Carmen Braden - Founder, co-director

Carmen Braden is a dynamic force in the world of new music, hailing proudly in Yellowknife NWT.

Her creative work draws on a life-time in the Canadian sub-Arctic and increasingly focuses on themes of play, motherhood, and human +environmental relationships. Carmen is an Associate Composer with the Canadian Music Centre, and is signed to Magnum Opus Management.

Carmen has released three studio albums: Seed Songs (2021), Songs of the Invisible Summer Stars (2019) and Ravens (2017).

Carmen has been nationally recognized, winning the Western Canadian Music Award for Classical Composer of the Year in both 2020 and 2019. Additional nominations include Classical Album of the Year 2020 (East Coast Music Award - Songs of the Invisible Summer Stars), Classical Artist of the Year (WCMA 2019), and Classical Composition of the Year (WCMA 2017).

Carmen has received commissions and performances by world class ensembles and performers, and her work has been premiered across Canada as well as the United States.

Her work has been played by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Classique de Montréal, James Ehnes, the Gryphon Trio, the Penderecki Quartet, Stratford Theatre Festival, Cheng2 Duo, Ensemble Resonance, Robert Uchida (ESO) Megumi Masaki, Patricia O’Callaghan, Ari Agha, the Land’s End Ensemble, and the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. Her choral works are a special focus, with performance and commissions by the Elmer Iseler Singers, Spiritus Chamber Choir, Luminous Voices, the Canadian Chamber Choir, Elektra Women’s Choir, Eastern Horizon, Canzona, Brock University Singers, the Sonic Timelapse project, the Whitehorse Community Choir and Aurora Chorealis.

As a performer, Carmen has been celebrated as “growing into the role of acoustic ambassador of the Canadian Subarctic” (Musicworks).  She has performed on stages across the country as a solo performer and a collaborator, including Open Ears (Kitchener), Koerner Hall (Toronto, the Stratford Summer Music Festival, the gala opening for the Bentway Conservancy (Toronto), Atlin Arts and Music Festival, Folk on the Rocks (Yellowknife), Snowking’s Winter Festival (Yellowknife), and the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

About her album “Songs of the Invisible Summer Stars”: “Braden’s music is clear, and it is bright…this recording is captured psychogeography – a process that asks us to embrace the playfulness of our surroundings, and to drift among those places without cause” (The WholeNote).

Carmen is association with several nationally recognized arts organizations. She is represented by Magnum Opus Management, she is an Associate Composer with the Canadian Music Centre, as well as a member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. Carmen’s work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, FACTOR, the SOCAN Foundation, and the NWT Arts Council. Her creative development has been supported in mentorship through the National Arts Centre and the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre.

Carmen Braden’s music company Black Ice Sound has been presenting concerts in Yellowknife since 2017. One special feature is the Longshadow New Music Festival (2019, 2022, 2023, 2024).

Carmen has been called “a talented, bold musician” (Up Here Magazine). Her music has been described as “a portrait – but also a release – between life and surroundings” (The WholeNote) and music that “showed a considerable development in sophistication and refinement on the part of the composer” (Calgary Herald).