NOTE: “Inuktut” means “Inuit languages,” including Inuktitut. Both words are used here.

Deantha Edmunds is Canada’s first and only Inuk classical soprano. Her performances are direct links to a little-known history that marries the heritage and language of her people with European classical music. A JUNO and East Coast Music Award nominee, Edmunds has performed across Canada and in Europe with symphonies and choirs, as well as for Prince Charles and Camilla. Edmunds just released a new album of Indigenous contemporary classical music called Connections. One song, “Legacy” honours the voices of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and two-spirited people. She just completed a libretto for Irngutaq, the first opera to be sung in English and Inuktut. Saltscapes spoke with Deantha Edmunds about inspirational teachers, humble wooden churches and Inuktitut arias.

You now live in St. John’s. Where did you grow up?

Corner Brook, but I haven’t lived there since high school. I had a wonderful childhood. I still think of it as home. Corner Brook was a very musical place.   

Tell me about one of your music teachers.

My first, Rosalie Elliott, was a choir director at St. Gerard’s Elementary, the school I attended. In grade three, we were singing Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.” She taught me to play my first Bach piece on the piano and got me to listen to Glenn Gould. She really got you interested. I wanted to be like her.   

What do you like about singing? 

Whenever I’m singing, I’m sharing my voice, and I feel my truest self. It’s what I’m meant to be doing. I have known that since I was very young. 

Was your family musical? 

Yes. My mother is an Irish Newfoundlander, and my late father was Inuk from Hopedale, Labrador. He could pick up any instrument and play it. He also had a beautiful singing voice. We always had different genres of music playing in the house. My siblings and I took piano lessons and ukulele. We sang in choirs and played in school concert bands. My maternal grandmother, who lived with us off and on throughout my childhood, sang all day long, every day.

My father didn’t go back to Labrador, so he lost a lot of his language, but he did tell us about growing up with extraordinary choral music, choirs and a brass band in the Moravian Church. That has since become a big part of my repertoire, classical pieces that were brought from Germany by missionaries of the Moravian faith 250 years ago.

Can you give an example?

Inuit were playing orchestral instruments and singing famous choral works like Handel’s Messiah or Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus,” which I sang in elementary school. These European composers’ works are renowned now, but they made their debut in this part of the world in the humble wooden churches along the north coast of Labrador, all in Inuktitut.

That’s remarkable. How does it feel to perform that music? 

A lot of the tradition faded away over the years, so I’m really proud to be able to breathe life into these classical pieces that haven’t been performed in Inuktitut in many years. I feel connected to my ancestry through the music and the language. It really does blow my mind sometimes. Here I am with a whole repertoire of Inuktitut arias. I get emotional just thinking about it.