Notinikew (Going to War) – A Program of Remembrance

A Choral Perspective of Canada’s Indigenous Veterans

TMC welcomes guest curator Andrew Balfour for this program. Andrew, TMC conductor Simon Rivard, and Elder Dr. Duke Redbird will present a program that reflects on Indigenous experience through music and poetry.

The centre piece of the program is Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew. Movements of the work will be sung by Andrew’s Winnipeg-based Camerata Nova and by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Andrew says of this choral drama:

Notinikew is an anti-war piece, an indigenous identity piece – a tragedy that speaks not just about World War I, but all wars and all indigenous soldiers. Why did these Indigenous warriors leave our forests and plains to enter a totally foreign military world and end up fighting in the midst of a true hell on earth?  

The concert will open with the TMC performance of Andrew Balfour’s Ambe (Come in). Listen in the video section below.

Of Cree descent, Winnipeg-based composer Andrew Balfour is an innovative composer, conductor, singer, and sound designer with a large body of choral, instrumental, and orchestral works, including Mamachimowin, commissioned by the TMC for its 125^th anniversary gala.

Dr. Duke Redbird is an elder, poet, activist, educator, and artist. With a legacy stretching back to the 1960s, he is a pillar of First Nations literature in Canada, and has practiced a number of art disciplines including poetry, painting, theatre, and film.

PROGRAM

A Dish with One Spoon, Duke Redbird

Ambe (Come In), Andrew Balfour

Notinikew (Going to War), Andrew Balfour
– Calling All Okicitawak (Warriors)
– Anthem for a Doomed Youth
– I Went to War
– Kookum (Grandmother) – Help me

Stolen Child, Duke Redbird

How they so softly rest, Healey Willan

In paradisum from Requiem, Gabriel Fauré

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