Cari Burdett is an award-winning Canadian singer, songwriter, producer, educator and artistic director whose genre-crossing career has moved through original music, jazz, world music, classical voice, cabaret and improvisation. At the heart of her work is a commitment to music as a force for connection, community building and arts-based cultural development, including reconciliation work through ongoing relationships and collaborations that honour the Quw’utsun Hul’q’umi’num-speaking peoples of the Cowichan Valley.

For more than three decades, Burdett has built a musical life around the connective power of the human voice — as a recording and performing artist, teacher, choir director, producer and community-engaged artist. Her work brings professional musicians together with community members, children, youth, Elders and cultural leaders, creating musical experiences rooted in listening, relationship, creativity and belonging.

Classically trained at McGill University, where she earned a Bachelor of Music in Opera Performance with Distinction, Burdett went on to earn a Master of Music from the Royal Academy of Music in London, with Merit in Performance. Her artistic development has continued through residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, intensive voice work at the Roy Hart Theatre in France, vocal improvisation studies with Rhiannon, and the Willie Clancy Summer School in Ireland.

Her first studio album, Magnolia, established Burdett as a distinctive genre-crossing vocalist, singing in six languages across the album. Produced by Grammy and JUNO Award winner Joby Baker and featuring an acclaimed ensemble of Canadian musicians, Magnolia moved between opera, jazz, folk traditions and Canadian repertoire. The album earned a 2016 Western Canadian Music Award nomination for Best World Album, while Burdett was named Vocalist of the Year at the 2016 Vancouver Island Music Awards. Music from Magnolia was later arranged and performed with the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra.

Burdett has performed as a classical and orchestral soloist in works including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, alongside concert and festival appearances across Vancouver Island, British Columbia and Canada, including performances at Butchart Gardens. Her work has been featured by CBC Radio, Radio-Canada, Shaw TV and the Victoria Times Colonist.

Her second studio album, Don’t Forget, marks a significant new chapter: her first full-length collection composed entirely of her own songs.

Eight years in the making, the album was put on hold after an unexpected vocal injury left Burdett with a paralyzed vocal cord, followed by the disruption of the COVID years. Once her voice had healed, Burdett knew she wanted to return to the songs, finish the recording and finally bring the album into the world. Now is that time.

During those years away from recording, Burdett immersed herself in nature connection practices and training, an experience that became an important part of both her healing and the evolution of her work. Today, she brings voice and nature connection together in offerings for groups and individuals, creating experiences rooted in song, ritual, community and connection to the land.

This work has become an integral part of Burdett’s artistic life, alongside performance, songwriting and teaching, and informs her work at Lila Music & Nature Centre in the Cowichan Valley.

Don’t Forget brings together themes of friendship, grief, belonging, healing, nature, love and remembrance. The album was developed in part with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and grew out of Burdett’s time at the Banff Centre, where she met Toronto producer and multi-instrumentalist Robbie Grunwald.

Produced by Grunwald and recorded between Union Sound in Toronto and Track and Trestle Studio in British Columbia’s Cowichan Valley, Don’t Forget features an exceptional group of Canadian musicians: Dean Drouillard on guitar, Brian Kobayakawa on bass, Joshua Van Tassel on drums, Robbie Grunwald on keyboards, Adrian Dolan on violin and viola, and Amy Laing on cello, with string arrangements by Dolan.

Many of the songs on Don’t Forget were written before the journey that followed. Years later, Burdett found herself living inside the very questions the songs had been asking.

“Don’t Forget is the story of finding my way back to myself,” Burdett says. “These songs carried messages that I didn’t fully understand when I wrote them. Years later, I found myself living them.”

The album has attracted national music press, with coverage from Roots Music Canada, Canadian Beats, MusicLoveMusic, Songplode and Tinnitist. Songplode described Burdett as having “a voice that seems to arrive with its own weather,” while Canadian Beats called “Where Is Love” “a gorgeous slice of pop-soul that would surely make Carole King smile.”

Live performance remains central to Burdett’s work. Over the years she has collaborated with musicians including Adrian Dolan, Adam Dobres, Richard Moody, Scott White, Miles Black, Sean Drabbit, Marc Atkinson, Quin Etheridge-Pedden and Daniel Lapp.

She is also the founder, Artistic Director, producer and featured performer of the Winter Solstice Concert Series. Since 2011, the series has grown into a beloved annual Vancouver Island tradition, frequently selling out its performances and now presenting eight concerts each year across Vancouver Island and Salt Spring Island. The series brings together outstanding Canadian musicians for concerts that blend musical excellence, improvisation, reflection and community gathering during the darkest days of the year.

Beyond the concert stage, Burdett has spent more than 30 years teaching voice, directing choirs and creating community-based musical experiences. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Lila Music & Nature Centre, where her work brings together music, nature connection, mentorship, children, youth, families, Elders and intergenerational community.

Whether singing with an orchestra, recording her own songs, improvising with a band, directing a choir or gathering a room of people in song, Burdett continues to return to the same territory: love, belonging, connection and the ability of music to remind us who we are.

With Don’t Forget, those threads come together in her most personal recording yet.

Cari Burdett is based on Vancouver Island, on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Quw’utsun peoples.