Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

Musical Matinee: The Gertrudes

The Gertrudes with Sadiqa de Meijer

Musical Performance and Conversation

Islandview

4:00-5:00pm

Join us for a free community concert with a lively performance from Kingston’s own The Gertrudes. This unique musical collective has a new album out, Just to Please You is with “a sound like an old-time saloon party travelling through deep space.” Following their performance, the group will take the stage to speak with Sadiqa de Meijer about the art and process of song writing.

The Gertrudes

“Between the mandolins, singalong folk melodies and driving percussion come nods to 70s classic rock, left-field samples and sonic experimentation … Balk at the ambitiousness, cheer at the result.” —NOW Magazine

The Gertrudes are a unique and experimental music collective from Kingston’s Skeleton Park neighbourhood. This down-home “folkestra” lay down experimental beds and frolic through a veritable orchestra of instruments. The Gertrudes have included a versatile collective of musicians to produce four full length albums, two EPS, participate in numerous Canadian festivals (notably the Vancouver Folk Fest, Pop Montreal, Wolfe Island Music Fest, Halifax Pop Explosion) and share the stage with artists such Sarah Harmer, Calexico, and Ricky Skaggs. Just to Please You is the group’s first full length album collaboration with Neptune’s Machine Producer Jason Mercer (ani difranco, Ron Sexsmith). Taking inspiration from artists like Wilco and The National, The Gertrudes knit together a sound like an old-time saloon party travelling through deep space. Just to Please You follows four full length albums and extensive touring across the country, including memorable performances at the Vancouver Folk Festival and the Halifax Pop Explosion, and sharing the stage with artists like Sarah Harmer, Calexico, and Ricky Skaggs.

Sadiqa de Meijer

Sadiqa de Meijer’s introduction to poetry can be attributed to her mother – a woman who marked anniversaries, birthdays, ice storms, and even haircuts with verses. “My earliest sense of poetry as a medium was that it was for everyone and involved pleasure and skill – which is an uncommon introduction, I think, and probably made a difference,” she says.

Sadiqa’s poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals including Poetry Magazine, as well as in the anthologies Best of Canadian Poetry in English and Villanelles. She won the CBC Canada Writes Poetry Prize for “Great Aunt Unmarried,” a poem based on a close family friend who died at 93, and her debut poetry collection Leaving Howe Island was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry.

Her most recent poetry collection, The Outer Wards, explores questions of maternal love and duty—and the powerlessness that comes with the disruption of that role through illness, and was praised by Michael Crummey for “a voice of authority and grace.” She is also the author of alfabet / alphabet: a Memoir of a First Language which reflects on her transition from speaking Dutch to English. In a series of “lucid, penetrating meditations on language, loss, and identity” – Susan Olding, Sadiqa questions identity, landscape, family, and translation.

Born in the Netherlands, she currently lives in Kingston, Ontario, where she serves as the city’s poet laureate.