May 2, 3 2026 at 3 pm | The Newcombe Singers, Music Director, Kathryn Whitney
Earth Song is a concert co-curated by Kathryn Whitney and Rebecca Hass
Featuring a new choral composition premiere by Rebecca Hass
How shall we live well on the earth? First, we must ask the earth how it would like
to be lived upon. .
The concert EARTH SONG takes us on a journey, curated jointly by Métis singer
and composer Rebecca Hass and Newcombe music director, Kathryn Whitney, to a
place where we can hear the Earth sing.
Taking the idea of a Land Acknowledgment as our point of departure, our concert
mixes indigenous and non-indigenous voices, each of which, through singing,
brings us closer to the sounds of the natural world.
Listening to these voices, and lifting our voices to sing along with them, we hear
the earth and the sound of the tundra, trees, warm sun, and tall mountains. The
sound of our own footprint, as well as the history of the footprints of our own
ancestors on the land, becomes clearer, leading to understanding of our
relationship to the land, and to ourselves.
EARTH SONG offers our singers and audience the chance, through group singing,
to come to a new understanding of what it means to live on, and be part of, the
land.
You can learn more about the Newcombe Singers here
November 11, 2025 Reflection by Rebecca Hass
In the land acknowledgement that I often hear there is a line that strikes me ‘ we give our gratitude to the Indigenous people’s of this place who have stewarded it since time immemorial’. It’s that word: stewarded. That word leaps out at me. I am a visitor on the territory I live on, and I take caring for the land very seriously. I feel the responsibility to be a good caretaker, in relationship to, and in respect to, this land. I’m attentive to my own role as a visitor in being a good steward. This comes from how my Dad raised me, and the Métis teachings he carried from his mom. I grow medicine plants in my garden and have been working to restore my small yard to more of the Garry oak meadow it once was. I think about what I harvest, and from where, and think about how what I take might impact other creatures that also live on this land.
When Kathryn first spoke to me about working with the Newcombe Singers, it was my land based music creative practice that I wanted to share. I believe that we can all find ourselves and our role in the land acknowledgement. As visitors, we have a responsibility and an opportunity, to care for this place. The first step is to begin to listen more deeply to the place we are. To build a relationship to the land we are on.
If you were to stop and listen, what might you hear? Could you move beyond the sound of traffic, and the noise of city living? If you moved beyond the pavement, could you hear the lands tonality? Could you feel the beat of the ocean? Or the tempo of the forest at Beacon Hill?
I’m excited to begin this journey of listening and relationship building with this place with the Newcombe Singers. It is my vision to learn from the choir members what the land is telling them and let that lead into the choral composition for the May performance. What is it to sing the land? What is the song the earth is singing to us? I’m looking forward to exploring these questions and hearing the song that arises.
Closing Reflection by Rebecca Hass — July 9, 2026
What a journey I had with the Newcombe Singers! Kathryn and her lovely choir brought passion, open minds and a great sense of fun to our collaboration. My process for this project was very unique and a new one for me. I wanted to co-create with the singers and for this new piece to be truly theirs in how it reflected their relationship to this land. I chose to assign the choir some ‘homework.’ I asked them to spend time on the land and to listen for a word, or phrase, or images that resonated with them. When they had gathered this over a month or two, they could submit to Kathryn who would pass it on to me. I encouraged them to trust their intuition and listen to the land, because it is speaking to them. I knew from my own journey that there is a deeper listening we can all engage in. I had no idea if this would work or not, but I trusted my gut and waited. I had a few days in residency arranged at the Canadian Music Centre in Vancouver to unpack the submissions in January of 2026. When I opened the file it was teeming with submissions. I had everything from a few adjectives, to an essay, to poems, and even photos. I opened up my workbook and made two pages. One for descriptive adjectives and one with feelings that the land was evoking. There were themes of course, but what really struck me was the perspective that was being revealed. The land was giving them something — stillness, wonder, balance, belonging, a sense of the sacred, love, comfort, wisdom, strength and mystery. So many words, and they were inspiring in each writer a gratitude. I had to wonder: What were they giving to the land? It was so generous. Over and over again. What was the reciprocal action that the choir members could offer?
All reflections were about what nature gave them — and the ways it was given — their joy, peace, and fear of loss. What does our gratitude sound like?
I thought about songs as gratitude. The song that is needed is one that honours and celebrates the land that has given us so much. I began to search through the many voice memos I have made the last few years. I have gotten into the habit of recording the melodies that come to visit, and sharing where I heard it, and what I was thinking about when I heard it. It is my way of honouring the song’s purpose that called it into being. As I went through the many old recordings I was listening for the song fragment that spoke of thankfulness through celebration. And there it was! I came across a very happy little melody that I had recorded for my dear brother, Rene Meshake, a few years ago. This melody came on the surf one morning, on the Tla-o-qui-aht territory near Tofino. The song made me smile and its energy of gratitude was undeniable. I tried a few others, but there was no doubt by the end of the first day — this was the entry point for this song — I knew it.
This joyful, kitchen party melody with its easy vocables, became the frame that opened and closed the song. In the middle is the journey from the beach up to the forest — again using all the words that the choir provided. An invitation to the audience to walk along the water, and then turn up to the sand, over the rocks, through the grass and undergrowth until you arrive at the trees and look up, up, up. The awe of the moment, I feel it in my bones just picturing it. The seagulls can be heard calling, and we, as the two leggeds, are left with a feeling of being ‘enfolded’ by the earth, deeply aware of the ‘great mystery’ that mother earth provides us with.
Highlights of this process include this compositional experience and the importance of how we do the work together in rehearsals and workshop. The time with Kathryn and the Newcombe Singers taught me so much about working with a community choir, everything from the joy of co-creation to the value of building relationship over perfection in execution. As a creative coach I often ask people to think about what makes a project a success in their mind. From the outside you would think applause, or flattering remarks, but all artists know that the joy and fulfillment lives in the process. This was a fulfilling journey that I walked with Kathryn and all of the Newcombe folks, and I’m grateful for their generosity in the process and their smiling faces as they performed it this past May.
