BIOGRAPHY
Constance Isabelle Kaldor was born during a
spring
blizzard on May 9, 1953 in Regina, Saskatchewan.
She began learning the piano at a very young age, and along with her
siblings, was part of the choir at the local Lutheran church.
Her father, Harold, was the choirmaster.
During her high school years, Kaldor progressed to playing the guitar,
and started to play at venues around town even then.
On the radio, she would listen to such influences as The Beatles, Patsy
Cline, Carole King and eventually, fellow Saskatchewan native Joni Mitchell.
But Kaldor also had a passion for theater, and studied acting at the
University of Alberta. After her
graduation in 1975, she joined the avant-garde troupe “Theater Passe Muraille”
in Toronto, a company that specialized in producing new Canadian writing talent.
However, her focus would eventually shift back to performing music.
At the time there were not many Canadian female singers, and her earlier
musical influences of King and Mitchell contributed to her return to the folk
circuit. “It had less to do with their writing styles or music but
more with the fact that they made it in a field dominated by males”, she
declared in the same article.
Kaldor quickly became prominent on the music scene and was part of the
“Canadian Wave” folk revival of the late 70’s that brought other Canadian
artists such as Roy “Bim” Forbes, Stan and Garnet Rogers, and Ferron to
light.
This popularity helped Kaldor create her own record label, Coyote, and her first album, One of These Days, in 1981. She decided to release her music independently because “most Canadian record companies wanted to know what American [female] you sounded like”, she told Billboard Magazine in 2000. Kaldor still heads Coyote Entertainment today, though some of her previous albums have been released on the Oak Street and Aural Tradition labels, as well as Rounder Records which released Small Cafe in the U.S.
Kaldor received a Juno nomination (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy)
for Most Promising Female Vocalist for Moonlight Grocery in 1984, and won
her first Juno for Best Children’s Album along with her sister in law, Carmen
Campagne, for Lullaby Berceuse in 1989.
It also garnered a U.S. Parent’s Choice Award in 1990. By 1992, she would have her best selling album, Wood
River, released. Her 2000 album, Love Is A Truck, has also been a big
seller and received a Juno nomination for Best Solo Roots &
Traditional album. An album of remastered
hard-to-find tracks from the 80's,
Vinyl Songbook, was released
in 2003. For a complete list of
albums and credits, see Discography.
- performances at Expo '86 in British Columbia
-
the “New Voices in Folk” concert in New York’s Central
Park in May, 1989
-
a 1992 international tour as goodwill ambassador to Canada
with stops in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, China and India where she
helped dedicate the new Canadian Consulate
-
singing with Roy Forbes at the Ottawa Folk Festival in 1998
-
jamming and trading songs with Arlo Guthrie at the Ontario
Folk Festival at Britannia Park on August 31, 1998
-
two sold out concerts with Heather Bishop in Waterloo and
Toronto in November, 2000
- performing at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage on February 20, 2001 (watch this concert! click on links for the connection)
-
appearing at the “Music Alert” fundraiser on May 24,
2001 at Toronto’s Convocation Hall to raise money for Friends of Medicare (and
those of you in the U.S. thought free health care came easily in Canada…)
- headlining the 2001 benefit in Bedford, New Hampshire for the Karen’s Climb Foundation, dedicated to supporting those affected by cystic fibrosis
- performing for Queen
Elizabeth II and a crowd of 10,000 at The Lieutenant Governor's Centennial Gala
on May 19, 2005
-
and most notably, closing the Lunenburg Folk Harbor Festival
in Nova Scotia on August 12, 2001, which, little did unsuspecting individuals
know, would be the genesis of this website (see 'A Folk Odyssey'.)
Kaldor’s theatrical
background would figure prominently in her career as well.
She wrote the script, music and lyrics for “Dust and Dreams” which
premiered in the summer of 1996 at the Station Arts Centre in Rosthern,
Saskatchewan. Set in the 1930’s,
the show intertwines the livelihoods of a traveling theater troupe and a farming
community. On the surface these
would seem like two different worlds, but as Kaldor explained in a 1997 Canadian Living interview, “wanting to be in the theater is the
same as wanting a farm… it’s a dream.”
Two of the musical’s songs, “I Don’t Care” and “Prairie
Moon”, appear on the album Small
Café.
She also wrote the music and
lyrics for the 1998 production of “The Destruction of Eve”, presented by
Toronto’s Company of Sirens. Written
and directed by Svetlana Zylin, the show depicts four female biblical figures in
contemporary guises and how they have shaped woman’s view of herself and her
surroundings (even God turns out to be a woman…)
In 2002, the 50th anniversary of Elizabeth II's succession to Queen of England and to Canada in it's commonwealth status, Kaldor received the commemorative Golden Jubilee Award for her contributions to Canada in music, charity and community services including classes and workshops.
Kaldor joined the ranks of "Margaret Atwood and Madonna", as she put it in a Montreal Gazette article by adding 'author' to her long résumé in 2003. Her first children's book, "A Duck In New York City" was released along with an album of children's songs that earned her her second Juno for Best Children's Album. Her second book and album, "A Poodle In Paris" followed in 2004 with more rave reviews and another Juno award.
After taping a few TV specials scatterd over her career,
Kaldor presented her
very own television series in 2004. "Connie Kaldor @ Wood River
Hall" on Canada's Vision TV featured her as host of a wall-to-wall music
program with some of the biggest names in Canadian folk including Bruce Cockburn,
Roy Forbes and Sylvia Tyson, as well as up-and-coming artists like The Duhks and
The Wailin' Jennys.
With all of her success, Kaldor
says the most creative thing she has ever done is have her two sons, Gabriel and
Aleksi. Today, they reside in
Montreal with her husband, Paul Campagne, who has produced her recent albums and
is part of a musically gifted family of his own.
He and his sisters Suzanne and Michelle, along with Davy Gallant and
Michel Dupire make up the group Hart Rouge.
The band’s sound is said to be as unique and diverse as Kaldor’s, and
indeed, both share in the talent of the Campagnes and Gallant on their albums.
As for the future, Kaldor
predicts that the prospect of further success for her as well as other
independent artists lies on the Internet. Not
only because of the success of her official website, www.conniekaldor.com,
but also of her belief that the Web will play a key role in music airplay.
“As radio gets narrower”, she explains in a 2000 interview with The
Voice Magazine, “I think the Internet is going to open up a lot for my
scene… Most people are listening to [the radio] in transit, ‘cause there’s
nothing else. But there are people
who are looking for something different.”
And for the fans who have been
lucky enough to find that difference with Connie Kaldor, they wouldn’t have it
any other way.
