Classical Indigenous Music Residency - Summer 2024

Janine Windolph (Atikamekw/Woodland Cree) is a Saskatchewan-based filmmaker, video editor, educator, fine-craft artist, and storyteller. She is the Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Prior, Janine was the Curator of Community Engagement at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan. She has her Master of Fine Arts: Interdisciplinary in Indigenous Fine Art and Media Production.

Janine was a co-producer for RIIS Media Project Inc wherein she co-directed RIIS from Amnesia: Recovering the Lost Legacies (feature-length documentary) that features the history of the Regina Indian Industrial School (RIIS). 

Janine’s filmography includes roles as producer, director, narrator, writer and/or editor.  She directed Stories Are In Our Bones, Lifegivers: Honoring Our Elders and Children, The Land of Rock and Gold, Ayapiyâhk ôma niyanân “Only us, we are here at home,”

Janine is working with Buffalo Mountain Banff; a community group to Buffalo Mountain, and providing production support to the Buffalo Mountain Video Project that is part of her sons’ homeschooling.

Juno nominated Cris Derksen is an internationally respected Indigenous Cellist and Composer. In a world where almost everything — people, music, cultures — gets labelled and slotted into simple categories, Cris Derksen represents a challenge. Originally from Northern Alberta she comes from a line of chiefs from North Tallcree Reserve on her father’s side and a line of strong Mennonite homesteaders on her mother’s. Derksen braids the traditional and contemporary, weaving her classical background and her Indigenous ancestry together with new school electronics to create genre-defying music. As a performer Derksen performs nationally and internationally as a soloist and in collaboration with some of Canada’s finest, including Tanya Tagaq, Buffy Sainte Marie, Naomi Klein, and Leanne Simpson, to name a few. Recent concert destinations include Hong Kong, Australia, Mongolia, Sweden, and a whole lot of Canada: the place Derksen refers to as home.

2021 commissions include pieces for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Ottawa's Chamberfest, the City of Toronto, Edmonton New Music, the Edmonton Symphony with support from the National Arts Centre, Vancouver's Blueridge Chamber Festival, Vancouver Transform Cabaret, and a 4-part docuseries for the Knowledge Network. 

Melody McKiver’s (they/them, do not use any other pronouns) musical work integrates electronics with Western classical music to shape a new genre of Anishinaabe compositions.  A proud member of Obishikokaang Lac Seul First Nation, Melody is currently Assistant Professor of Indigenous Music (tenure-track) with the Desaultels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba and a member of the Mizi'iwe Aana Kwat (LGBTQ2S+ Council) within the Anishinaabe Nation of Treaty #3. They are the 2020 recipient of the Canada Council's Robert Flaming Prize awarded annually to an exceptionally talented young Canadian composer, and a recurring invited participant in the Banff Centre for the Arts’ Indigenous Classical Music gatherings. 

A frequent performer across Turtle Island, Melody has performed at the National Arts Centre, Luminato Festival, Vancouver’s Western Front, and the Toronto International Film Festival. They have shared stages with Polaris Prize winners Lido Pimienta, Tanya Tagaq, and Jeremy Dutcher, and performed with acclaimed filmmaker and musician Alanis Obomsawin. As a composer, Melody has a growing body of chamber and choral works. Notably, they were commissioned by Soundstreams and Jumblies Theatre to compose Odaabaanag, a string quartet responding to Steve Reich’s Different Trains, drawing on interviews conducted with Anishinaabe elders from Melody’s. Melody has scored several films and was invited to the Berlinale Talents Sound Studio as a music and composition mentor for the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. Additional commissions have included Cluster Festival, Marina Thibeault, Duo AIRS, Brandon University, Megumi Masaki, Carnegie Mellon University, and TORQ Percussion with the Elora Singers. Upcoming projects include a setting of Métis author Katherena Vermette’s poem river woman for the Elora Singers and TORQ Percussion Quartet, and a full-length album in 2023. Melody holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from Memorial University and a BFA in Music and Indigenous Studies from York University.
 

Eliot Britton (b.1983) bridges sound worlds.  From the imperceptible rhythms of the natural environment to towering, digitally magnified timbres, his musical language uses the tools and techniques of the 21st century to build and share networks of music and meaning. Britton’s fiercely virtuosic and award-winning aesthetic brings together performers and technology, finding new modes of expression and collaboration. From soloists, drum machines and orchestras to augmented reality and machine learning, Britton seeks innovative ways of connecting and expressing Canada’s contemporary soundscape. As an Anglo-Metis from Manitoba, Britton is passionate about collaborating on narrative expanding indigenous projects. 

A graduate of the University of Manitoba (w. Michael Matthews) and McGill University (w. Sean Ferguson), Britton is now a teacher, researcher, and composer at the University of Toronto. There he is the Director of the newly rebuilt Electronic Music Studios (UTEMS) and splits his time between the Composition and Music Technology areas. Britton is currently the composer in residence at Red Sky Performance, as well as co-director of Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts Festival. His work at UofT seeks to expand the framework for research creation, opening new spaces for diversity in the creative applications of music technology.  

Beverley McKiver is an Anishinaabe artistic music creator. A pianist since childhood, in recent years she has poured her passion and energy into contemporary classical composition. Beverley has composed for solo piano, choirs, small ensembles, vocalists and carillon. Beverley’s musical influences include a wide gamut of classical, jazz, liturgical, and Indigenous musicians and composers. In her work and in her life, she aspires to honour nature, while recalling both the joys and tribulations of her ancestors.