Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
Cognitive Dissonance
Announcing a new free concert co-presented by musica intima and Early Music Vancouver.
This special concert hosted at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in downtown Vancouver, one of Vancouver’s Indigenous artistic landmarks, is a sonic offering honouring this continent’s occupied lands and waters, as we centre the voices and stories of its first peoples.
The programme includes the world premieres of new works by Cree composer V. Jessica Sparvier-Wells and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Stó:lō, Hawaiian, Swiss interdisciplinary artistT’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss. Other works include compositions by Cree composers Andrew Balfour and Sherryl Sewapagaham, as well as Métis composer Ian Cusson.
Curated by Cree-Métis baritone Jonathon Adams, this special concert will feature Jonathon Adams and the wonderful voices of musica intima. Please join us for this free event at 7:30pm on Saturday, August 3rd.
Click here for texts & translations.
Jonathon Adams, Baritone
Jonathon Adams is a Cree-Métis two-spirit baritone from amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, AB). They have appeared as a soloist under Masaaki Suzuki, Philippe Herreweghe, Laurence Equilbey, and Alexander Weimann, among others, with the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, the Washington Bach Consort, Tafelmusik, Ricercar Consort, B’Rock, Vox Luminis, the Netherlands Bach Society, and il Gardellino. In 2021 they were named the first artist-in-residence at Early Music Vancouver. They have lectured and led workshops at the Universities of Toronto, Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta (Augustana), Bard College, Festival Montréal Baroque, and the Juilliard School.
Jonathon was featured in Against the Grain Theatre’s 2020 film MESSIAH/COMPLEX, in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s MEA CULPA with Ballet Vlaanderen, and on Jessica McMann’s most recent album ‘Prairie Dusk’. They attended the Victoria Conservatory of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, studying with Nancy Argenta, Emma Kirkby and Rosemary Joshua.
V. Jessica Sparvier-Wells, Composer
V. Jessica Sparvier-Wells is an Alberta-based Cree multi-disciplinary artist. She interweaves land, Indigenous identity, history, and language throughout her dance and music creation/ performance practice. A classically-trained flutist, she holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Calgary and an MFA in Contemporary Arts from Simon Fraser University. Her work fuses together traditional language and dance with her own contemporary experiences as an Indigenous woman and Two-Spirit person with focus on land-based creation and ideas of connection, disconnection, and home.
In 2017 her Too Good; That MAY Be, an immersive soundscape performance, was shown at the Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg as part of The 60’s Scoop; A Place Between. Her compositions include Muskwa’s Mountain Home (2021), Inni (2018) and soundscapes including Beguiling the Land (2020). Jessica is currently the City of Calgary’s Curator of Indigenous Art. She is also co-founder and co-director of Wild Mint Arts, an Indigenous arts company and is a Laureate of the Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL Indigenous Art Awards (2017). In 2021 she released her first Indigenous-Classical album Incandescent Tales, and is currently working on a second album to be released this year.
Cease Wyss, Composer
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss is an Indigenous Matriarch of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Hawaiian people. Through her work as an ethnobotanist, artist, activist and community-based educator, they strive to share Indigenous customs, teachings, and futures and to connect Indigenous peoples. Wyss’s thirty-year career encompasses a vast array of practices, from weaving, making remedies, medicine walks to the realm of Indigenous Digital Futurisms. Ceases’ interactive, community-based work is insightful and informative of their contemporary conditions.
Interweaving their skills as an ethnobotanist and an interdisciplinary artist, Cease maintains a practice to decolonize their life and their art by learning about their culture and using traditions practiced by their ancestors. This is witnessed in their recent exploration of cultural weaving using materials traditionally used by Salish People such as red and yellow cedar, Salish Woolly dog fibre, stinging nettles, and fireweed fluff. Furthermore, their current community teachings and research is focused on restoring and remediating Indigenous species and natural space by encouraging others to build their Indigenous food forests and to nurture local biodiversity respectfully and sustainably.
Wyss is a collaborator, deeply involved in community building and finds dialogue with communities crucial in exchanging knowledge and critical in preserving Indigenous understanding of the land and ecosystems. Wyss has taught these teachings to public institutions and organizations and has participated in creative projects that share different indigenous cultures in stewarding this effort in preservation. Outside the importance of preserving what surrounds them, Cease believes in the importance of taking care of and feeding oneself, in redefining oneself as a way to care for Mother Earth, Chescha7 Timixw, and Ch’iaxw- their sacred protocol.
musica intima
Founded in 1992, musica intima has grown from grassroots beginnings to a fully professional vocal ensemble which has championed Canadian music on stages around the world. One of Canada’s most esteemed vocal ensembles, musica intima’s unique collaborative leadership model invites each of the 12 members to be co-artistic directors of the group, exchanging ideas freely and exploring their individual musical creativity.
musica intima strives to be a role model in “going beyond the land acknowledgment” both in the arts communities, and beyond, through building relationships with IBPOC artists across disciplines. The groundbreaking collaboration NAGAMO, with Cree composer Andrew Balfour, demonstrates this commitment to art and society - generating a JUNO nominated, WCMA winning album, but also providing a platform for musica intima to demonstrate their commitment to education and outreach through multiple cross-Canada tours, working with thousands of young singers and artists on collaboration and fostering the decolonization of the choral arts.
