Nunavut musician and Aakuluk Music label owner Andrew Morrison, the one-time leader of JUNO Award-nominated Arctic folk-rock group the Jerry Cans, has created a beautiful and often mournful piano record, Last Days. The record is comprised of six instrumentals with each of the same works also recorded with Inuktitut-language poetry by rock legend James Ungalaq (Northern Haze) and JUNO Award-nominated singer-songwriter Terry Uyarak.

“It is a grief album, but a life album,” says Andrew. “There's lots about home. I think that's something that we struggle with, in this era of our lives, when we lose people, parents, but also lose people that we look up to artistically.

“It is a great honour to have both James and Terry contribute poetry to my album; they write absolutely beautiful words,” says Andrew. “We wanted to provide both Inuktitut and English guides to their poems with the hope that more people can understand life in Nunavut.”

Last Days was largely inspired by Andrew’s late mother, who was comforted by her son’s piano instrumentals in her final months, but also his need to break out of his comfort zone and create a piece of art that can be taken to the great classical concert halls of the world.

“I wanted to do something that ignores the rest of the commercialized appetites in the music industry and honour non-lyrical music. It’s a world I don’t know too much about, but I think that we’re told too quickly what songs are about, but with the Inuktitut poetry — because most people won’t understand it — the tone of the voice, I hope, conveys that. This is getting back to something that I feel is missing in art, which is our connection to what we’re feeling and expressing.”

During the pandemic, when Andrew’s mother was in care, every morning he played her snippets of the piano songs because he knew she enjoyed them. “I recorded them on my phone just as voice notes,” he says.

Some of those intros are on the final recording, and some he rerecorded after she passed away. “It was just time to diarize and remember the last moments of my mother passing away,” Andrew says.

Self-produced in Inuktitut and Montreal, the instrumentals “House Is Home v. 1”, “79th ave v.1”, “The News v. 1, The News 2 v.1 ”, “Colours”, and “Sooth Your Soul”, also feature Sara Page (Barr Brothers) on harp and Kristina Koropecki on cello.

“The News” poems were written and recited by James Ungalaq. “Two of his band members had passed away this year so he was also in a devastated space,” says Andrew. “He had a bunch of poems that he had written. It’s him finding his place again, similar to me, being from a band that had a certain identity to something very different. I feel like for both of us, it's been mining our souls a little bit.”