(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music announces the distribution of a new recording, LAUREATE (PM2024), with acclaimed singer, Measha Brueggergosman-Lee. This double-album celebration commemorates Measha becoming a recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award in Classical Music with the release of Live at Westben, an electrifyingly eclectic live concert with her signature hilariously off-beat banter, and Planet Measha, a multi-lingual remix album of singles taken from The Measha Series. Featuring a cross-section of Canada’s most gifted musicians, Live at Westben puts you in a front row seat at a Measha concert while Planet Measha showcases her collaboration with an incredible cast of DJs, singers, and MCs. With LAUREATE, Measha shows us her vision of “classical” music as being borderless inclusivity built on versatility, friendship, and fearless collaboration.
For the 2024 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Gala performance on June 8th, Measha will perform a newly commissioned orchestration by Canadian composer Aaron Davis of one of Planet Measha’s tracks by famed Canadian hip hop sensation Jay Vernon with the National Arts Symphony Orchestra (NACO) of Henri Duparc’s Au pays où se fait la guerre, featuring Montreal rap sensation, Timal Garnier, in his orchestral debut.
LAUREATE will be available digitally on all platforms, and in limited edition vinyl, featuring the graphic designs of Pierre Tabbiner and the artwork of Paula Arciniega. Measha will receive her award on June 8, the day after her album release. Listen to the new album here: Stream Now! and pre-order the vinyl edition here: Measha Merch Store.
Measha Brueggergosman-Lee holds several honorary doctorates and ambassadorial titles with international charities and is permanent Artist-in-Residence with the Canadian opera company, Opera Atelier. The JUNO award winner has presented innovative programs at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Washington’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Madrid’s Teatro Real as well as at the Schwarzenberg, Edinburgh, Verbier and Bergen Festivals. She is completing her second year of a master’s degree in theology and released her best-selling memoir Something is Always on Fire in 2018.
Other milestone recordings in 2023-24 include a song cycle by Robert Fleming for the Canadian Art Song Project and a new work composed for her by Canadian-Dutch composer Jaap Nico Hamburger. She also was the executive producer and director of Forgotten Coast, a 30-minute television episode broadcast on CBC Gem telling the story of her Black Loyalist heritage through the lens of hip-hop artist Jay Vernon, with orchestrations by Aaron Davis and Edwin Huizinga performed by the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Alexander Shelley. Leaf Music released her Zombie Blizzard album, featuring poems by Margaret Atwood and music by Aaron Davis, earlier in 2024. Her new podcast, COMMON GROUND: Conversations About God, a multi-faceted series of in-depth conversations featuring Margaret Atwood, Bruce Cockburn, Tomson Highway, and others, will be available also through the Acadia Divinity College website (https://acadiadiv.ca) and on all major streaming platforms starting on June 6.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).
