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Turning Point Ensemble re-members Air India Flight 182

For the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of Flight 182, the Turning Point Ensemble will perform Irish composer Jürgen Simpson's new work based on poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s children of Air India.

For the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of Flight 182, the Turning Point Ensemble will perform Irish composer Jürgen Simpson's new work based on poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s children of Air India.

Every year families from Canada to India make pilgrimages to Bantry and a dozen other communities along Ireland’s ragged southwest coast to pay respect to the memories of their lost loved ones who perished on Air India Flight 182. Their pain is deep and real.

But for many of us, the 1985 tragedy has been lost in litigation (the most expensive investigation in Canadian history), so the facts have obscured the memory.

Now for the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of Flight 182, the Turning Point Ensemble will perform Irish composer Jürgen Simpson's new work based on poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s children of Air India.

Renée had her personal reasons for writing children of Air India (Nightwood Editions, 2013)—she lost her aunt and uncle. At a talk last week at Simon Fraser Woodward’s, she described her artistic process and how she found that, until she faced the tragedy she could no longer write until she faced it. “I just shut down”, she said and then later more explicitly when she described the challenge “to write about other people’s dead children.”

Impressively, she pushed back against “the discourse of our time [which] is about smoothing everything and making it palpable” and produced a work that captured the attention of Turning Point Ensemble director Owen Underhill and Irish composer Jürgen Simpson.

AIR INDIA [REDACTED], which premieres November 6th through 11th at SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, features the Turning Point Ensemble (with Zorana Sadiq, soprano, Daniel Cabena, countertenor and Alexander Dobson, baritone) conducted by Owen Underhill performing music by Jürgen Simpson.

air india [redacted] performances:

  • Date: November 6, 7, 8, 10 & 11, 2015
  • Time: Evening Performances @ 8pm & Sunday Matinee @ 2pm
  • Location: SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings, Vancouver
  • Tickets: turningpointensemble.ca

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