Modern Ruin

Ottawa-born singer and composer Kyrie Kristmanson discovered the Trobairitz (women troubadous) of the 12th and 13th centuries while studying at La Sorbonne. While traveling off the beaten path in France, she discovered the practically disintegrated ruins of Medieval forts where there these educated and sophisticated women would have written their mostly lost works. Works that constitute the first autonomous artistic output made by women in the West. The songs on Modern Ruin emerged from artistic production residencies in the abbeys of Noirlac and Fontevraud, two locations heavily imbued with history and myth. The result is a unique musical creation thaht kaleidoscopically references Joni Mitchell, Dead Can Dance, the Kronos Quartet, Malicorne, and Cat Power. Modern Ruin reveals an unexpected continuity between the freedom of these few women in the Middle Ages and artists working now, evoking an almost supenatural connection between women of the 12th and 21st centuries.  On stage, she will be accompanied by the Warhol Dervish Quartet (John Corban, Emily Redhead, Pemi Paull, Jean-Christophe Lizotte), an unorthodox Montreal-based chamber music collective bringing together some of the most interesting and creative musicians in Canada.