Tusarniq—The Solstice Show

With the gracious support of the Makivik Corporation, Wired on Words proudly presents:
Tusarniq—The Solstice Show
As we approach this darkest day of the year, who better to show us how to heat it up than Nunavik Inuit
poets and performers—people who ENJOY four months of darkness.
How do you do it? You tell tales, you sing, you throat-sing, you invite all your friends and you present a
concert like The Solstice Show, with DJ MadEskimo spinning laptop and the super-present effervescent
Evie Mark directing everything. With the haunting words of Taqralik Partridge and the intense and
lovely music of Guido del Fabbro. With words and music from their friends and contemporaries like
poet singer Moe Clark and poet/musician Ian Ferrier, and with a house band—Pharmakon MTL—that
can hypnotize you into the next year.
Tusarniq is an Inuktitut word meaning “beautiful sound.” and this show adds up to just that: sounds of
the internal heat and light it takes to get us through dark winters in Montreal.
Information on the show is presented below:
Sunday December 20th
DJ MadEskimo (music)
Evie Mark (throatsinger)
Taqralik Partridge (poet & throatsinger)
with Guido del Fabbro (composer/musician)
Ian Ferrier
Moe Clark (Métis poet/singer)
Pharmakon MTL (house trance/improv band)
Casa del Popolo
4873 St. Laurent, Montreal
Sunday December 20th
doors open 8PM $5
The Tusarniq Festival and this special Solstice Show are
funded with the generous support of the Makivik
Corporation, as well as donations from CKUT 90.3 FM, the
Quebec Writers’ Federation and Wired on Words
Productions.
For information, interviews and hi-res artist photos contact:
Ian Ferrier
Moe Clark
poets@wiredonwords.com
moe.clark@gmail.com
Taqralik Partridge & Guido del Fabbro
Originally from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (Arctic
Quebec), Taqralik Partridge is a spoken word artist,
writer and throatsinger of Inuit and Scottish
heritage. As an urban Inuk, Taqralik—now making
Montreal her home—speaks to city life in the south
with a unique style grounded in the tradition of
Inuit storytelling blended with gritty urban speak.
Taqralik weaves real-life stories with choppy
rhymes, barely-breathed lullabies and throatsinging,
- and does not shrink from heavy subjects like
sexual abuse, violence or poverty. Outstanding
work by Taqralik with musician Guido del Fabbro
can be found on the CBC web-site
Taqralik recently toured the Canadian Arctic with
the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
"She isn’t merging two worlds so much as keeping them in constant conversation". - Anna Leventhal,
Shameless Magazine 2007
"When Taqralik Partridge performs, you can never tell what you’ll hear next: an amusing satire… a
delicate lyric, or a raucous barrage of high-speed lines, delivered straight from the gut." -Jim Bell,
Nunatsiaq News (2006)
Born in Montreal in 1980, Guido Del Fabbro began violin lessons at
the age of four. A co-founder, architect, and composer of the
Mouvement de Musique Présente, Guido is one of the top improv
musicians in the city, with a record of outstanding collaborations with
poets. Guido spent a year-and-a-half touring North American with
Gilles Sainte-Croix’s equestrian circus, Cheval-Théâtre. In 2003, he
launched is first solo album, Carré de sable, with the label Ambiances
Magnétiques. He’s playing in Pierre Lapointe’s new show, La forêt
des mal-aimés.
Guido’s music featured in a special CBC concert with Taqralik
Partridge at
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20080607taqra
MadEskimo
MadEskimo is the alter-ego of Geronimo Inutiq, and is at a crossing-point of many streams and tangents
of culture. Using electronic music equipment, madeskimo presents us sounds and music referencing dub,
electronica, urban music, electroacoustics all with the cultural filter of having originated in the changing
face of the Canadian arctic. The midnight sun; the infinite vistas of rolling hills, sky, and water of the
arctic; the long cold and dark winters punctuated by the surreal dancing of northern lights and the
vastness and lushness of the milky way; the Inuit legends and myths of yore; the sounds of nature,
traditional songs, throat singing, and drumming - these are all filtered through the entity that is
madeskimo. Also someone quite metropolitain, madeskimo is up to date on cutting edge postmodernity.
