Tanya Tagaq Gillis

Over the winter, in collaboration with my talented photographer friend Sarah Race, I did a photo shoot makeup for Canadian Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis. She is a popular composer and performer who developed her own solo form of Inuit throat singing, which is normally done by two women. Because of her unique talent, Tanya was quickly discovered and has collaborated and toured all over the world with big artists including Bjork and the Kronos Quartet.

Tanya's debut album was released in October of 2002. Her music is stunning emotions and provocative sounds of aggressive grunts and growls, gasping rhythms, moans & sighs; it is truly impressive. She won the best female artist at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards in 2005.

While doing her make-up, I got a chance to chat with her for a bit and I must say she is a beautiful person inside as she is on the outside. Not only is she incredibly talented, but she's got a sweet personality as well as a contagious sense of humor.

Tanya was featured here on the cover (above) of the winter 2006 issue of Words & Music Magazine by Socan where you can see the makeup job I did on her. The beautiful shots were taken by Vancouver photographer Sarah Race.

Below is a picture of us during the shoot. From the left; myself, Tanya, Sarah...