In spring 2017, the NAC Orchestra was hosted by the Eskasoni Mi’kmaw Nation, the ancestral home of the highly acclaimed poet and elder Rita Joe, to present Bringing Home I Lost My Talk. The symbolic heart of the performance was the piece I Lost My Talk, based on the poem by Rita Joe. Rita Joe penned her poem to express not only the pain and suffering she survived at Schubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, but also her hope and conviction that her words could guide and inspire Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Canada to journey to a place of strength and healing.
The orchestra also collaborated with local artists Kalolin Johnson, Carter Chiasson and Thomas Johnson to present an arrangement of their powerful song We Shall Remain. This song was written in tribute to the Elders and ancestors of all First Nations peoples. It echoes the voices of a strong and resilient people from times of innocence and harmony with the earth, through centuries of struggle, oppression and hardship and onwards into a time of rebirth and reconciliation through education and the empowerment of youth. Kalolin Johnson is also the featured singer.
Please enjoy this special performance!
Full program
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9, IV. Allegro con fuoco
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto, III. Allegro ma non tanto (James Ehnes violin)
JOHN ESTACIO I Lost My Talk* based on the poem by Rita Joe, C.M.
CARTER CHIASSON/KALOLIN JOHNSON/THOMAS JOHNSON
We Shall Remain (It Wasn't Taken Away) – Kalolin Johnson, singer
Arranged by REBECCA PELLETT
I Lost My Talk full credits
Based on the poem by Rita Joe, C.M.
Monique Mojica, actor
Donna Feore, creative producer & director
Barbara Willis Sweete, filmmaker
Tekaronhiáhkhwa Santee Smith film choreographer
Normal, visual and stage design
Kimberly Purtell, lighting designer
Onscreen dancers:
Kennedy Bomberry
Jesse Dell
Joshua DePerry
Ascension Harjo
Monique Mojica
Billy Merasty
Nimkii Osawmick
Montana Summers
Santee Smith
Alex Twin
I Lost My Talk was commissioned for the National Arts Centre Orchestra to commemorate the 75th birthday of the Right Honourable Joe Clark, P.C., C.C., A.O.E. by his family.
Rita Joe National Song Project
In her autobiography, Rita Joe challenges Indigenous youth to find their voices, share their stories, and celebrate their talents. Inspired by this idea, the NAC asked the teachers and students in five communities across Canada to create a song based on what I Lost My Talk means to them and their community.
Rita Joe was a famous Mi’kmaw poet who celebrated her language, culture and way of life. Rita Bernard was born in 1932 in Whycocomagh, Nova Scotia. Orphaned at the age of ten, she soon found herself at the Shubenacadie Residential School. Forbidden to speak her language, she endured mental and physical abuse and left at age 16. She soon met Frank Joe and they married and started a family.
Rita Joe began writing in the mid-1970s. She wrote seven books, including Poems of Rita Joe (1978), Song of Eskasoni (1988) and The Blind Man’s Eyes (published posthumously in 2015).
In 1989, Rita Joe was inducted into the Order of Canada and in 1992, she became a member of the Queen’s Privy Council. She received an Aboriginal Achievement Award in 1997 and doctorates from several East Coast universities. Rita’s husband, Frank, died in 1989 and a year later she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She kept writing until her death in 2007, five days after her 75th birthday.
Upon her death, the Globe and Mail named her the Poet Laureate of the Mi’kmaq people.
“I was only a housewife with a dream to bring laughter to the sad eyes of my people”
Composer John Estacio is a recipient of the National Arts Centre Award for Composers (2009)– a major prize that includes the commissioning of three works for the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the first of which is Brio: Toccata and Fantasy for Orchestra. The NAC Orchestra premiered Mr. Estacio’s Brio in Ottawa and performed it on tour throughout Canada’s Atlantic provinces in 2011, during the China Tour in 2013, and the UK Tour in 2014. The UK Tour will also feature the world premiere of Mr. Estacio’s latest NAC commission, Wind Quintet.
