Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, 7:30 p.m. — Hering Auditorium
Pamyua opens our 75th season and headlines opening night for Arctic Fest! Opening night will include performances by the Celaire Singers, the North Star Ballet, and the Pavva Inupiaq Dancers. Arctic Fest features the arts, sciences, and Indigenous cultural and knowledge systems, all focused on our changing environment.
Get Tickets NowPamyua showcases Inuit culture through music and dance performance that takes traditional melodies and reinterprets them with contemporary vocalization and instrumentation. As they’ve developed their own genre – Inuit soul music – the Alaska-based group uses their music to share Indigenous knowledge and history.
Three members of the quartet are from the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta. Two brothers – Phillip and Stephen Blanchett – formed Pamyua in April 1995 after they stumbled upon a musical concept to blend Inuit drumdance melodies with R&B vocal styling and arrangements. The duo immediately began sharing their performance around Alaska and collaborating with like-minded artists. Later that year Ossie Kairaiuak joined the group. The following spring, they were joined by Karina Moeller, originally from Nuuk, Greenland. Today the quartet works with world-class musicians from Alaska and Denmark and travels the world sharing their blend of cultural harmony.
Get Tickets Now“The most famous Inuit band in the world.” – Rolling Stone (Italy)
“One of the 10 greatest Alaska artists of the millennium.” – Alaska Magazine
“A blizzard of interlocking harmonies.” – Native People Magazine
