Cari Burdett has always believed that the voice is more than an instrument. It is a way of being present – with yourself, with an audience, with the living world. That belief has shaped everything: the albums, the concerts, the teaching, the community work, the annual winter gathering that has sold out for fifteen years running.

Growing up steeped in music, Cari pursued formal training at McGill University and the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she completed a Master’s in Opera, Voice Pedagogy and Performance. But the classical tradition was never the destination – it was the foundation. Over forty years of singing and thirty years of teaching have taken her far beyond the conservatory, into jazz, world music, folk, cabaret, improvisation, and the kind of performance that doesn’t stay safely behind the fourth wall.

Her debut album Magnolia – produced by Grammy and Juno Award winner Joby Baker alongside an ensemble of some of Canada’s finest musicians – announced an artist of rare range and emotional depth. Spanning opera, jazz, folk, and original Canadian composition, the album earned a Western Canadian Music Awards nomination for Best World Album and the Vancouver Island Music Award for Vocalist of the Year. It was later performed in its entirety with the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra.

Her forthcoming album Don’t Forget is something new – the first full collection of songs written entirely by Cari herself. Produced by Robbie Grunwald with string arrangements by Adrian Dolan, and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, FACTOR, and the BC Arts Council, it is intimate and expansive in equal measure. A record about love – not as sentiment, but as a force woven through nature, relationship, and the texture of everyday life.

On stage, Cari performs with an all-star ensemble of acclaimed Canadian musicians and has appeared at venues and festivals including Butchart Gardens and the Winnipeg Folk Festival. She has been featured on CBC Radio, Radio-Canada, and Shaw TV, and her professional development has taken her to residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Roy Hart Theatre in France.

But perhaps the work she is most proud of happens closer to home. In the Cowichan Valley, she founded Lila Music and Nature Centre – a gathering place for voice instruction, community choir, nature-based education, workshops, and ceremony. She sings at bedsides in hospices. She facilitates grief and ceremony. She works alongside local Coast Salish Elders. She has built, year by year, a Winter Solstice Concert that brings her community together in the darkest week of the year – and keeps selling out.

All of it comes from the same place: a conviction that singing is not a performance skill but a human one, and that the voice – anyone’s voice – is a pathway to something larger.

Cari Burdett lives and works on Vancouver Island, BC.