JEREMY DUTCHER MOTEWOLONUWOK ᒣᑏᐧᐁᓓᓄᐧᐁᒃ Tour
23rd Nov 2023 at 7:30pm
Events Acadia, in partnership with Acadia Student Services, is pleased to present an Evening with Jeremy Dutcher, featuring Sister Ray.
Jeremy Dutcher is a Two-Spirit song carrier, composer, activist, ethnomusicologist and classically-trained vocalist from New Brunswick, Canada who currently lives in Montréal, Québec. A Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation in North-West New Brunswick, Jeremy is best known for his debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (The Songs of the People of the Beautiful River), recorded following a research project on archival recordings of traditional Wolastoqiyik songs at the Canadian Museum of History. Jeremy transcribed songs sung by his ancestors in 1907 and recorded onto wax cylinders, transforming them into “collaborative” compositions. The album earned him the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the 2019 JUNO Awards. His 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Concert has over 85,000 views.
Jeremy studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After training as an operatic tenor in the Western classical tradition, he expanded his professional repertoire to include the traditional singing style and songs of his community. Jeremy’s music transcends boundaries: unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home, and teeming with the urgency of modern-day resistance.
Jeremy has toured the world, from Australia and Norway to Italy and the Philippines. He has worked with and performed for iconic artists such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joni Mitchell, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Jeremy is regularly sought out for his perspectives on queerness, Indigeneity, language revitalization, and fashion, including a 2022 appearance as a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race. In 2022, Jeremy and his family launched Kekhimin, the first ever Wolastoqey language immersion school, in Fredericton New Brunswick.
Sister Ray, the project of Edmonton-born songwriter Ella Coyes, was conceived out of necessity;
a self-designed vehicle built to examine trauma with unflinching honesty. Armed with a voice
that soars and scrapes in equal measure, Coyes converts first-person recollections of big,
complicated love into universally potent allegories. Raised on the expansive prairies of Sturgeon
County, Sister Ray’s music is steeped in a wide range of cultural influences. With gospel
bluegrass and 90’s country playing in the background of their youth, it was the traditional Métis
music played at home that not only brought them closer to their heritage, but taught them a
form of storytelling rooted in collective value, resilience, and safety.
Communion, the 2022 debut album by Sister Ray, is a raw, meticulously-crafted portrait of
momentous, ordinary moments; experiences that define your past, and instruct how you move
through the world. Quickly met with critical acclaim, the album was longlisted for the 2022
Polaris Prize, and Pitchfork deemed it “a complex study of webs of interpersonal hurt, and a
celebration of emotional survival.” They have been featured in Clash Magazine, NME, DIY
Magazune, Audiotree, Paste, NPR, and more, along with appearances at Pitchfork Festival in
Paris & London, Primavera Weekender, and headline and support dates across North America
and Europe.
Teeth, their new EP on Royal Mountain Records, came from a need for space and the
repercussions conditional to this desire. “I was thinking often about intimacy and
avoidance—crawling around to find where my place would be,” Coyes says. The songs were
written quickly and vigorously, mimicked through the recording process, crafted by Coyes over
five days, recruiting Ginla ( the Brooklyn based duo behind Communion and early Adrienne
Lenker) as collaborators and producers. With three originals and a spectral cover of “I Never Will
Marry,” inspired by Linda Ronstadt’s interpretation, Coyes discerns big and small epiphanies in
Teeth. Their yearning tone and staggering honesty trickles throughout and the erosion leads to
an opening—vacant, unfamiliar, and with room to breathe.
Venue: Festival Theatre
