About RiverFestYYC 

What is RiverFestYYC?

RiverFestYYC is a “festival in the making” celebrating the Rivers that run through our city. 

The 2022 version comes in the form of a River walk beginning at the Confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers continuing across the George C. King pedestrian bridge to St Patrick’s Island and following the pathway East along the Bow to Confluence Plaza (near the CPA Calgary Zoo - West parking lot).

There are 5 stops along the way where participants will encounter RiverFestYYC sandwich board signs^*.

Each of these stops has a descriptive sign with QR codes that can be scanned to discover stories, artwork, information and a map.  The stories and artwork created for this River walk are “site specific”, meaning each artist was inspired in some way by their stop location. 

MAP

 

Stop 1:
Confluence Stories

Click to Listen

Fort Calgary is proud to partner with RiverFestYYC to share original stories from Treaty 7 Nations about the land and the Confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers. Scan the QR code to hear an origin story of Mohkinstsis (Calgary) written by Professor Eldon Yellowhorn and shared by Elder Leonard Bastien. Please visit Fort Calgary's website for the full self-guided audio tour.

Photo credit: Kyler Tritter

Stop 2:
Photo Essay

Click to View

Photographer Tony Settari explores the banks of the Rivers at the Confluence through the lens of his large format and 35mm digital cameras.  See the Bow and Elbow rivers through his eye and be inspired to interpret them through your own by adding to our growing photo essay. Hashtag your own encounters with the Rivers at #riverfestyyc  

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Artist lead: Toni Settari

Settari grew up in Czech Republic and moved to Calgary in 1969 for graduate studies at the University of Calgary.  He took up mountaineering and landscape photography, and soon gravitated to large format photography. This started a period of intense photo work in Canadian Rockies. Following a long pause, he returned to photography in recent years. Settari has a PhD from University of Calgary, and is self-taught as a photographer. His work was exhibited in the past and recently at cSPACE King Edward. Tony has always been passionate about the purity of expression offered by the classical “straight” B&W photography and he uses the same tools to express his feelings about the world and about social and environmental concerns. The present photo-essay was shot in spring and summer of 2022, with some images using 4x5 analog camera and some DSLR, and minimum of digital postprocessing. 

Photo credit: Tony Settari

Stop 3:
River Woman

Click to Listen

The River, by her very nature, nourishes. From sky to mountain, waterfall to stream... leap, cascade & dive through composer Morag Northey’s watery string quartet sound story. Flow as River Woman playfully dances with Cree Knowledge Keeper Cheryle Chagnon-Greyeyes & sound designer Amelia Northey-Taylor who reverently moves us by wind, wave, song, drum, birds, thunder, & raindrops to the knowing... “Water is Life, Mní Wičhóni.”  

Credits

Director, Composer, Cello Morag Northey	Sound Producer, Sound Design Amelia Northey-Taylor
Singing, Drumming, Knowledge Keeper Cheryle Chagnon-Greyeyes Anishinaabe “Water Song”	Violin, Viola Jonathan Lewis

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Artist lead: Morag Northey

Northey is a multimedia, multi-genre artist, cellist and composer who draws on classical and theatrical traditions using her well loved cello, piano, loops, bells, an electric 6 string cello and various progressive elements of composition. She has performed across North America, Spain, France, and Italy in concert halls, cathedrals, on mountain summits, under a season of full moons, and along "The Way" of the Frances Camino de Santiago. Morag concerns herself with healing, inner, outer and invisible landscapes, and the land and our relationship to it. All of her previous works, more than can be mentioned here, have led to today’s RiverFestYYC compositions "River Woman", and "Vocalise" for Nicole Tritter’s "what of your own water".

Photo credit: Morag Northey

Stop 4:
A Pathway of Connections
Spoken word by Adora Nwofor

Click to Listen

Connecting to nature is a necessity, often overlooked.
Water blesses all of us daily.
This piece is a thank you to the many journeys this water will connect.

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Artist lead: Adora Nwofor

Nwofor aka Statuesse is your typical everyday awkward Amazon Goddess next door. She leads with grace and humor even when not intended. Comedian and host she is all well rounded and a 2021 Calgary Herald Compelling Calgarian making an impact on Turtle Island. From co-producing and styling community content with Shaw Cable, hosting events like Folkfest, Cariwest and Reggaefest, to making folx jaws drop with comedy at Snickers comedy open mic, comedy clubs nation wide, she isn’t afraid to tell THE edgy story you needed. A people lover, getting a look into new communities is her newest adventure, Living a creative life on Youtube tells how people have continued to express themselves despite a pandemic. That’s not all; there’s also public speaking (at U of C, Mount Royal and Capilano university in the past year), activism (you saw 2020 but she has been on it), wardrobe styling and modeling in the YYC, recently debuted theatre with ETC, Ellipsis Tree Collective (she sang y’all) doing all like she’s having a party. Maybe she IS the party!

Photo credit: Onyie Ekene-Obi

Stop 5:
what of your own water

Click to Watch

Dancers Kelley McKinlay and Nicole Tritter immerse themselves in the Bow River at the Confluence. Their bodies’ ebb and flow in concert with each other and the water itself, creating a dance where all three entities are equally present. 

Credits

Director Joel McNichol	Choreographer Nicole Tritter
Dancers Kelley McKinlay Nicole Tritter	Camera Carter Hess Robert Schmidt Joel McNichol Kyler Tritter
Drone Pilot Kyler Tritter	Editor Kelley McKinlay
Editing Supervisor Joel McNichol	Film Score Vocalise
Composer, Vocalise Director, Cellist Morag Northey	Music Producer, Sound Engineer, Voice Amelia Northey-Taylor
Piano, Piano Arrangement Sergei Kofman	Executive Producer Marilyn Milavsky

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Artistic Producer: Nicole Tritter

Tritter is an interdisciplinary artist with a contemporary dance background. This lens of movement and interacting with the world through her body is still a defining part of her artistic expression/practice. Consequently, movement is always an underlying factor in her work, whether used to create the work itself (large scale sculptures), as the work (performative storytelling), or interactive experiences designed to find movement within the participant (installation and participatory artforms). Tritter has a BA in Dance (1998) and an MFA in Sculpture (2018) from the University of Calgary and a BFA in Sculpture (2014) from ACAD (now AUArts).

Photo credit: Kyler Tritter (edited by Joel McNichol)