Music for Indigenous Prayer Sunday
God be in my head – Andrew Balfour (b. 1967)
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Of Cree descent, Winnipeg based composer Andrew Balfour (b. 1967) is an innovative composer, conductor, singer and sound designer with a large body of choral, instrumental, electro-acoustic and orchestral works, including Take the Indian (a vocal reflection on missing children) and Empire Étrange: the Death of Louis Riel. His 2017 Indigenous opera, Mishaabooz’s Realm, was premiered in Montreal and Haliburton, Ontario, commissioned by L’Atelier Lyrique de Opéra de Montréal and Highlands Opera Workshop. He has also been commissioned by the Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, among many others. Andrew is also the founder and Artistic Director of the innovative, 14-member vocal group Dead of Winter. He is passionate about music education and outreach, particularly in schools located in low-income areas of Winnipeg and in northern communities.
Balfour calls his music a “reimagining of history,” a reckoning both with the larger colonial past and with his own story of being “taken from [his] Indigenous family when he was a baby” while also being “luckily. . . raised in a loving and very musical family.” In his works, the Christian scriptures and hymns are transformed into “a more Indigenous perspective of spirituality but keeping the beauty of the polyphony intact.” In this Sunday’s communion motet in church, God be in my head, Andrew Balfour fashions the well-known text, a short hymn originating in French in the late 15th century and appearing in English in 1514 in a Book of Hours, into his own spare and concise style, again blending an Indigenous viewpoint with the traditional choral form.
God be in my head, and in my understanding.
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking.
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking.
God be in my heart, and in my thinking.
God be at my end, and at my departing.
Gerald Harder