Buffy Sainte-Marie to launch Chan Centre's 2022-23 season, its 25th anniversary
Other featured performers include Oumou Sangaré, Fatoumata Diawara, Dinuk Wijeratne, and Sandeep Das
Buffy Sainte-Marie. Photo by Matt Barnes
CHAN CENTRE for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia has announced programming for 2022-23, its 25th-anniversary season.
The Chan Presents series launches with legendary Cree singer and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie on September 18. An Oscar-winning composer, musician, visual artist, activist, and educator, she has spent her life creating, innovating, and disrupting.
Her performance is part of a larger two-day festival in September, ahead of this year’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The festival will celebrate Indigenous culture and community and will feature performances by artists from the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, as well as Indigenous musicians and dance groups from across Turtle Island. (Details about the Indigenous-centred festival will be announced soon.)
Makaya McCraven, a "beat scientist” shaping the future of jazz presents the Vancouver premiere of his forthcoming album on October 15. The Paris-born, Massachusetts-raised, Chicago-based drummer, composer, producer, and sonic collagist is a multi-talented "cultural synthesizer".
Grammy- and UNESCO-winning “Songbird of Wassoulou” Oumou Sangaré, one of Africa’s most venerated international stars, performs on October 23. The Malian feminist icon shares bold, empowering messages that champion women’s rights and tradition.
Grammy-nominated Afro-pop superstar Fatoumata Diawara appears on April 14. Hailed as a vital standard-bearer for modern African music, the singer, songwriter, actor, and activist is one of the most compelling voices of her generation. Weaving together blues, funk, rock, and syncopated Afropop, Diawara sings for the children of her homeland, the need for women’s leadership, and world peace. Her latest album, Maliba, tells the story of protecting the Timbuktu Manuscripts, a collection of historic cultural artifacts that were threatened with destruction in her homeland of Mali.
“Our Chan Presents series celebrates some of the most dynamic artists of our time,” Jarrett Martineau, curator-in-residence of the Chan Centre Presents, says in a release. “It lifts up the voices of women, Black and Indigenous artists, and space-shifting storytellers that reimagine where music can go, what it can do, and who it can reach. I’m proud that we’ll be interweaving luminous voices from the past, present and future. These iconic voices draw on ancient traditions and reimagine them into new futures, representing the music of a world to come.”
Fatoumata Diawara. Photo by Aida Muluneh
With Martineau handling the bulk of programming, two guest curators are involved for the upcoming Chan season.
Sri Lankan composer, conductor, and pianist Dinuk Wijeratne oversees two concerts: the lauded tabla player Sandeep Das on February 18 and The Journeyed Compass, featuring Wijeratne himself, on May 5.
Das has established himself as one of the world’s leading tabla maestros since debuting at age 17 with legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar. A Grammy-winning musician and Guggenheim Fellow, Das has been part of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble for over two decades and has worked with iconic orchestras like the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic, among others. His Delhi to Damascus project uses voice, tabla, sitar, bansuri, and oud to explore the shared riches of Indian and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Sandeep Das and The HUM Ensemble meld North Indian ragas and Arabic maqam, demonstrating contemporary possibilities as well as the shared heritage of their cultures.
The Journeyed Compass consists of Wijeratne, Lebanese violinist/composer Layale Chaker, and Syrian clarinetist-composer Kinan Azmeh. Their transporting concert will combine Middle Eastern and South Asian music
Pianist David Fung, newly appointed associate professor of piano at the UBC School of Music, leads the programming for the Chan Centre’s newly acquired Steinway Spirio piano. Fung selected Billboard chart-topping piano duo Anderson & Roe to perform on March 4.
Known for their adrenalized performances, original compositions, and innovative music videos, Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are revolutionizing the piano duo experience for the 21st century with the goal of making classical music a relevant and powerful force in society. The two will present a program of variety and virtuosity, featuring music from Mozart to the Beatles, with a set devoted to the sublime that includes their inspired Hallelujah Variations on a Theme by Leonard Cohen.
Dinuk Wijeratne. Photo by Michelle Doucette
Falling Out of Time, on October 29, is a new work from the Grammy-winning composer Osvaldo Golijov. Rooted in David Grossman’s novel of the same name, this nuanced story in voices narrates a profound journey of grief and solace, a journey “out of time” as parents grieve the death of a child, a quest to comprehend a loss with no name.
Martineau is also programming an innovative new series for the anniversary season that will mark a departure from the main Chan Presents programming. Stay tuned for details.
Past Chan Presents subscribers can purchase subscription packages in advance of the public. Subscription packages for the public go on sale June 30. Single tickets go on sale July 13. Students and self-identifying Indigenous peoples are eligible for 50 percent off tickets.
See here for more subscriptions and information.
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