Sensory immersion

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A collage of sounds and sights will envelope the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq on Thursday.

GS4: North/South, presented by GroundSwell and WAG-Qaumajuq brings together throat singing, strings, percussion and electronics amid a rich display of artworks from the recent WAG-Qaumajuq exhibition Inuit Sanaugangit: Art Across Time.

“There’s a magical sense in throat singing for me, and when people are feeling and experiencing it, it’s something else,” says Inuk throat singer Nikki Komaksiutiksak, who performs with her daughter Caramello Swan.

“A lot of my grandparents’ artworks are in the Winnipeg Art Gallery, in the vault, and so I’ve always kind of had a weird connection with the art gallery.”

Komaksiutiksak is from Chesterfield Inlet, a hamlet on Hudson Bay’s western shores and Nunavut’s oldest community. Executive director for Tunngasugit, an Inuit resource centre in Winnipeg, she’s also a member of the WAG-Qaumajuq’s board, a role she says empowers her to assist in cultural education.

“I love educating people about who we are, and hearing different music from different cultures helps you to understand. I love making music and connecting with people because that’s really where changes happen,” she says.

Komaksiutiksak and Swan perform with violists Melody McKiver and Jennifer Thiessen and percussionist Ben Reimer, all leading figures in the Prairie classical scene.

The program is curated by GroundSwell co-founder Jim Hiscott who calls the concert an “immersion of the senses.”

It’s no wonder.

GS4: North/South features seven musical pieces by McKiver, Hiscott and the two throat singers. Several works include a heavy dose of improv, virtuosic flights of fancy inspired by the seven evocative artworks from Inuit Sanaugangit: Art Across Time on pedestals that surround the venue.

Works from Wanda Koop’s exhibition A View From Here, nestled between the others, round out the visual spectacle.

“Improvisers often use scores, so even if there’s no note-reading required, it’s just to have a visual object or image as a sort of inspiration,” says Thiessen, who improvises on four pieces and often performs with her husband Reimer in their duo Park Sounds.

“That could (mean) making decisions in advance, like this colour is going to connect to this sound, or this character in this painting will connect to this theme.”

The featured selection of Inuit artworks, curated by Rachel Baerg, the WAG-Qaumajuq’s head of education and public programs, includes pieces such as Jonasie Faber’s stone and wood sculpture People in a Boat (2006) and Charlie Ugyuk’s sculpture Winged Shaman Dancer (1990), made of whale bone, antler and stone.

It’s no secret that classical musicians are often considered stiff improvisers next to rock and jazz players, but this show has strong shepherds.

McKiver, an assistant professor of Indigenous music at the University of Manitoba, has shared stages with Polaris Prize winners Tanya Tagaq and Jeremy Dutcher, and has a similar gift for electro-acoustic experimentation, pushing traditional forms in striking new directions.

“I’ve gotten to work with both Jen and Melody, doing some improvisational things, some compositional things. I find them both very generous performers, really engaging to play with,” says percussionist and GroundSwell board president Victoria Sparks.

“And every time I get a chance to see even some throat singing, I’m just always in awe of how joyful it seems. So, the idea of kind of mixing all that joy and generosity together — I can’t wait to hear it.”

GS4: North/South is the last concert in GroundSwell’s 2024-25 season. Audiences are encouraged to take in Qaumajuq’s three-storey glass Visible Vault of Inuit Art before and after the concert.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca