A daring pop duo
Canadians musicians Tanya Tagaq and Owen Pallett will be doing things their way at Massey Hall Tuesday
Tanya Tagaq and Owen Pallett, two of Canada’s most fearless musical innovators, team up for the latest edition of the Live at Massey Hall concert series on Tuesday.
Tagaq delivers a hair-raising take on traditional Inuit throat-singing influenced by jazz, metal and electronic music, while violin virtuoso Pallett serves up a cultured blend of classical and baroque New Wave pop, but they’re still a perfect pairing.
Both are past Polaris Prize winners, phenomenally well respected and uncommonly well known for artists who have spent their careers indefatigably following their own paths. Who knows? They might even team up for a number or two. The Star chatted with both in advance of Tuesday’s show. The interviews have been edited and condensed.
This is your first time headlining Massey Hall, right? How does that feel?
Tagaq: I’m nervous. I didn’t give a f--- about playing Carnegie Hall! But, yeah, I’m nervous . . . I think it’s just the stigma around this being such a big place and the number of seats to be filled.
Pallett: I’ve been onstage there many times with other bands and I’ve played various orchestral con- certs, but I’ve never actually done a solo concert there before. I don’t enter into the mythology part of it; it doesn’t really affect me so much.
I think this show is emblematic of how much unlikely success and visibility you’ve achieved while making music that’s completely original and uncompromising.
Tagaq: My team and writers and people who work in music all the time are why I’m anywhere. This could have been totally underground for the rest of my life . . . I don’t feel any sort of affiliation with any sort of fame at all. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make me a better person.
Pallett: All I’ve really learned is there’s actually no correlation between the amount of work someone puts into something or the quality of the work compared to how much money it might make you, how many people it’s going to attract or what sort of accolades it might achieve.
How did winning the Polaris Music Prize affect your career?
Tagaq: Having Polaris in my pocket opened a lot of doors in the United States and in Canada, as well. I can now, after15 years of doing this, comfortably support my daughters.
Pallett: Because I won in the first year it was not nearly as much of a “thing” as it is now. I remember having mixed feelings about it because I don’t have a competitive spirit and I don’t think competition has any place in an artistic community.
Do you have anything nice to say about your Massey gig-mate this week?
Tagaq: I met him overseas in Ireland, I think — we did a festival together — and I just really like him and I love his music and that’s why we’re doing Massey together.
Pallett: I’ve wanted to play shows with Tanya for a long time because she’s the best live performer in the world. So I’m really happy that we have this opportunity. I hope that we can play together more often.
Are you working on anything new at the moment?
Tagaq: I’m in town recording my new album with Jesse (Zubot) and Jean (Martin) and a few others right now. It’s very exciting. It’s always about pulling it up higher and pulling it down lower and stretching it further.
Pallett: Me and my band, we’ve kind of been getting to a point where I can’t think of how we would improve the shows we’ve been playing . . . I feel as if I’m kind of ready to move on and do something different. So this show at Massey Hall is probably the last show that I’m going to do that’s going to be entirely reliant upon this violin-and-live-looping-software setup that I’ve got, and what I do in the future is going to be more in service of the songs that I’m writing and the sounds I want to generate rather than the process.