Recent highlights include 2rivers Remix Festival in Kamloops BC, 2024 Ottawa Jazz Festival, L’Off Jazz festival in Montreal, Nelson BC and Revelstoke concerts. I'm super excited and proud to be a part of the US based, groundbreaking Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band. With them I've performed in Washington DC, Juneau Alaska, NY city, and Worcester MA. 2025 will be spent creating new music at home, although I'm always open to interesting performance opportunities.

OUT NOW

CHUCK'S STORY
Originally hailing from Kenora ON, with his ancestral roots in Animakee Wazhing 37, ‘Oshki Manitou’ finds the now Winnipeg-based, Ojibway musician expanding dramatically on his previous work as a trumpet player, arranger, and composer. Fusing contemporary interpretations of sweat-lodge melodies with jazz and elements of dance and electronica.
Copenace’s distinctive voice and approach allow him to unify a wide range of styles beautifully in a way that’s honest and innovative in equal measure. “I shy away from traditionalists,” he explains. “When someone says, ‘this isn’t how music should be done’ or ‘if you’re playing this genre of music, this shouldn’t be there.’ That’s always bothered me.”
The result is a collection of eminently groovy, haunting, and, at times, ethereal songs that display Chuck Copenace’s signature voice and substantial skills as an interpreter, composer, and performer as never before. But that’s only part of the equation, he says, citing a larger purpose behind his efforts, for which ‘Oshki Manitou’ is just a starting point. “I’m committed to sharing my story to help heal and offer support to people, and I want to introduce young people to jazz, but I also want to bring indigenous musicians together. And I think my music can be a platform to further that mission.”

“As far back as I remember, I felt I had a distinct musical voice and wasn’t meant to take a typical path as a player, studio musician, or sideman,” Copenace says. That only came into focus after his first sweat lodge, an experience he found painful but incredibly inspirational.
For Chuck Copenace, ‘Oshki Manitou’ is a decidedly personal musical expression, a gift to his family and community, and a means of sharing how ceremonial melodies have changed his musical outlook and united his creativity and spirituality.
The SACRED FIRE

MUSIC
‘OSHKI MANITOU’
‘EP 1’
‘APPETITES’ (JOE SILVA REMIX)



