The Canadian Music Center in BC (CMC BC) and Queer Arts Festival are pleased to co-present Queering The Air with Rachel Iwaasa on Friday, September 23, 7:30 pm, at the SUM Gallery, featuring pianist and performance artist Rachel Iwaasa, a ”keyboard virtuoso and avant-garde muse” (Georgia Straight).
She will be performing works written by Queer and Trans composers including three world premieres — by Cris Derksen, Annette Brosin and Rodney Sharman — along with works written for Rachel by Leslie Uyeda, Mary Jane Coomber and Russell Wallace. The new work by Cris Derksen was co-commissioned for this concert by CMC BC and the International Society for Contemporary Music.
“I feel this concert has never been more necessary, said Sean Bickerton, BC Director of the Canadian Music Centre. Necessary to celebrate the extraordinary but neglected vitality and creativity of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, but also as a response to the increase in bullying in schools and hate crimes across Canada during COVID. Visibility, art, and creativity are the most powerful and eloquent responses we can summon to combat ignorance and fear.”
This innovative recital will feature electronic music components and an interactive audience piece, featuring a special appearance by award-winning composer, producer, and traditional singer from the Lil’wat Nation, Russell Wallace.
Tickets are on a sliding scale up to $25 and are free to students and Indigenous attendees. And all proceeds will be donated to Out In Schools, an award-winning 2SLGBTQIA+ education program using film and discussion to engage youth in building safer, more inclusive communities.
About Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa
Hailed in the press as a “keyboard virtuoso and avant-garde muse” (Georgia Straight) with the “emotional intensity” to take a piece “from notes on a page to a stunning work of art” (Victoria Times Colonist), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa is recognized among Canada’s foremost contemporary music pianists. Selected to close the ISCM World New Music Days 2017 in Vancouver, Rachel has performed in the Netherlands, Germany, US and across Canada, with engagements including Muziekweek Gaudeamus, Music TORONTO, Music on Main, Vancouver New Music, Redshift, Western Front, Vancouver Symphony, Victoria Symphony, the Aventa Ensemble (Victoria), CONTACT contemporary music (Toronto), New Works Calgary, Groundswell New Music (Winnipeg), and Vancouver Pro Musica.
Rachel has commissioned or premiered works by many of Canada’s most eminent composers, such as Hildegard Westerkamp, Rodney Sharman, Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Jordan Nobles, Jeffrey Ryan, Farshid Samandari, Marci Rabe, and Emily Doolittle. One half of the acclaimed contemporary flute/piano duo Tiresias with Mark Takeshi McGregor, Rachel has also collaborated with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Judith Forst, Heather Pawsey, the Bozzini Quartet, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, and Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. Her interdisciplinary
adventures have led to work with photo-based artist SD Holman, playwright/director David Bloom, choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, and multi-media provocateur Paul Wong.
About Cris Derksen
Juno nominated Cris Derksen is an internationally-acclaimed 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. A new album of Cris Derksen’s works will be released in 2022.