Patricia Cano

Patricia Cano is a Peruvian-Canadian actor and singer-songwriter born and raised in Sudbury, ON. Since 2001, she has travelled the world singing Cree Cabaret alongside Cree playwright/ author/composer extraordinaire, Tomson Highway. In 2017, Patricia won the Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in Cree, English and French in Highway’s one-woman musical, The (Post) Mistress. Her acting credits include memorable years spent as a member of the renowned French theatre company, Le Théâtre du Soleil, and later as a member of the NAC’s English Theatre Company.

Her solo music career was launched in 2009 with the release of her first studio album,This is the New World - a collaboration with Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist, Carlos Bernardo. The album won Best Album by a Solo Artist at the 2011 Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards and led to years of cross-Canada touring. In October 2017, Patricia released her much anticipated sophomore album, Madre Amiga Hermana, of which one reviewer wrote, “This is an outstanding release from a supremely talented songwriter and vocalist” (Raul Da Gama, World Music Report, Oct 2017). In 2019, Patricia won the Northern Ontario Music & Film award for Outstanding Vocal Performance on a Recording for her rendition of Violeta Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida”.

In February 2021, Patricia released a recording entitled The Love & Resistance Sessions, a four-song collaboration, crafted with love in the time of Covid, with multi-instrumentalist and composer Louis Simão. Most recently, Patricia voiced the audiobook for Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen for Penguin Random House released in June 2021, and performed in Zaagidiwin for Luminato 2021. In Spring of this year, Tomson Highway released his new Cree Country studio album on which Patricia sings all songs in Cree.  What a [joyful] honour it is, indeed