The Metis Legacy
Philip Aaberg, Darol Anger, Jimmie LaRocque,
with The Metis Heritage Dancers,
and the Cascade String Quartet
World Premiere Performance
November 16
Helena Civic Center
In the 1800s, a new population of people emerged on the Northern Plains of North America: the Metis, whose fathers were former employees of Hudson's Bay and Northwest Fur Companies, and whose mothers were Indian women of various tribes. The French word, Metis, comes from the Latin mixtus, which means "mixed," and which also gives us "mele." It's the right idea.
When Canada annexed the northwest in 1870, all the treaties signed with the Metis were "unilaterally extinguished" through individual land and grants scrip. Denied the recognition of their collective rights by political edict, the Metis became Canada's "forgotten people."
This landless nation, led at one time by the martyr-warrior Louis Riel (who taught, briefly, at a school near Great Falls before heading off to fight with his people) is now emerging as a political and cultural force in Canada, and recently won an important court decision regarding hunting rights. (For more information, see http://www.metisnation.org.), or read Strange Empire, by Joseph Kinsey Howard, with an introduction by Nicholas Vrooman of Helena.
Come join us in a celebration of the extraordinary legacy of fiddle music of the Metis people. The project explores the musical and social legacy of a tribe without boundaries, whose heritage results from marriage between Indians and Europeans throughout the Northern Plains from Sault St. Marie, Michigan, to Choteau, Montana, across both sides of the 49th parallel.
For this project, Composer/performers, Darol Anger, Philip Aaberg, folklorist Nicholas Vrooman and master Metis fiddler Jimmie LaRocque collaborated on the creation of a new musical work that references the indigenous American rhythms and diverse European fiddle heritage that illuminates Metis music.
World-class composer and pianist Philip Aaberg is known throughout the world for his incredible range and boundless, distinctive style. He finds devoted listeners among rock, country, new age, and classical music fans, and his range of performances includes everything from solo piano concertos with the Boston Pop Orchestra to appearances with luminaries like Peter Gabriel, Elvin Bishop, John Hiatt, and slide guitar innovator Roy Rogers.
Violinist, fiddler, composer, producer and educator, Darol Anger is at home in a number of musical genres, some of which he helped to invent. With the jazz-oriented Turtle Island String Quartet, Anger developed and popularized new techniques for playing contemporary music styles on string instruments. The virtuosic "Chambergrass" groups Psychograss and Newgrange, and the plugged-in Anger-Marshall Band feature his compositions and arrangements. His Grammy-nomimated folk-jazz group Montreux was the original musical model for the New Adult Contemporary radio format. Working with some of the world's great improvising string musicians, among them Stephane Grappelli, Mark O'Connor, Bela Fleck and Vassar Clements, has contributed to the development of Anger's signature voice, both as a player and a composer.
