SPSCC Artist & Lecture Series: Tanya Tagaq in Concert with Nanook of the North

Tanya Tagaq’s music is like nothing you’ve heard before. The Arctic-born artist is an improvisational performer, avant-garde composer and experimental recording artist who won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize for an album called Animism, a work that disrupted the music world in Canada and beyond with its powerfully original vision. Tagaq contorts elements of punk, metal, and electronica into a complex and contemporary sound that begins in breath, a communal and fundamental phenomenon.

While 2014’s Polaris Music Prize win signaled an awakening to Tanya Tagaq’s art and messages, she has been touring and collaborating with an elite international circle of artists for over a decade. Tagaq’s improvisational approach lends itself to collaboration across genres, and recent projects have pulled her in vastly different directions, from contributing guest vocals to a F**ked Up song (a hardcore punk band from Toronto) to premiering a composition made for Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future collection, and composing a piece for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Tanya’s most recent album Retribution was released in fall 2016.