Director of the School of Music
Professor, Composition
Email: t.patrick.carrabre@ubc.ca
T. Patrick Carrabré is a Métis composer living in Vancouver. Construction of identity and community engagement are long-term themes in his compositions, concert and radio programming, and administrative activities. Recognition for his music has included two JUNO nominations, a recommendation at the International Rostrum of Composers, several WCMA nominations and one award (Best Classical Composition). For well over a decade he worked closely with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, including six seasons as composer-in-residence and co-curator of the Winnipeg New Music Festival. Pat also served two-seasons as the weekend host of CBC Radio 2’s contemporary music show The Signal.
Research Area: Community Engagement, Decolonization, Digital Strategies for Musicians, Music Composition
My current research-creation project is a musical work for the Harbourfront Centre’s Music in the Garden concert series. It will explore manifestations of Métis identity from the early 1800s to the present. Following the Red River Resistance (1869–1870) and the Battle of Batoche (1885), it was often dangerous to publicly identify as Métis. Beginning with a reworking of Pierre Falcon’s Battle of Frog Plain, through the years of hiding (“My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.” Louis Riel), this work will conclude with a setting of Gregory Scofield “Since When,” showing the ever changing face of the Métis. To realize this project, I am working with Métis mezzo-soprano Rebecca Cuddy, who already has a rich repertoire of Métis related material that will provide further context for our continued struggle to be recognized as a unique people and claim space wherever we might now live.