From Winnipeg to Montreal, music producer Devon Bate is here to stay

When he was an aspiring musician, Devon Bate, BA 14, MA 23, felt the allure of Montreal in live-music venues across the city, where many of his favourite bands performed. To be a part of it more permanently, the Winnipeg-born artist moved to Montreal in 2010 and enrolled at Concordia to pursue his studies.

“It was all really appealing to me,” he says. “The program, the city, the surrounding culture — it’s what I wanted.”

Since then, Bate — who completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in communication studies — has fully integrated himself in the city’s music and culture scene. His work includes the sound design and artistic direction of the Cabal Theatre performance ensemble and the production of 16 successful LPs.

Most notably, Bate worked with composer and pianist Jean-Michel Blais, BA 15, as producer on his 2016 debut album Il, which was named one of Time Magazine’s top 10 albums of the year. Bate also produced tenor and composer Jeremy Dutcher’s Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, winner of the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and the 2019 Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.

More recently, Bate returned to Concordia to further expand his expertise. As a media studies graduate student, he researched coal mining and noise pollution in Nova Scotia and worked for the Montreal-based research-creation project The Sociability of Sleep to examine experiences of sleep.

Bridging communities through collaboration

When he’s not deep into the research of sound, sleep and the environment, Bate is doing what he loves most — building meaningful collaborations in the music production studio.

As an anglophone from Manitoba working with Blais, a French Canadian, Bate maintains that much of his success in Montreal is the result of the collaborations that can arise among Canada’s different language communities. 

“My experience here has been defined by the people I’ve met and the communities I’ve been involved with," he says. "When I came to Quebec, I learned more about Canadian francophone language and culture, particularly in the art scene."

By producing for Blais and being immersed in a francophone milieu, Bate was exposed to different music styles, which led to experimentation with his art production. 

“Opportunities to bridge communities are valuable and sought after — unfortunately, they happen less than we would like,” says Bate. “To contribute further to the division between francophones and anglophones in the art scene seems backwards."

Today, prospective students from the rest of Canada who feel the same pull to Montreal that Bate once did, are now faced with a new obstacle: significant tuition increases for out-of-province and international students across Quebec’s three anglophone universities. 

“Exclusivity doesn’t foster the French language," Bate says. “It doesn’t teach prospective students French, it keeps them out.”

Artists, like Bate, who come from elsewhere for their studies and to contribute to the province’s economy, are integral to a flourishing cultural scene, he adds.

“The diversity of Montreal’s art scenes should be protected. And that’s why people come here. No one wants that to go away.”