Vancouver Chamber Choir set to premiere T. Patrick Carrabré's Histoires des Métis in Longhouse concert
Through seven movements, the composition tells stories in a way that feels familiar to the Métis composer, conductor, and UBC music prof
T. Patrick Carrabré
The Vancouver Chamber Choir presents Stories of the Land at the First Nations Longhouse at UBC on June 8
INDIGENOUS SONG WITH nods to Indigenous traditions from groups across Turtle Island will fill the Sty-Wet-Tan Great Hall in the upcoming Vancouver Chamber Choir concert Stories of the Land.
Works by Indigenous composers explore the memories and viewpoints of those who have inhabited the land for millennia.
Histoires des Métis by T. Patrick Carrabré, which showcases texts by Jean Teillet, is one of two works set to be premiered at the concert, which takes place in the First Nations Longhouse on the UBC campus.
Through seven movements, the composition tells stories from the Métis Peoples’ history in a way that feels familiar to Carrabré, a Métis composer and conductor who’s a music professor at UBC.
“It’s telling the tale in a very kind of old-fashioned way that you would get up at a kitchen party and say, ‘I got a story,’” he says.
Two movements are based on well-known Métis songs, and the others are based on prose by Teillet, a Métis lawyer and author of The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, The Métis Nation.
Teillet and Carrabré are from the same family line in Manitoba, but officially met at dinner party before being asked to collaborate on the piece.
“Jean had a number of ideas for themes that would really resonate with the history of our people, and we both agreed we wanted to include a couple of more traditional things,” says Carrabré.
The movements range from a tongue-in-cheek folk song the voyageurs sang while paddling to a piece about a woman being assaulted by an armed-forces officer.
“There’s some really sad stories, but on the other hand, it’s like, ‘We love the Prairies, and we dream of when the buffalo will come back, and we’ll all be happy,’ so it’s a real broad range of subject matter,” Carrabré says.
Once he received the texts from Teillet, Carrabré says he was enthralled in the process of putting notes to her words.
“Jean had been working on these poems for quite a while, and she sent them to me, and they were just so inspiring to me that I sat in my little room with my piano—I compose with headphones on a grand piano—and I’m singing away,” says Carrabré. “I would cry at the sad parts and I would sing loud at the great parts.”
In recent years Carrabré, who received his master’s degree in music from the University of Western Ontario and his PhD at The City University of New York, has been exploring ways to decolonize his creative process as an orchestral composer.
“I often talk about how well and truly colonized I’ve been—like I have a PhD in Western art music,” Carrabré says.
A Western composer typically controls how their work is performed, ensuring it comes out exactly as written on the page, but Carrabré says he is trying to give up some of that power and authority, and to get away from that “colonial hierarchy”.
“When I go to the rehearsals this week, we may talk about changing some things,” he says. “I think I’m going back to a more Indigenous approach, where there’s more give and take in the creative process.”
He’s also experimenting with the form of choral music, inviting audiences to sing or hum along in some of his works.
“I’m much more interested in connecting and breaking down the barrier between me being the composer and how people interact with the music,” Carrabré says.
With works in the concert written by composers from various Indigenous groups, the pieces nod to different singing traditions, like chants, clan songs, or call-and-answer singing, where a group repeats melodies back to a leader.
Carrabré points out Métis singing tradition is based both in church choir singing and more entertainment-style music like singing and fiddling.
“I think it’s very natural for Indigenous musicians to gravitate towards the choir environment,” he says. “A group singing together can be really powerful.”
Singing has also been a way for many Indigenous folks to enter the music profession. Now as a professor at UBC’s music school, Carrabré says he often thinks about barriers for some Indigenous Peoples to participate in the industry.
“In a music school to get in as a piano major, you have to have had 15 years of piano lessons, and that’s a pretty big barrier when you’re coming from some Indigenous communities where there just is no piano teacher, there is no high-school band program,” he says. “So what are your options? Singing.”
Carrabré says over the years he has noticed more Indigenous musicians entering classical music. “It’s wonderful to see and participate in, and there’s lots of demand right now, particularly in the choral world,” he says.
The title of the upcoming show, Stories of the Land—which also features a premiere by Vancouver Chamber Choir composer-in-residence Andrew Balfour and works by Sherryl Sewepagaham, Russell Wallace, and Alex Vollant—feels deeply relevant to Carrabré.
“We all have different kinds of connections to this particular place,” he says, adding that Indigenous music is very personal.
“We’re trying to tell stories, these stories about who we are, and where we are, and I think that is what excites me about being involved in a creative process, is that I get to share these stories with other people.” 
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