Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq CM (born Tanya Tagaq Gillis and sometimes credited as Tagaq; born May 5, 1975) is a Canadian (Inuk) throat singer from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, Canada, on the south coast of Victoria Island.

After attending school in Cambridge Bay, at age 15, Tagaq went to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories to attend high school where she first began to practice throat singing. She later studied visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and while there developed her own solo form of Inuit throat singing, which is normally done by two women.

Tagaq was a popular performer at Canadian folk festivals, such as Folk on the Rocks in 2005, and first became widely known both in Canada and internationally for her collaborations with Björk, including concert tours and the 2004 album Medúlla. She has also performed with the Kronos Quartet and Shooglenifty and has been featured on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

In 2005, her CD entitled Sinaa (Inuktitut for "edge") was nominated for five awards at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. At the ceremony on 25 October 2005, the CD won awards for Best Producer/Engineer, Best Album Design and Tagaq herself won the Best Female Artist award.

Sinaa was nominated for the 2006 Juno Awards as the Best Aboriginal Recording.

Although primarily known for her throat singing, Tagaq is also an accomplished artist and her work was featured on the 2003 Northwestel telephone directory.

Her 2008 album Auk/Blood (ᐊᐅᒃ Inuktitut syllabics) features collaborations with Mike Patton, among others. In 2011, she released a live album titled Anuraaqtuq. It was recorded during Tagaq's performance at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville.

In 2012 Tagaq performed the theme music for the CBC television show Arctic Air.

Tagaq released her third album, Animism, on May 27, 2014 on Six Shooter Records. The album was a shortlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize, her first nomination for that award, and won the $30,000 award on September 22, 2014. The album also won the Juno Award for Aboriginal Recording of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2015, and was nominated for Alternative Album of the Year.

Since the initial collaboration with the Kronos Quartet in 2005, Tagaq and the Quartet have performed together at venues across North America, from the January 2006 debut of the project Nunavut at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver, British Columbia through to the New York’s Spring for Music Festival at Carnegie Hall presentation of composer Derek Charke's, 13 Inuit Throat Song Games (2014). In 2015, Tagaq was commissioned to write a piece for the Kronos' Fifty for the Future project.

Her fourth album Retribution was released in October 2016. Her show in Toronto in November was sold out.

In December 2016, Tagaq was named a Member of the Order of Canada.

• 2006 Juno Awards, nominee: Aboriginal Recording of the Year, Sinaa
• 2009 Juno Awards, nominee: Aboriginal Recording of the Year and Instrumental Album of the Year, Auk/Blood
• 2014 Polaris Music Prize, winner: Animism
• 2014 Canadian Folk Music Pushing the Boundaries Award
• 2015 Juno Awards, nominee: Alternative Album of the Year, Animism
• 2015 Juno Awards, winner: Aboriginal Recording of the Year, Animism
• 2015 Western Canadian Music Award, winner: Aboriginal Recording of the Year, Spiritual Recording of the Year and World Recording of the Year.

Studio albums

• Sinaa (2005)
• Auk/Blood (ᐊᐅᒃ) (2008)
• Animism (2014)
• Retribution (2016)

Live albums

• Anuraaqtuq (2011)