Spy Dénommé-Welch

Storytelling through Sonic Worldings

In this talk I discuss how I approach music composition, creation, and storytelling, and the ways I engage the pedagogical and philosophical implications of human-Land relationships in story building. By exploring the conceptual and real-time observations of human-Land interconnections, using sound, music composition, and storytelling (play-building, world-building), I investigate how these influences can effectively shape one’s imagination and creativity while bringing to bear critical reflections of how we relate and interact with the Land, and, furthermore, how deeper environmental awareness can influence artmaking.

Biography

Spy Dénommé-Welch, PhD., (Algonquin-Anishnaabe) is a composer, sound designer, librettist/playwright, producer, and scholar. He wrote and co-composed the Dora-nominated opera Giiwedin (2010), and premiered his second opera, Canoe, in September 2023. Recently, he released his first full album entitled, Transpositions, featuring the viola, bass trombone/tuba and piano. Other selected composing and writing credits include RADAR (2019), Rouge Winter (2019), Contraries: a chamber requiem (2018), Sojourn (2017), Bottlenecked (2017), HATE MAIL & Irreconcilable Trolls (2017), Victorian Secrets (2014), and sound design and composition for Audrey Dwyer’s play Come Home: The Legend of Daddy Hall (2024).

Dr. Dénommé-Welch is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Knowledge Systems and Education and Associate Professor at Western University. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Unsettled Scores (www.unsettledscores.com).