IAC Commissions: Kaia Kater

"Grenades...represents Kater’s breakthrough moment as a vital roots storyteller.”—Rolling Stone

A Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian, Kaïa Kater grew up between two worlds: her family’s deep ties to folk music and the years she spent soaking up Appalachian music in West Virginia. Her first EP, Old Soul, was released in 2013 when she was just out of high school, followed by 2015’s Sorrow Bound and 2016’s Nine Pin. Kaia toured Nine Pin, which won a Canadian Folk Music Award and a Stingray Rising Star Award, from Ireland to Iowa, including stops at the Kennedy Center, Hillside Festival, and London's O2 Shepherd's Bush. Her third album, Grenades (2018, Folkways/acronym Records), was nominated for a 2019 JUNO Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year.

 Photo credit: Raezavel Argulla

The pandemic has forced humanity into an involuntary state of uncertainty that may last a long time. This is troubling, of course, but, as with any of life’s terribly sad moments, is not without redemptive possibility. We are challenged to find a new comfort level with uncertainty as a more constant companion. 

Like everyone, we at Irish Arts Center are entering a new phase of grappling with all of this. We still don’t know when it will be safe or allowable to gather in groups for live performing arts experiences. We continue to innovate our digital programming and prepare for our magnificent new building that awaits us, soon enough we hope. We develop scenarios and contingency plans. 

And we challenge ourselves to lean into the moment. For this, as ever, we rely on the artists. 

To that end, we have commissioned more than two dozen artists reflecting a range of perspectives across our artistic community, to create short works that respond to the idea of finding grace in uncertainty, to find meaning in the chaos, and perhaps even some redemption, as we recognize the fear and sadness we feel. 

In his work On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic just weeks after 9/11, John Adams sought to create a “memory space” for those who suffered loss of life, of loved ones, of innocence, and to evoke the feeling “that we are all united by a common bond of humanity.” 

In a similar spirit, we wish to inspire a volume of artistic responses that might form a kind of tapestry of emotion, a chronicle of the moment, work that can be appreciated now and for the long-term.

The common bond of humanity unites these artists—and will carry us all through this moment.