Tanya Tagaq 6/20/19 College Street Music Hall

One of the few interesting performances associated with the unfortunately emaciated International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit avant garde vocal improviser, which must be a lonely category. Joined by drummer ( and pocket trumpeter) Jean Martin, Jesse Zubot on electric violin and synths, and Christine Duncan on vocals, synths and theremin, the group forged an hour of challenging improvised music. Tagaq's performances allege themes of environmentalism, human rights, and post colonial issues of indigenous peoples. I read that she accepted an award while standing in front of a video feed of thousands of  names of women "disappeared" by colonial intruders. Wordless vocalizations took the form of huffing, whinnying, child-like squiggles, and an unnerving exorcist rasp. Tagaq is a true performance artist as she prowled and pantomimed in conjunction with her sounds. In the improvised jazz realm, it seems that interplay, soloing, and return to a common theme is the modus operandi. In this setting, Tagaq was central, and the other musicians had to cue off her sounds. At one point, violin and tribal drumming seemed the perfect backdrop. Tanya must be exhausted at the end of a set due to the continual full body contact of her art. I was interested to see the cue to stop and it turned out to be a sigh ( which was not heard previously), as if she was saying " damn, I made it through another performance!"