Mr. Estacio has written three operas including Lillian Alling, which premiered in October 2010 by the Vancouver Opera. Filumena, his first opera, premiered in 2003 in Calgary and Banff, and went on to receive four Betty Mitchell Awards, including one for outstanding production. Filumena was filmed for television and broadcast on PBS and the CBC. As composer-in-residence for several orchestras, Mr. Estacio created several compositions and recorded some of them on the JUNO nominated CD “Frenergy, the Music of John Estacio,” released by CBC Records.
Mr. Estacio’s orchestral works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet featured several of Mr. Estacio’s orchestral works in Wonderland – a ballet choreographed by Shawn Hounsell. He composed an orchestral score for the new ballet King Arthur’s Camelot by the Cincinnati Ballet which premiered in February 2014. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and acclaimed tenor Ben Heppner toured Europe with Mr. Estacio’s arrangement of Seven Songs by Jean Sibelius.
Since its debut in 1969, the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra has been praised for the passion and clarity of its performances, its visionary educational programs, and its prominent role in nurturing Canadian creativity. Under the leadership of Music Director Alexander Shelley, the NAC Orchestra reflects the fabric and values of Canada, reaching and representing the diverse communities we live in with daring programming, powerful storytelling, inspiring artistry, and innovative partnerships.
Alexander Shelley began his tenure as Music Director in 2015, following Pinchas Zukerman’s 16 seasons at the helm. Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and former Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra (2009–2017), he has been in demand around the world, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Stockholm Philharmonic, among others, and maintains a regular relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and the German National Youth Orchestra.
Each season, the NAC Orchestra features world-class artists such as the newly appointed Artist-in-Residence James Ehnes, Angela Hewitt, Joshua Bell, Xian Zhang, Gabriela Montero, Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, and Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds. As one of the most accessible, inclusive, and collaborative orchestras in the world, the NAC Orchestra uses music as a universal language to communicate the deepest of human emotions and connect people through shared experiences.
Monique Mojica (Guna and Rappahannock nations) Actor/ playwright Monique Mojica is passionately dedicated to a theatrical practice as an act of healing, of reclaiming historical/ cultural memory and of resistance. Spun directly from the family-web of New York’s Spiderwoman Theater, her theatrical practice embraces not only her artistic lineage through mining stories embeded in the body, but also the connection to stories coming through land and place.
Monique’s first play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990 and is widely taught in curricula internationally. She was a co-founder of Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble with whom she created The Scrubbing Project, the Dora-nominated The Triple Truth and The Only Good Indian. In 2007, she founded Chocolate Woman Collective to develop the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way, a performance created by devising a dramaturgy specific to Guna cultural aesthetics, story narrative and literary structure.
Monique has taught Indigenous Theatre in theory, process and practice at the University of Illinois, the Institute of American Indian Arts, McMaster University and is a former co- director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. She has lectured on embodied research and taught embodied performance workshops throughout Canada, the U.S., Latin America and Europe.
She was most recently seen onstage in Kaha:wii Dance Theatre’s world premiere of Re-Quickening choreographed by Santee Smith and with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in I Lost My Talk as part of the Life Reflected series.
Upcoming projects include Side Show Freaks & Circus Injuns co-written with Choctaw playwright, LeAnne Howe and directed by Jorge Luis Morejón with an illustrious collaborative team of Indigenous artists from diverse disciplines.
Donna Feore is one of Canada’s most versatile creative talents and has been highly praised for her work with the Stratford Festival. She directed and choreographed last season’s smash hit, The Sound of Music, which enjoyed an extended run. This came on the heels of her 2014 production of the popular and critical hit Crazy for You, which itself followed her hugely acclaimed production of Fiddler on the Roof.
She returns to the NAC, having recently acted as Creative Producer & Director for the NAC-commissioned Dear Life and Director for Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other directing credits include Tom Stoppard’s Rock & Roll and It’s a Wonderful Life for Canadian Stage, and Lecture on the Weather by John Cage and A Soldier’s Tale with F. Murray Abraham for the Detroit Symphony.
