Sarah McLachlan receives Governor General's performing-arts award

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      Vancouver singer-songwriting star and arts advocate Sarah McLachlan has just been named a Governor General's Performing Arts Awards laureate.

      The Halifax-born McLachlan has not only sold millions of her albums, including Solace and Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, worldwide, but established the Lilith Fair female-centred concert tours, worked with the Alberta Ballet, and supports music education for kids here through this city's Sarah McLachlan School of Music.

      The Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards are presented each year to Canadian artists volunteers whose accomplishments have inspired and enriched the cultural life of this country.

      McLachlan joins film and stage director Atom Egoyan, actress and director Diana Leblanc, composer and conductor Walter Boudreau, and actor-director R.H. Thomson in this year's honours.

      These lifetime artistic achievement awards are accompanied by the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts, which goes to Michael M. Koerner, while filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée will receive the National Arts Centre Award in recognition of exceptional achievement over the past performance year.

      In addition to honouring the 2015 laureates, the awards feature a mentorship program that's designed to unite past lifetime-award recipients and talented mid-career artists. This year’s mentor is composer and conductor Howard Shore, who won a 2011 Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and the protégée is Montreal-based composer Nicole Lizée, whose work has been performed here in Vancouver by the Little Chamber Music Series That Could, among others.

      The 2015 laureates will be honoured at events in Ottawa in May, culminating in the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Gala at the National Arts Centre on May 30.

      Follow Janet Smith on Twitter @janetsmitharts.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Randyrocker

      Apr 9, 2015 at 12:19pm

      She's getting this award for what, singing behind the backdrop of pets that are facing harm and suffering? Why exactly does she deserve this other than that whining vocal, she hasn't had anything chart worthy in years, and the only ones who would listen to her, would have to be living a life of pain and sorrow anyways. The fact she's a Canadian is not enough to qualify her, or else every Canadian should receive an award for just being one.