Nominees for the 2025 JUNO Awards were announced on Tuesday, February 11, with several CMC Associate Composers and Centrediscs Recording Artists featured among this year’s nominees.
World premieres by Andrew Balfour and T. Patrick Carrabré will be performed at UBC’s First Nations Longhouse.
Manitoba’s Andrew Balfour is a Juno-nominated Indigenous composer who was Brandon University’s artist-in-residence last week. His piece, War Oratorio Nôtinikêw, (Going to War), tells the stories of forgotten Indigenous soldiers through music.
Balfour, 56, is in St. John’s as part of a tour with the Vancouver chamber group Musica Intima.
Outstanding records from Marc-André Hamelin, Julia MacLaine, collectif9, Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà — and others
An open letter from the second iteration of the Canadian Indigenous Classical Music Gathering
Looking back on the first few months of the pandemic, Andrew Balfour recalls being in “an absolute state of shock.” The composer and artistic director of Winnipeg-based chamber choir Dead of Winter recalls, “After I’d realized the seriousness of [COVID-19] globally, I was even starting to think, ‘I had a good run. I was lucky enough to do what I wanted for this long. Maybe I’ll have to get another job.’”
"There are things you expect to hear from a classical-music composer like Andrew Balfour: that he grew up singing in a church choir. That he began playing an instrument at an early age – in his case, trumpet. That while other kids were grinding out guitar licks, miming Bruce Springsteen or David Bowie (he grew [...]
