Cris Derksen: Cellist at a Crossroads

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“I’m half Cree and half Mennonite,” explains Cris Derksen. “I think that’s really important to say.”
Derksen is a young, innovative and much-in-demand composer and cellist who will be performing at Ottawa’s Chamberfest 30 on Aug. 2.

Astride Two Worlds

Self-described as “urban-indigenous,” Derksen spent her formative years distributed between her father’s First Nation culture at the North Tallcree Reserve in northern Alberta, and the more mixed metropolitan milieu of Edmonton, where she went to school.

“It was quite a dichotomous upbringing,” Derksen says. Her exposure to Indigenous cultural expression is what most seminally prompted her distinctive performance style and varied catalogue of mixed-genre compositions.

Playing the piano from age five, it was an utterly adventitious discovery of the cello at age 10 that engendered her true instrumental romance.

“I wanted to play the double bass,” Derksen recalls. “But my mom’s car was too small. So she said, ‘Take the next biggest thing’—which was, of course, the cello.” A happy accident indeed.

“The range of the cello is so vast,” says Derksen. “And what I do—hooking it up to electronics—really expands the palette of what you think a cello is and can be.”

On the Beat

Derksen is among the growing vanguard of composers and performers pushing at the boundaries of classical/Indigenous musical fusions—composers such as Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, Raven Chacon, Dawn Avery and Tanya Tagaq. In Derksen’s case, the sonic landscapes she creates are further enhanced by a canny sense of theatricality and novelty. Orchestral Powwow, for example (which grew from Derksen’s Juno Award-nominated 2015 album into what is now a 45-minute live show), integrates an authentic native drum ensemble with a traditional chamber orchestra—the latter sans conductor, led instead by the primary rhythm of the drums. (“It’s about time we start listening to the Aboriginal beat first,” Derksen remarks.)

Among Derksen’s currently pending commissions are a 10-minute violin-cello duet which will debut in Edmonton, and the score for an upcoming 90-minute National Geographic documentary entitled “Pristine Seas,” which will highlight the unsullied splendours and diversity of the Hudson Bay ecosystem.

Gem Collecting

“I often feel like I am a jeweller,” Derksen says of her creative process. “I take little bits and pieces of things that I know and love, like a crow collecting shiny things, and braid them together to make them a piece that only I can make.”

For her Aug. 2 Chamberfest30 show, Derksen will be teaming with members of the Quatuor Despax to perform an evening of original string quartet music, combining electronic looping technology with a more classically-inflected performance style.