CANADA DAY
CELEBRATING CANADIAN WOMEN IN MUSIC & ART
Tuesday, July 1 • 4-10PM
Open Hearth Park, Sydney NS
FREE ADMISSION
Featuring Mainstage Performances by...
SERENA RYDER
Toronto-based vocal powerhouse Serena Ryder is a platinum-selling artist adored by fans, peers and critics alike, in part due to her raw and earnest songwriting, and beautifully electric live performances. She has won seven prestigious JUNO Awards, including the 2022 Adult Contemporary Album of the Year for her record The Art of Falling Apart, which invites listeners to join her mental wellness journey and helps us understand the importance of sitting with the uncomfortable moments and the wisdom in their messages.
Serena has a unique ability to cross genres – from pop, to folk and roots, to Christmas and children’s music. Her diverse catalogue has earned her several accolades, including Canada’s Walk of Fame Allan Slaight Music Impact Honour, the Margaret Trudeau Mental Health Advocacy Award, a Canada Folk Music Award and Canadian Screen Award for Achievement in Music–Original Song.
Serena is a mental-wellness advocate who has shared her own story of depression and neuro-divergency publicly, and speaks across the country to thousands of people each year. Her song “What I Wouldn’t Do” was reimagined for Kids Help Phone’s Feel Out Loud 2023 campaign — the largest mental health campaign in Canadian history. Serena also works with emerging musicians and industry professionals through her ArtHaus Community non profit, helping them develop creative, entrepreneurial and wellness skills needed to thrive in today’s music and media landscape.
HEARTS OF KIN
Hearts of Kin is an emerging East Coast Americana band fronted by sisters Danielle MacDonald and Shellie Ann Tobin. The singer songwriters have been capturing audiences with their sweet sibling harmonies and signature slide guitar. Well known for their soulful songwriting, the darling duo's style has been flavored by the early influences of Sheryl Crow, Jewel, The Chicks and the late great John Prine. Recently reunited in their Cape Breton hometown, the sisters have wasted no time establishing the band as an up-and-coming force. Their debut album, Beautiful Burn, released in October, 2023 has received significant recognition, winning Music Nova Scotia's Country Recording of the Year 2024.
With several songs claiming top positions on east coast and national radio charts, Hearts of Kin have earned invitations to showcase for the East Coast Music Awards, the Stan Rogers Folk Festival, and the largest outdoor concert in Atlantic Canada, the Cavendish Beach Music Festival. The duo is currently touring locally, while working toward their next album.
and Songwriters Picnic with...
KAIA KATER
In the years since her 2018 album, Grenades, on Smithsonian Folkways, Kaia Kater has taken time to reinvent herself and hone her skills, first attending film school to learn composition, then diving deeper into her songwriting to come up with her most personal album yet. Feeling the pressure as a talented young songwriter, banjo player, and bandleader with three successful albums and an NPR Tiny Desk Concert under her belt, Kater struggled initially with the expectations of her adopted genre, Americana. “I was factoring everybody else's perception into my songwriting,” she says. “Would I write more honestly if I knew that no one would ever hear this?” With that in mind, Kater retreated to her apartment in Montréal. Sitting at home with her banjo, the songs unfolded in personal intimacy, revealing windows into the perspective of
women and revolutionaries through history.
Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian Kaia's jazz-fueled voice and deft songcraft have garnered acclaim from NPR's Tiny Desk, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and No Depression. Through her artful banjo playing and lush songwriting, Kaia draws on influences rooted in Quebec, the Caribbean, and Appalachia, all of which reflect the diversity of her background; her ties to the Canadian folk music scene; her college years spent soaking up Appalachian music in West Virginia, her father’s experience growing up in Grenada, and her recent work in film composition.
ROSE MORRISON
An artist embodying the roar of the sea with a pure and delicate voice, Rose Morrison has seen, and done, a lot in her almost 25 years as a professional musician. The versatile fiddler from Baddeck, Victoria County, has toured and recorded with Oscar and Grammy Award winner Glen Hansard, Irish folk legend Breanndán O Beaglaoich (Breanndán Begley), and celebrated Scottish-Canadian tenor John McDermott. She’s performed twice at Carnegie Hall—most recently in March 2024 during a tribute to Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan, recorded three albums and travelled all over North America, Europe, and Japan with the Cottars, and won three East Coast Music Awards. While Rose has firmly established herself as a fiddler drawing from a deep well of fierce, untamed wildness, she has also been writing songs for years, though rarely singing or playing them for many people. Until now. Rose’s third album, The River She Knows, was released in June and reveals Rose emerging as a poignant and insightful songwriter. Her songs get stuck in your head—and your day is better for it. In addition to recording and performing, Rose has spent the past three years as Artistic Director of the Little Church in Big Baddeck—a popular series showcasing international artists in a quaint and intimate setting, nestled beside the Baddeck River at the Vicar’s View.
ABMHS WOMEN'S DRUM GROUP
The Allison Bernard Memorial High School Women's Drum Group brings together young women to learn and carry on traditional practice of Mi'kmaw drumming.
and in the Family Zone...
FUN INFLATABLES & GAMES
With an assortment of inflatable fun and games for all ages, the Family Zone is always a highlight of the Canada Day experience. From bouncers to obstacle courses, physical games to games of skill, there is something for everyone to experience - ALL FOR FREE!
TUNES & TALL TALES
With lush three part harmonies and high quality instrumentation, Tunes & Tall Tales is presents original stories and singalongs for young audience. Accompanied by their "crankie," a moving storybook box operated by turning cranks, the trio of PEI musicians and storytellers foster imagination and build connections through art, music, and stories. From festivals to theatres, libraries to classrooms, Tunes & Tall Tales' interactive live show is a fun and engaging way for young audiences to experience art in all its forms.
THE SKELETON DANCE
The Skeleton Dance is a play for all ages about DEATH (YAY!)
In a highly physical, energetic, and light-hearted play with elements of creative movement, clown, and puppetry, two young children, Emma and Ella, process the news that their Great Uncle Trout has suddenly passed away. They consider the implications of this in an entertaining, irreverent way, where the audience is privy to their many whimsical theories about death.
Despite the subject of death being widely perceived as inherently difficult subject matter, The Skeleton Dance is playful, light-hearted and irreverent. The children in the play do not feel social pressure to discuss death as a somber event and are not inhibited in sharing their opinions. The goal of The Skeleton Dance is to provoke thought about the ways in which we respond to hardship and comfort one another.
The Skeleton Dance guides audiences through grief through the lens of a child:
all feelings are okay, there are no bad questions, and we must process through connection and play.
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