Pride Spotlights: Cris Derksen
Today on Pride Spotlight we feature Indigenous cellist and composer Cris Derksen, who identifies as Two-Spirit and uses she/her pronouns.
Image sourced from https://www.crisderksen.com/
Derksen originates from North Tall Cree reserve in Northern Alberta. She trained in classical music from a young age, and has a Bachelors Degree in cello performance from the University of British Columbia, where she served as Principal Cellist with the UBC Symphony Orchestra. Derksen received the Canadian Aboriginal Music Award for Instrumental Album of the Year for her album The Cusp (2010), and was nominated for a Juno Award in the same category for her 2015 album Orchestral Powwow.
With several international composer credits for film and tv under her belt, and Derksen is internationally respected. She has been commissioned by several orchestras in Canada and abroad, including the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra (Rebellion, a short symphonic piece, 2020), and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (Napi on the Rocks, A Symphonic Story, 2019).
Derksen’s main claim to fame is her genre-defying compositional style. Her innovative sound, which has been described as “classical-traditional fusion”, juxtaposes contemporary electronic beats against a skillfully woven tapestry of elements from classical, folk, urban, and aboriginal musical traditions. The end result of Derksen’s creative integration of seemingly incongruous musical elements is a body of work that is fresh, thoughtful, and undeniably modern. Derksen’s music combines her classical background and Indigenous ancestry, and the resulting music is simultaneously both, yet neither.
Derksen’s personhood cannot be slotted into simple identity categories; the music she creates defies labels in a similar way. Derksen’s music is a living artistic expression of the principle of intersectionality, which refers to interconnection of identity factors such as race, gender, and sexuality.
While her influences are apparent, her music is an entity truly greater than the sum of its parts. In her own words, her goal is to bring “Aboriginal music to the centre of the European model. . . to lead the way with our drums and our heart beat to create new forms of music”. In this sense, her compositions serve as a sonic representation of the intersections between the old and the new, and give insight into her unique intersectionality. No matter what label you use to describe it, one thing is clear: like her music, Derksen is in a category all her own.
Have a listen to the track “Round Dance” from Derksen’s Juno-nominated third studio album Orchestral Powwow, for which she collaborated with powwow groups across Canada.
