Odaabaanag (2019)
Odaabaanag was commissioned in collaboration with Jumblies Theatre and Soundstreams. Odaabaanag is a project that bridges contemporary music, community-engaged arts and intercultural creative processes. Using Soundstreams’ February 2019 performance of Steve Reich’s “Different Trains” as a catalyst and source for inspiration, Anishinaabe composer Melody McKiver developed a new work for string quartet and recorded voices from the community. Like “Different Trains”, Odaabaanag (“Trains” in Ojibwe) explores the notion of intergenerational memories. While “Different Trains” reflects on Steve Reich’s Jewish heritage and the Holocaust through the use of survivor voices, Odaabaanag highlights themes, voices, and histories from Melody’s home community of Sioux Lookout ON and Lac Seul First Nation, drawn from interviews with Anishinaabe elders Garnet Angeconeb, Tom Chisel, and Josephine King. Alongside Melody’s string quartet, The Gather Round Singers community choir also performed a new song cycle by Beverley McKiver, drawing on the same participatory and cultural source material of the McKivers’ shared familial histories. Odaabaanag‘s premiere culminating performance was presented Nov 30, 2019 and Dec 1, 2019 at the Brigantine Room, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto ON. On May 5th, 2019, at the Arts & Letters Club, Odaabaanag‘s work-in-progress performance was presented to a full house.
Excerpts from Odaabaanag was subsequently performed in a chamber version of the Brandon University New Music Ensemble, including Melody McKiver as violist, as part of the Brandon University Indigenous New Music Festival in February 2020. Future performances are presently in development for Ottawa ON and Sault Ste Marie ON, pending COVID-19 accommodations.
The string quartet was premiered by
Violin 1 - Timothy Ying
Violin 2 - Aysel Taghi-Zada
Viola - Kathleen Kajioka
Cello - David Hetherington
Melody McKiver - Reckoning EP (2017)
This album comes from the production of Reckoning by Article 11. A triptych in movement, video and text, Reckoning is an incendiary theatrical presentation of three separate experiences with Indian Residential Schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the fallout that has already reverberated across the country. The Reckoning EP is taken from the original score composed and performed by Melody McKiver for the first movement, Witness. Composed for solo viola and live electronics, Reckoning was captured in a single take and subsequently mixed and produced by Melody McKiver. John Ng’s powerful performance of Witness traces the experiences of a first-generation Canadian reviewing claims made by residential school survivors to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and emotionally processing those traumas experienced by children. Reckoning EP is dedicated to the memory of Melody McKiver’s late grandmother Waa’oo Kathleen Bunting-iban, a survivor of Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario.
Marina Thibeault performs Melody McKiver’s Ningodwaaswi and Niizhi, arranged by François Vallières 2021.