The National Arts Centre is beginning its “Year of the North” with a musical tour of all three of Canada’s territories, followed by a spring festival of northern arts and culture in downtown Ottawa.
The NAC Orchestra is touring Iqaluit, Pangnirtung, Rankin Inlet, Yellowknife and Whitehorse until Nov. 4, performing and giving 50 free education sessions at schools, seniors homes and youth centres.
From April 25 to May 4, 250 northern Canadian artists will visit Ottawa for the Northern Scene. The festival will showcase music, theatre, dance, visual arts, film, food, fashion and more at various venues across the city.
“We started out with consultations with community leaders in Nunavut to find out what we could do that would really address the needs of the community,” says Genevieve Cimon, the NAC’s director of music education.
From these consultations, the Year of the North was born: a blend of classical European music and classical Inuit music.
Grammy-winning Canadian violinist James Ehnes will be performing as the featured soloist in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons during the tour.
“As far as what the musical traditions are for the people of the North, other than throat singing, I don’t know much about it, so I think these educational opportunities, they’re probably going to be more for me than for them,” he says.
A throat-singing piece composed by school children from Ottawa and Iqaluit is one of the Inuit pieces in the tour’s repertoire.
Nancy Mike, an Inuit throat singer, taught the children of Hillcrest High School and Inuksuk High School to throat sing.
Mike says she originally learned throat singing through a workshop and says she is happy to be able to give this opportunity to a new generation.
“It’s so much fun because these young people love to learn about their culture and from my perspective,” she says.
“They don’t get that opportunity from their parents. They don’t get to learn it from them, because their parents’ generation was that generation that was told not to practice those things anymore.”
In the early and mid-20th century, government and religious organizations attempted to assimilate the Inuit into the Canadian, Christian majority.
Another major arts and culture issue in Nunavut is simply finding a place to perform, Mike says. Nunavut is the only province or territory that does not have a performing arts centre.
The Qaggiavuut Society is working to find a performing space and the NAC Orchestra will be waiving fees at its Iqaluit performance and taking donations for the society and the initiative.