Award-winning Canadian folk singer Kaia Kater will perform her first Montana show ever on Saturday, February 4, at 7:30 at Big Sky’s Warren Miller Performing Arts Center.
Born of African-Caribbean descent in Québec, Kater grew up between two worlds: one her family’s deep ties to Canadian folk music in her Toronto home; the other the years she spent learning and studying Appalachian music in West Virginia. Her acclaimed debut album Sorrow Bound (2015) touched on this divide, but her new album, Nine Pin (May, 2016), delves even further, and casts an unflinching eye at the realities faced by people of color in North America every day. Her songs on the new album are fueled by her rich low tenor vocals, jazz-influenced instrumentation, and beautifully understated banjo, and they’ve got as much in common with Kendrick Lamar right now as they do with Pete Seeger.
Recorded in just one day in Toronto, Nine Pin was produced by both Kater and acclaimed Canadian artist Chris Bartos (The Barr Brothers, Jonathan Byrd), who also produced her last album, Sorrow Bound. Few artists could pull off such a polished, cohesive album in one day, but Kater felt that this actually lent focus to the project. As a concept album, Nine Pin weaves between hard-hitting songs that touch on modern issues like the Black Lives Matter movement (“Rising Down,” “Paradise Fell”) and more personal narratives speaking to life and love in the digital age (“Saint Elizabeth”). And while these larger stories are deftly crafted, this is really an album of moments. Kater’s a cappella voice speaking to the loneliness of a city in “Harlem’s Little Blackbird” while solo dance steps echo in the background, the muted hesitancy of Caleb Hamilton’s trumpet breaking the trance of “Little Pink,” the smoke of electric guitar that cuts through “Saint Elizabeth,” the wave-like ebb and flow of piano behind the plaintive love poem “Viper’s Nest…” All of these moments point to an artist wise beyond her years.
Born in Montreal, she has lived Winnipeg, Wakefield and, most recently, West Virginia, Kater now resides in Toronto. Her old-time banjo-picking skills, deft arrangements, and songwriting abilities have landed her in the spotlight in North America and the UK, garnering critical acclaim from outlets such as Rolling Stone, CBC Music and The Roots Music Report. Often praised for her capacity to sound new and old at once, Kaia anchors her music the space where tradition and innovation intersect.
Kater’s song “Paradise Fell” off of Nine Pin was selected as one of NPR’s Heavy Rotation The Best Music of 2016, and she was named as one of 10 Country Artists To Watch in 2016 by Rolling Stone, which called has said she is “…plaintive, mesmerizing…writes and performs with the skill of a folk-circuit veteran…” In December, Nine Pin was recently named the “Pushing the Boundary” category winner at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.
Tickets are now on sale, $15 for general admission and $25 for premium seating, at warrenmillerpac.org. For more information on these concerts, please call (406) 995-2742 or visit bigskyarts.org.
