Lucas Waldin is a dynamic and versatile conductor whose performances have delighted audiences across North America. He has collaborated with some of today’s most exciting artists including Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Folds, the Canadian Brass, and Buffy Sainte-Marie, in addition to conducting presentations such as Disney in Concert, Blue Planet Live, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the groundbreaking symphonic début of R&B duo Dvsn as part of the global Red Bull Music Festival.

Waldin has been a guest conductor for numerous orchestras in the US and Canada, including The Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Grant Park Festival Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic, and the Toronto Symphony.

Having joined the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra as Resident Conductor in 2009, Waldin was subsequently appointed Artist-in-Residence and Community Ambassador—the first position of its kind in North America. He appeared with the ESO more than 150 times and conducted in Carnegie Hall during the orchestra’s participation in the 2012 Spring for Music festival. In recognition of his accomplishments, he was awarded the Jean-Marie Beaudet Award in Orchestra Conducting, and received a Citation Award from the City of Edmonton for outstanding achievements in arts and culture. 

A native of Toronto, Waldin holds degrees in flute and conducting from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Jeremy Dutcher is a Two-Spirit song carrier, composer, activist, ethnomusicologist, and classically trained vocalist from New Brunswick who currently lives in Montreal, Quebec. A Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation in Northwest New Brunswick, Dutcher is best known for his début album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (The Songs of the People of the Beautiful River), recorded following a research project on archival recordings of traditional Wolastoqiyik songs at the Canadian Museum of History. Dutcher transcribed songs sung by his ancestors in 1907 and recorded onto wax cylinders, transforming them into “collaborative” compositions. The album earned him the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the 2019 JUNO Awards. His 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Concert has more than 85,000 views.

Dutcher studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After training as an operatic tenor in the Western classical tradition, he expanded his professional repertoire to include the traditional singing style and songs of his community. Dutcher’s music transcends boundaries—unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home, and teeming with the urgency of modern-day resistance. 

Dutcher has toured the world, from Australia and Norway to Italy and the Philippines. He has worked with and performed for iconic artists such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joni Mitchell, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Dutcher is regularly sought out for his perspectives on queerness, Indigeneity, language revitalization, and fashion, including a 2022 appearance as a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race. In 2022, Dutcher and his family launched Kehkimin, the first-ever Wolastoqey language immersion school, in Fredericton, New Brunswick.