Four Manitoba wins at Canadian Folk Music Awards

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This article was published 03/04/2023 (1283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hurricane Clarice blew through the Canadian Folk Music Awards last weekend in Vancouver.

It wasn’t a freak weather event, but rather the title of the award-winning album by Winnipeg banjo player Allison de Groot and fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves that landed on the radar of the awards’ jurors.

The record won two awards at the ceremony, for traditional album of the year and instrumental album of the year, two of four trophies won by Manitoba artists at the event, which took place Saturday and Sunday evenings.

Also bringing hardware back to Manitoba are vocalist Lizzy Hoyt, whose album The Parting Glass earned her the award for traditional singer of the year, and William Prince, whose 2022 duet Sing Me a Song with Toronto pop star Serena Ryder won single of the year honours.

Hoyt recorded The Parting Glass during the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions against large gatherings forced her to lean on her vocal skills and her talent with the guitar.

She turned disadvantages into advantages though, placing her sweet voice at the heart of the songs, such as an a cappella rendition of the traditional Irish ballad Banks of the Lee, among other of her favourite traditional Celtic songs.

Hoyt is a dual-threat vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. Besides her Celtic-influenced album, her fifth, she also is an operatic mezzo-soprano who had the title role in Manitoba Opera’s La Cenerentola last fall after joining the company’s Emerging Artist Program in 2020.

“I’m sort of living a double life,” she said Monday afternoon as she was preparing to return to Winnipeg after working and visiting on Vancouver Island. “I’d be lying if I said they were similar, but as time has gone on, it’s been interesting to find the similarities (between folk and opera).”

De Groot and Hargreaves combined their own song ideas with traditional folk forms such as field recordings, hymns and oral histories for Hurricane Clarice, which has also earned them a 2023 Juno Award nomination.

The resulting bluegrass tunes are influenced by diverse topics such as seasonal depression and arduous touring schedules.

Boy Golden, the stage name for Winnipeg singer-songwriter Liam Duncan, was nominated for contemporary album of the year for his record Church of Better Daze. John Wort Hannam, a singer and storyteller from Lethbridge, Alta., won the award.

Alan.Small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @AlanDSmall