Of Aboriginal and French Canadian ancestry, madeskimo represents the cultural dynamics of a 21st
century Canadian true and through and stands to bring a challenging and refreshing postmodern
aboriginal and Canadian dynamic take on electronic music to the world. Now new and improved with
veejaying too. As you please.
http://madeskimo.net
Evie Mark
Evie Mark is a throat-singer from northern Quebec. Traditionally, Inuit throat-singing is considered a
'game in which one makes noises' employed by women during the long winter nights to entertain the
children, while the men were away hunting.
In this ‘game' two women face each other; one is leading, while the other responds; the leader produces
a short rhythmic motif that she repeats with a short silent gap in-between, while the other rhythmically
fills in the gaps. Both singers try to show their vocal abilities in competition, by exchanging these vocal
motives. The first to run out of breath or be unable to maintain the pace of the other singer will start to
laugh or simply stop and will thus lose the game.
Originally, the lips of the two women were almost touching, each one using the other's mouth cavity as a
resonator. The sounds used include voiced sounds as well as unvoiced ones, both through inhalation or
exhalation. Because of this, singers develop a breathing technique, somewhat comparable to circular
breathing used by some players of wind instruments. In this way, they can go on for hours.
Ian Ferrier
Ian Ferrier is one of the core writer/performers in the North American poetry and spoken
word scene. His work is well-known across Canada, as well as in New York and in Europe.
Rooted in poetry, his performances are a haunting blend: some pieces are performed with
acoustic guitar, others with choir; some are whispered and others wail to the trancelike
music of a band called Pharmakon MTL. His signature is the quiet voice at the centre of
every piece.
In the fall of 2007 his CD—What is this Place—was released by Vancouver’s Bongobeat
Records and selected as “best CD of 2007” by HOUR magazine. In Europe, UK Vibe
magazine was even more effusive, saying “It has taken the world forty years to replace
Kerouac, it’s now time to move on as the baton is now in the hands of Ian Ferrier.”
Moe Clark
Métis sound artist Moe Clark fuses her unique understanding of performance narrative
with traditions of circle singing and spoken word. With a background in voice, spoken
word, and visual arts, she creates a lyrical style, steeped in ritual and poetic exploration.
Her poetic songs resonate with the power to heal, to celebrate spirit and to connect with
authentic purpose.
After her debut album release “Circle of She: Story & Song” (April ’09) Moe toured
extensively across Canada and recently made her debut performances in Europe and
South America. Other feature highlights include performances for the '07-'08 Canadian
Festival of Spoken Word, the 2009 festival Voix d’Amériques, the 2009 Diverse as This
Land Performance at the Banff Centre, and the 2007 CBC Calgary Poetry Face-Off.
Moe has collaborated with and performed alongside established artists such as Ian Ferrier
(Montreal), D.Kimm (Montreal), Sheri-D Wilson (Calgary), and Tanya Tagaq (Nunavut).
Aside from her poetry performance work, Moe has also stepped into larger artistic
collaborations in areas of artistic production, composition and performance creation. She
has recently completed two films, one in collaboration with the National Film Board and
another with BravoFACT. The Bravo project was to create and direct a video poem for
Intersecting Circles, a poem that won the 2007 CBC Calgary Poetry Face-Off and has since
become a full-stage performance and part of a permanent archive collection in Northern
Alberta.
www.myspace.com/moeclarkspokenword
Pharmakon MTL
With influences from spoken word, post rock and trance, Pharmakon MTL is a voice/music
improv project. It’s music that takes you on a journey. Its closest analogue would be a
magical ingredient people use for exploration and cathartic release.
In this case the ingredient is only musical: endlessly melodic long-line arpeggios by
electric guitarist Kris Mah, percussion and kinetic tension by long-time collaborator and
drummer Doug Stein; whispered and spoken narrative and verse vocals by poet/musician
Ian Ferrier; sung improv vocals by Metis poet and singer Moe Clark.
Each of these is thrown into the mix, and the result is a free exploration of a musical
landscape bound to an intensely cinematic whispered and spoken voice. The percussion
and guitar define the range and speed of the exploration, and give us the landscape and
the feel. The voice says what will and is happening, and sung vocals tell us in detail how
human it is to react and to feel.
cinematic
kinetic
melodic
http://myspace.com/pharmakonmtl
percussive evocative