Going Home Star/L’Étoile du retour

Canadian composer Christos Hatzis offers a dense work, performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, abetted by pre-recorded sounds, elements of turntablism and the collaboration of singer Tanya Tagaq. With a nod to Steve Reich’s Different Trains and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Inuit throat-singing as a backdrop, Hatzis builds a dense score that can be heard like a film. A tragedy in fact, the subject of which is the unenviable fate of First Nations children sent for re-education in Canadian religious residential schools. A great work of art.