Indigenous composer Cris Derksen highlights R.I.'s history with ‘First Light'

Boston Globe

10-07-2025

Advertisement
'I always come to my work with an Indigenous lens, as it is my perspective,' she said.
Get Globe Rhode Island Food Club
A weekly newsletter about food and dining in Rhode Island, by Globe Rhode Island reporter Alexa Gagosz.
Enter Email
Sign Up
As Derksen dug deeper into Rhode Island's history, she came across a 1771 advertisement for
'What if John Anthony managed to escape and leave behind a life that was not his and create his own life, reclaim his own light?' Derksen wondered. The question became the heart of her commission for Newport Classical: 'First Light,' a hopeful, reimagined future in which the boy escapes bondage and claims his own destiny, with a central message of resilience and renewal.
'First Light' will premiere on July 13
Advertisement
The Boston Globe spoke with Derksen about how she continues to reimagine the classical music landscape by celebrating the past as well as pushing the art form forward.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Q. You debuted a work at Carnegie Hall in New York City. What was that like for you?
Derksen:
Oh, gosh, that was kind of a humbling experience. Carnegie was always so high – I never even put it on my bucket list. It was to write a piece for Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, he's the conductor there, he first asked me to write a piece for the opening of their season, and I was so stoked because it's pretty impressive. And then even before I even had the concept, he was like, 'Hey, do you want to go on tour? You want to go to Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall?' So even before I wrote the piece, I knew it was going there, so there's a lot of pressure. That piece is called 'Controlled Burn,' and it's about the forest fires that we've been having.
What's your process when you are commissioned for a piece?
The concept takes the longest for me. And once I know the story that I'm going to tell, then it's so much easier to actually write the story. And I definitely think of my compositions as a journey.
Sometimes they come with parameters, and sometimes they don't. And the parameter (for 'First Light') was it has to be about Rhode Island. And I'm Canadian. I'm originally from northern Alberta, so quite far away from Rhode Island. I didn't really know much about Rhode Island besides that's where the fancy people go live [laughs]. Diving into Rhode Island's history was really intense because that's the first place of colonization.
Advertisement
The rad thing as a composer is I get to shed light onto anything I want to. I get to just put a little flashlight and be like, 'Hey, look at this. Like, let's think about that.'
That's what 'First Light' is about, it's thinking about slavery and racism, and all the dark and dirty things that happened with making North America what it is today. In this piece, I was like, 'Let's do a historical reimagining of an Indigenous slave boy who escapes and gets free. And let's recreate history, or let's reimagine history and put some light into such an adverse situation.' We're seeing the story from his view, it's the journey of his perspective.
It starts in the morning. I was thinking about first light: who is awake in the first light? It's farmers. And that's also like a really good time to escape, that kind of dark morning, and eventually, like a leitmotif, he escapes, and it's just hope. And that's it, it's a nice beam of hope.
It's a cello quartet piece for the Galvan Cello players: Oh, man, they're so virtuosic.
The Galvin Cello Quartet.
© Todd Rosenberg Photography
What's your feeling about the state of classical music today?
I work with the Calgary Philharmonic as an artistic advisor, and I've sat on the Orchestras Canada Equity Board. And really, it's like, 'How do we make classical music look and sound more like Canada?' It's the same for the States. It is about diversity, it is about bringing in all perspectives. If you only have one perspective, it gets pretty mundane. But having a bunch of different perspectives, it gives a lot more color and a lot more history, you know?
Advertisement
As a composer, what kind of pressure is there to create music that's relevant for our time?
What's rad about today's time is there's so much we can take from different genres, too, and it's still classical music. But I definitely add an element of the rhythm, in little bits it gets a little jazzy, almost, but it's still very much rooted in classical. My roots are totally romantic classical heavies. Like, give me Brahms, give me Rachmaninoff, give me the heavy, tonal stuff. I use that a lot, but we're making it relevant, too. I think music should be relevant.
What inspired you to start with classical music in the first place?
I feel like I've always been writing music, like even when I was a little kid. I started with piano at 5, and was writing my own things by 7. I'm better at getting my feelings out through music than I am with words. So it's always been a language for me. I just can't imagine not doing it.
And what was it like for you as an Indigenous artist, to be in the classical music world?
At first it was very lonely. When I was growing up, there was nobody like me. But I've started a classical Indigenous residency here in Canada. So now we have a network of folks, and there are folks that we are connected with down in the States. For me, it's about telling our stories, it's about getting our stories out there to all the people, and it doesn't really matter what medium it is.
Advertisement
How do you inspire other young people who are interested in the classical arts? What's your advice to them?
Don't quit. Just don't quit. When I go to schools, I say, 'I got a secret for you, and that's the nerds win in the end.' If you like something now and you don't quit, and you just stick with it, and you just put the time into it, you are eventually going to get pretty good at it. And once you're pretty good at it, people are going to want it.
And what's next for you after this?
I'm currently writing this next ballet, and then I have a piece with the Toronto Symphony, where I live. So writing that in the fall, and then summer is the Vancouver Folk Fest and then Ottawa Chamber Fest. But really the summer is about writing this ballet.