Bio

Pianist, composer, adventurer and dreamer Natasha Duchene has been entrancing audiences from the abandoned ruins at the Salton Sea to the icy waters in Canada’s north, sharing the stage with both folk and jazz musicians. With a background in electroacoustic and instrumental composition from Université de Montréal, she fuses these influences with traditional songwriting and jazz to create a style that is compelling, mysterious, and very human. These songs take you to complex emotional spaces and into the dark woods at night, often drawing on the powerful landscapes of the North and the desert for metaphor and inspiration. Her strong musicianship has also brought her to the theatre as musical director for several children’s plays, as well as on stage as an actor and singer.

Natasha grew up in rural Nova Scotia, where her grandfather gave her first piano lessons in a church until she could purchase a used upright piano. She quickly began writing songs, and performed locally until moving to Montreal at the age of 18 to pursue International Development and Religious Studies at McGill University. Quickly realizing that the pull to a career in music was irresistible, she dropped everything to study at composition at l’Université de Montréal and has never looked back. She lives in a little houseboat with Max the Dog in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. She is currently working on her first album, and North Paws, a feature length documentary for the Pet Network.