Archetype Trad- July 14
The concert “Explorer” presented by Archetype Trad is a journey across the east of Canada, from Quebec to Newfoundland. Traditional fiddle music is renewed and re-interpreted through original arrangements and compositions by Kate Bevan-Baker and Émilie Brûlé. Their instrumentation of different types of violins offers a broad range and timbre that form their unique sound: modern violin, violin in cross-tuning, baroque violin, 5-string violin, and bowed vielle are all featured in the duo’s repertoire. On the program is a dynamic blend of traditional music from Québec, Acadian tunes from New Brunswick, as well as tunes from Cape Breton juxtaposed with older Scottish repertoire, tunes from Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland by both anglophone and francophone composers, and music from Ireland which has greatly influenced the fiddling traditions across Canada.
Established in 2018, Archetype Trad is a duo of violinists and fiddlers Kate Bevan-Baker and Émilie Brûlé. Inspired by their mutual interest and involvement performing traditional music, they explore repertoire from Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland as well as returning to the sources that greatly influenced Canadian fiddling repertoire: traditional music from Scotland, Ireland and England. Highly original in nature, Archetype Trad combines tunes that are centuries old with modern compositions and arrangements. This fusion of old and new is a key creative goal of Archetype Trad: to blend each members’ advanced musical training in classical and baroque genres with the orally transmitted folk repertoire from eastern Canada and its European roots.
Kate was born in Newfoundland to Scottish and Newfoundland parents, and her family is now living in Prince Edward Island, while Émilie was born in Quebec and has ancestry in France as well as Gaspesians from the Island of Jersey (between France and England), her family is not located in the Lanaudière region. Kate and Émilie are both currently based in Montreal, though their ancestral and family histories encompass many cultures and geographic territories. When their bows cross, their playing styles and musical accents are easily distinguishable with one strongly influenced by Quebecois tradition, and the other by music of the Atlantic provinces. This is the inspiration for the origin of the duo’s name: a play-on-words based on the French word for bow (archet) and the traditional music the duo plays.