Returning to this topic of here, the TSO managed to deliver the most evocative land acknowledgements I’ve seen at a concert. Part of what has made land acknowledgements a staid and performative curtsy is how it is we hope to honour the traditional territories which we occupy despite the absence of the Indigenous peoples that are being acknowledged. There’s no single fix to this problem, but seeing Dutcher strut on stage at the top of the evening to acknowledge the presence of his people, in his language, in his traditional garb, is a damn good start. Bravo. Simultaneous to Dutcher’s presence on stage was the Mi’kmaw dancer Sarah Prosper, performing within the audience on the main floor. The effect of Dutcher’s song, and Prosper’s dance was a profound sense of presence, of hereness, that underscored the TSO’s Canadian identity which might otherwise be lost in the Eurocentric heritage of the music it programs. This sense of place was transferred seamlessly from the land acknowledgement to the first item on the program, Oskar Worawetz’s Carnival Overture, as a jovial prelude to Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Morawetz earned his Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto, where he went on to teach composition from 1946 to 1982. His fairly frequent appearances on TSO programs - the last time being November 19th, 2021, for which I wrote the program notes to his colourful Sinfonietta for Winds and Percussion - is another nudge as to why the TSO matters in the cultivation and preservation of Canadian compositional heritage.