Selected opera credits include staging and choreography for the Canadian Opera Company’s Siegfried, which she remounted for the Opéra National de Lyon. Also for the COC: Tosca, Red Emma and Oedipus Rex, which earned her a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Choreography.
Selected film and television credits include Mean Girls, Eloise, Treading Water, Politics is Cruel, Martin and Lewis and Stormy Weather. In 2016, Ms. Feore will direct and choreograph a completely reimagined version of A Chorus Line for the Stratford Festival.
Santee is a multidisciplinary artist from the Kahnyen’kehàka Nation, Turtle Clan, Six Nations of the Grand River. Santee trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and completed Physical Education and Psychology degrees from McMaster University and a M.A. in Dance from York University. Santee premiered her debut work Kaha:wi-a family creation story, in 2004 and one year later founded Kaha:wi Dance Theatre which has grown into an internationally renowned company. Santee’s artistic work speaks about identity and Indigenous narratives. Her body of work includes 14 productions and numerous short works which tour nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of numerous awards most recently the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Prize for the Performing Arts; Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performance Ensemble in Dance at the 2019 for Blood Tides; and her production The Mush Hole received five Dora Mavor Moore awards in 2020. Santee is a sought-after teacher and speaker on the performing arts and Indigenous performance and culture. Smith is the 19th Chancellor of McMaster University. @santeesmith
Normal is a visual design studio founded in Montreal in 2009 by Mathieu St-Arnaud and Philippe Belhumeur. The two creative directors joined forces to offer their television and performing arts clients both their expertise in integrated technology and their visual approach. They were joined in 2013 by Sébastien Grenier-Cartier as partner and managing director. In 10 years, the studio has designed and produced more than 300 multimedia environments (combining video, staging and special effects) that are both groundbreaking and engaging, for shows and events in the performing arts, entertainment and architectural projection sectors. At the forefront of its field in Montreal, Normal Studio is known for its boundless creativity and technological vision. The studio has collaborated with close to 200 local and international artists and companies to create the visual and technological environments of such works as the breathtaking settings of Cirque du Soleil’s Toruk – The First Flight and Sép7imo Día: No Descansaré, and the wildest imaginings of Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon of 4D Art, creators of the Cité Mémoire projection circuit, the multimedia shows Temporel and Icarus, the exhibition Dreamscapes, and the film 360 Continuum at the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium in Montreal. Other notable projects include the visual design of the dystopian film Fahrenheit 451 by Rahmin Bahrani, produced by HBO Films; the projections for storyteller Fred Pellerin’s Christmas Tales with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; and the set design for Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra’s contemporary symphonic concerts Life Reflected and The Man with the Violin, to name just a few. Normal Studio is a team of 33 people and a dozen freelancers and external suppliers to the Quebec design and multimedia industry. Its team of experts is composed of multidisciplinary talents in animation, illustration, design, staging, technical direction, computer science and new technology who share a commitment to creative excellence and a desire to present the extraordinary to the audiences of multimedia works and experiences.
Kimberly is a Toronto-based lighting designer for theatre, opera, and dance. Her designs have been critically acclaimed across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mongolia, as well as in Prague and Moscow. She has designed for the Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Canadian Stage Company, Soulpepper Theatre, Mirvish Productions, National Arts Centre, and the NAC Orchestra, as well as Pacific Opera Victoria, Opera Philadelphia, Arena Stage in Washington D.C., Tapestry Opera, Hamilton Opera, Edmonton Opera, Theatre Calgary, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Citadel Theatre, and Place des Arts, among many others. She has also designed productions for the Pan Am Games and the Vancouver and Beijing Cultural Olympiads.
Kimberly has been nominated for numerous awards for excellence in lighting design and has received three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the Pauline McGibbon Award, a Montreal English Theatre Award, a Sterling Award, a Toronto Theatre Critics Award, and an Ottawa Critics Circle Award.