Rosebud graduate Natalie Gauthier takes talents on tour

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Actor and musician Natalie Inga Gauthier, who just acted in Rosebud’s Wind in the Willows, is performing a musical tour in January.
Gauthier, with Sonia Deleo, will give a house concert in Rosebud, Sunday, Jan. 10, and a concert at Gravity Espresso and Wine Bar in Calgary, Friday, Jan. 22.
They’ll also perform house concerts in Calgary and Lethbridge, and a concert in Jasper, Alberta. Gauthier will perform in an all-day music marathon at Gravity, Jan. 8. On Jan. 23, she’ll open for Kray Van Kirk at a Gallery House Concert in Calgary.
Gauthier is emphasizing her musical talents this month, but she has diverse other talents which never lie dormant. In 2015, besides acting in Wind in the Willows, she performed with Stages Ignite Festival, acting all four characters in a one-woman show titled Beard. She attended the month-long Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance on Manitoulin Island, Ont., living in a tent and sharing a communal kitchen. She also recorded and played live with John Wort Hannam, and recorded with Joe Vickers.
The musical partnership with Sonia Deleo also developed in 2015, though they’d met two years earlier. Last fall, Deleo said she was looking for a band to perform with, and “something just clicked,” Gauthier said. “We very, very gingerly said, ‘Well, should we try and play music together?’… so we did, and the first night we got together, we ended up accidentally co-writing a song.”
They discovered complementary musical styles, writing “songs of hope and love for our loved ones, and moments of grief and loss.”
And they have shared inspiration.
“I’ve always felt connected to (my grandmother) whenever I’m making music,” Gauthier said. “I feel that at least some of my passion for singing and making music came from her.”
In fact, her grandmother’s name, Inga, is Gauthier’s middle name. Deleo finds the same kind of inspiration in her grandfather Deleo.
Gauthier is thankful for the partnership, especially since she knows she wouldn’t have been ready for it when they met in 2013.
“For the last two years, it was a very, very intense period of growing pains,” she said. “I feel actually like I’m in a season of reaping the benefits of that … not to say that I have no ways in which I want to grow, but I’m actually just wanting to enjoy that. I’m in a season of relishing the wonderful life that I have.”
But relishing life doesn’t mean Gauthier rests on her laurels. From February to June, she’ll act with Evergreen Theatre, touring schools with the play Legend of Four: A Science Fantasy. She looks forward to more performances at Gravity Espresso and Wine Bar, to singing on the upcoming album of her friend Kathryn Smith, and to coming back to Rosebud to record her own new album. And the theatre audition season is coming up.
For extra income, Gauthier has “eight other jobs that I do here and there periodically,” but she considers that a gift too.
“I spend my energy in performance,” she said, but non-artistic jobs fill her tank in different ways. “I view it as being a well-rounded human being with lots of different skills. I’m not trapped only exercising one muscle or only utilizing one skill. I feel my life is a wonderful multi-colored adventure.”
For more information about Gauthier’s tour, including the Rosebud house concert and the concerts at Gravity Espresso and Wine Bar, see her Facebook page, Inga.