on the Edge, an
initiative devoted to creating opportunities for classical musicians to
reintegrate improvisation practice into music education and concert
performance. He works an associate music director at Metropolitan United
Church of Toronto, and has written articles on music and culture for the
Toronto Star and Wholenote Magazine. More information on his
activities can be found at benjaminstein.ca.
