SYLVI MACCORMAC
Weaving Music, Sound, & Voice

by Kevin Dale McKeown

I first met Sylvi Maccormac in the late ‘90s when I was communications and marketing director for the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. She called me up with a question about our website, and told me that she had been creating “soundscapes” of the festival and though she had been promised that they would be posted on the festival website, they hadn’t, and what could I do about it?

**Silvi Maccormack.** *(Matthew Wild Photo)*
*click image to enlarge.*

I don’t think I had ever heard of “soundscapes” before, but after listening to some of Sylvi’s creations I realized what a treasure they were, weaving the sounds from the stage, the crowds, and snippets of announcements and conversation into an amazing tapestry. We quickly arranged for them to be posted on the website and given the exposure they deserved. In recent years there have been a lot of changes at the VFMF and somehow the links to Sylvi’s soundscapes no longer work. She and others have been communicating with festival organizers about that, and hopefully they will be restored soon. See “Related Links” below to find some of her work online.

July is Disability Pride Month, and The West End Journal thought this would be an appropriate time to honour a long-time West Ender who, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 21, has refused to let her disability define her, and has made many contributions to the local cultural scene, the most recent of which is her 13-track “WHEELS Soundscapes: Voices of People with Dis Abilities“ with the Vancouver Adapted Music Society. Other works include the “Vancouver Folk Music Festival Soundscapes 1999-2002”; “Heart of the City Festival Soundscape 2015,” and an online ebook about WB Yeats and Japanese Nõ Theatre in 2000.

The soundscapes on “WHEELS” date from 1998 to 2023 and include works from across Sylvi’s career, ranging from a segment from “QEKIYEKSUT,” an excerpt from 2023’s “Brother Bear & Bent Boxes” with vocalist Russell Wallace, to 2003’s folk-warping penny whistle loops “Penny: A Process and Spirit wheels: Railway Lines: Trains of Thought”.

“QEKIYEKSUT” was honoured with a Canadian Electroacoustic Community Jeff Chippewa Award, an honour given to an “artist with family or historical lineage or who maintains a spiritual connection to Indigenous culture including, but not limited to, First Nations, Métis and Inuit.” Sylvi is of Irish descent, but Wallace is from both the Stʼatʼimc and Lil’wat Nations.

Sylvi has also done her fair amount of acting, appearing as ‘Lenny’ in the Canadian feature film Bella Ciao! (2018), directed by Carolyn Combs and in her documentary short, Patience & Absurdity (2012) about a mother with Alzheimer’s and daughter (Sylvi) with MS.

She was invited to sit on the equity commission for Canada Council 2015; read for the Vancouver Playwright Theatre Centre in 2015 and 2016; and composed for and acted in Real Wheels Theatre’s “SuperVoices” in 2015.

Many awards and honours have come her way, including an Honourable Mention at Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique Bourges, France in 1999, and the City of Vancouver Remarkable Woman Award in 2012. She has been published in collections such as those by the Canadian Music Centre and Canadian Electroacoustic Community, and had commissions and film credits from KickStart, CBC, and the National Film Board of Canada.

Her powerful voice blends song writing that reflects Canada’s natural and cultural landscape and weaving elements of her rich Irish heritage.

We’re sure that there will be more from the creative mind of Sylvi Maccormac. Stay tuned!

RELATED LINKS