David Dalle
Thursday March 11th, 2021 with David Dalle
Songs for Murdered Sisters: an Ottawa tragedy; a global scourge; a brother's grief.

Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk, and Nathalie Warmerdam all died on the same day, September 22, 2015. All murdered by the same man, with whom they had all had a previous relationship. A man with a criminal record filled with domestic violence, yet he was able to murder these women. "Before the murders, he had faced more than 30 criminal charges in his life — most of them related to intimate partner violence — and had been convicted of nearly half of them. At the time of the murders, he was on probation and subject to a weapons ban. While one of his victims clipped a panic button to her belt each morning when she dressed, he was under no such surveillance — even with his history of repeatedly breaching probation, ignoring weapons bans and carrying out increasingly violent incidents. After serving one sentence for domestic assault, he flat-out refused to sign an agreement saying he’d stay away from his victim, but walked out of prison just the same." (Maclean's) Since that day, hundreds more Canadian women have been killed at the hands of a current or former partner, and thousands upon thousands around the world. Acclaimed Ottawa opera and concert baritone Joshua Hopkins felt the devastation personally that day, as Nathalie Warmerdam was his sister. After this horrifying loss, Hopkins wanted to honour his sister in the only way he knew how, with song. He wanted to tell his sister's story and bring awareness to gender-based violence. He sought out musical collaborators. Composer Jake Heggie, with whom Hopkins had worked before, agreed to write the music. Margaret Atwood wrote the text for the song cycle "Songs for Murdered Sisters". She ended up writing eight poems in a single session, directed both to Hopkins' sister and all the sisters globally afflicted by violence. The premiere recording was just released, sung by Joshua Hopkins, with the composer Jake Heggie on piano. The result is a searing half-hour song cycle for voice and piano which delves deep into grief, anger, and loss.