Animated short: The Wild Goose

Canadian Art Song Project is excited to announce the release of our first animation project: The Wild Goose. 

The song “The Wild Goose” was originally written by singer / songwriter Wade Hemsworth and arranged for Canadian Art Song Project by Cecilia Livingston in 2019. CASP Co-Artistic Directors, pianist Steven Philcox and tenor Lawrence Wiliford recorded the arrangement written for them in this new animated short.

The Wild Goose animated short film debuted for the public on June 15th, 2024 at the Revue Cinema prior to the exclusive Toronto in-person screening of The Bicycle Opera Project’s film adaptation of SWEAT, an opera by Juliet Palmer with a libretto by Anna Chatterton, directed and choreographed by Jennifer Nichols.

ABOUT THE WILD GOOSE ANIMATION PROJECT:

Many of Wade Hemsworth’s original songs are thought to be folk songs passed down for generations. Indeed, his most well-known songs, including “Blackflies”, “The Log Driver’s Waltz”, “The Land of the Muskeg”, and “The Wild Goose” are familiar to many Canadians without recognizing the composer’s name at all. Some of the contemporary popularity of Hemsworth’s music is due in part to the collaborations he had with the Canadian singing duo Kate and Anne McGarrigle, but in addition to this, his music was amplified through visual media such as films, documentaries and animation. The Wild Goose animation project by Canadian Art Song Project pays homage to the National Film Board supported animation projects The Log Driver’s Waltz (1979) and Blackfly (Christopher Hinton, 1991), both inspired by Wade Hemsworth songs.

In addition to being inspired by the tone of these animated shorts, The Wild Goose also draws inspiration from the settler relationship with the natural landscape of Northern Ontario illustrated by Thoreau MacDonald. MacDonald’s illustrations were well-loved by Hemsworth and appear throughout the 1990 published collection of Hemsworth’s songs by Penumbra Press.

A team of talented animation students from OCAD University collaborated with CASP on this project. Over the course of the 2023-24 academic year, these students worked with CASP under the supervision of Experimental Animation faculty member and Chair, Philippe Blanchard to create the film. 

“The Wild Goose” was one of Wade Hemsworth’s first songs. It was written in the early 1950s, inspired by the artist’s time working in Northern Ontario, Québec and Labrador as a surveyor. Kate McGarrigle notes in The Songs of Wade Hemsworth that “The Wild Goose” draws upon Hemsworth’s “feelings of oneness with the great play of nature which is theatre to all beings; those who act and those who observe”.

ARTISTIC TEAM:

Production

Lawrence Wiliford, Producer

Canadian Art Song Project is grateful for the support of The Azrieli Foundation, The SOCAN Foundation, The Institute for Music in Canada, OCAD University Faculty of Art and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music on this endeavour.