ARTS Sounds as fresh as new snow

With new faces, Music on Main mixes it up for the Winter Solstice concert

In just five years, Music on Main’s annual Music for the Winter Solstice concert has become a true seasonal tradition, its blend of sonic innovation and convivial warmth a welcome alternative to frenzied shopping streets and the winter blues. But with acceptance comes expectation. How can Mom’s programmers retain the holiday spirit while also keeping the mix fresh?

For MOM artistic director David Pay, it’s a matter of gently tweaking the established formula, while thinking equally carefully about who he invites onboard.

“When I’m talking to people about playing this show, I’m talking to them about the feeling in the audience and the feeling in the space,” he explains, in a cellphone conversation with the Straight. “And, obviously, I’m thinking about musicians who can share that feeling of warmth and all the feelings of glad tidings, but without any of the feast-days necessities.

“It’s not Christmas; it’s not Hanukkah; it’s not a pagan solstice,” he continues. “It’s just that this time of year, things get dark but also warm and cozy. So how can we have a beautiful feeling where we can all come together? And when I talk to musicians about that, they’re always onside.”

This year, only pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa returns from previous Music for the Winter Solstice productions, but a few familiar songs will reappear, including Mom–commissioned works from Alfredo Santa Ana, Nicole Lizée, and Caroline Shaw. Joining Iwaasa on the Heritage Hall stage will be violinist Karen Gerbrecht and singer Corey Payette: the former will present a selection of what Pay calls “violin bonbons” from Fritz Kreisler, Edward Elgar, and Antonín Dvorak, while the latter will offer songs from his musicals Les Filles du Roi and Children of God. Payette will also introduce a new instrument to the Winter Solstice stage: the Indigenous frame drum on which he accompanies himself in the song “Gimikwenden Ina (Do You Remember?)”.

It’s an appropriate choice, the Ojicree composer notes. “The drum in that song plays an enormous role,” Payette relates, on the line from Armstrong, B.C., where his new musical, Sedna, has just opened at the Caravan Farm Theatre to immense acclaim. “It’s such a low, bassy instrument that it provides us with a sense of warmth. It almost warms us from the inside.”

For Payette, tradition is a powerful source of warmth and sustenance, and that’s at the heart of “Gimikwenden Ina”. “In times of darkness, in what can seem like a cold feeling or isolation, if we share language and share songs, that is a way that we, as people, have always connected to one another,” he says, noting that he sees Music for the Winter Solstice as part of “a very, very old tradition of storytelling and sharing song”.