Cris Derksen’s CONTROLLED BURN Will Make Calgary Premiere

The Calgary Philharmonic will welcome innovative cellist and composer Cris Derksen to perform with the Orchestra at the Singer Concert Hall on Saturday, March 15 for the Calgary premiere of Controlled Burn. Derksen was commissioned to write Controlled Burn by Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain with Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and it premiered there in 2024. Derksen also performed the piece for her debuts at Carnegie Hall and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center last year in addition to an appearance with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra.

Controlled Burn takes its name from and is inspired by traditional Indigenous fire keeping practices that were banned in Canada shortly after Confederation but that have since been accepted as a useful tool in combatting the conditions that lead to the catastrophic fires that have been plaguing areas and communities in North America with ever-increasing frequency. The work addresses the sense of loss that came with the banning of Indigenous cultural practices. She speaks of a time, pre-contact with European settlers, in which burns were a safe community event populated by “running children” and “aunties laughing.”

“Now, obviously, forest fires are not safe,” she says of the flames that have caused such destruction in locations as far flung as Los Angeles and Jasper. “The sound of these fires are military — the sound of helicopters and water bombers.”

It’s the latest triumph for the JUNO-nominated artist, who has performed across the globe as a soloist-composer, serves as Artistic Advisor to the Calgary Phil, and has collaborated on such projects as the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast, Surviving St. Michael’s. No matter how high her star rises, though, Derksen, who comes from a lineage of chiefs from the NorthTall Cree Reserve on her father’s side and strong Mennonite homesteaders on her mother’s, has remained true to her core philosophy of making music inclusive and accessible to all.

"I’ve always been about making music relatable to my peers,” says Derksen. “Taking the cello outside of the concert hall and bringing it down to street level was something that I really cared a lot about when I was just starting out — to get rid of the classism that comes with classical music. As I grow and find myself in the classical sphere, I feel like I’m bringing the street level into the classical world as well, bringing all my worlds together.”

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