Michael Cloud Duguay brings acclaimed sound work Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go to Sydney

SYDNEY, N.S. – Canadian composer Michael Cloud Duguay will bring his acclaimed live sound work Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go to Sydney on Sunday, September 27. 

Made from music, interviews and sounds gathered during a 1,500-kilometre journey across coastal Newfoundland, the work forms a layered portrait of a changing island and the people and communities that sustain it. 

Wild Lots and Eltuek Arts Centre will present the special matinee performance at Historic St. George’s Church, Cape Breton’s oldest standing church. The afternoon will begin with Grieving Machines, a radio-based installation and immersive sound experience by local Eltuek studio artist Devon Morrison, performing as Bleachlake. Grieving Machines is presented with support from the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s Creative Catalyst Program. 

Following more than a year of research, planning and conversations with outport churches, Duguay and his collaborators recorded the album over nine days in July 2024. Travelling across Newfoundland in The Scamper, Jake Nicoll’s solar-powered mobile recording studio, they recorded seven organs in seven historic churches, alongside interviews and the sounds of the places through which they moved. 

The result is not a conventional album of organ music, but what Duguay describes as an abstract musical documentary organized around faith and loss. Moving through composition, improvisation, interviews and field recording, Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go tells overlapping stories about rural communities, memory, religion and spirituality, climate change, labour, trust and human connection. 

For the live performance, Duguay is joined by Andrew MacKelvie, Markus Lake and Dave Grenon. Across keys, woodwinds, saxophone, narration, projected photography, and live sound processing, the four musicians improvise with digital instruments created from the original organs, carrying the sounds and stories gathered in Newfoundland into new form in Sydney. 

Historic St. George’s brings its own history to the work. Begun in 1785, it is one of only three churches in North America to hold a Royal Charter. Its seven-stop pipe organ dates to 1910, its sound shaped by the church’s scale and acousticsThe church stands in Sydney’s downtown, within the Historic North

End and adjacent to Eltuek Arts Centre—now a vibrant, bustling hub of creative and community life. 

Bringing the work to Unama’ki also echoes the long relationship between the islands. For generations, people have moved between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, carrying work, music, kinship, stories and ways of life. Cape Bretoners settled in Newfoundland, while Newfoundlanders came to Unama’ki’s coal and steel communities. The families and relationships formed through these movements remain interwoven across the Gulf. 

“Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go is a completely unique work of deep listening and reverence. You can smell the salt, feel the ice wind, hear the organs and birdsong, the communities and people they visited. Islands and what they behold are a magic mix of ecology. The portrait that emerges is made of ritual, weather, grief, drone and horizon. Having it here speaks to what passes between islands through music, memory, kinship, and stories. It observes what has been known, felt, and carried, what might disappear, and what we can make anew,” said Christie MacNeil, Vice President, Arts and Community at New Dawn. 

Released in July 2026 on Duguay’s Watch That Ends the Night Records, Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go has received international attention. The Guardian described it as “a sacred kind of sound,” while The Quietus called the work “enthralling, rich, and absorbing.” The album has also been featured by The Wire, The FADER, CBC Radio, Bandcamp Daily and the Newfoundland Quarterly, among others. 

The Sydney presentation will close the first leg of the project’s inaugural tour. Eltuek Arts Centre and Wild Lots are thrilled to bring the work to audiences in Unama’ki. 

Together, Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go and Grieving Machines explore different forms of listening: what is carried across time and distance, what we search for and what we hold space for in its absence.

EVENT DETAILS 

Michael Cloud Duguay: Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go with Grieving Machines by Bleachlake 

Sunday, September 27, 2026 

Doors and installation at 2 PM, music at 2:30 PM 

Historic St. George’s Church 
119 Charlotte Street, Sydney 

Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. 

Advance tickets: https://bit.ly/4g0rVxe 

This event is NOTAFLOF – No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds. Anyone requiring this option may contact wiiiiiildlots@gmail.com in advance or speak with organizers at the door. 

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ABOUT ELTUEK ARTS CENTRE

Eltuek (el·du·ehg) is a Mi’kmaw word that means “(We) are making (it) together.” The (it) refers to whatever it is (we) decide to make – a meal, a conversation, a painting, a poem. Art, community, social change. We do it together. The Eltuek Elder Advisors shared the name Eltuek, with the intent that Eltuek Arts Centre is accessible, inclusive, and continuous. 

Eltuek Arts Centre is an artist-led creative arts hub in North End Sydney that features private artist studios, an Open Studio for shared artist workspaces, gallery and exhibition space, Cafe Marie and Meals on Wheels, arts and community organizations, and creative gathering and event spaces for the community. 

Eltuek Arts Centre is a non-profit arts organization that is owned and operated by New Dawn Enterprises. New Dawn is a private, not-for-profit, volunteer-directed social enterprise dedicated to community building. We are the oldest Community Development Corporation in Canada and a founding member of the Canadian Community Economic Development Network. Our Mission, to engage the community to create a culture of self-reliance, is as relevant today as it was when the organization was founded back in 1976. 

Eltuek Arts Centre opened in February 2020 in the former Holy Angels Convent, ca. 1885. New Dawn Enterprises purchased it in 2013, and the 130-year-old heritage building is the largest adaptive reuse of built heritage in Unama’ki, Cape Breton Island. The building stands as a symbol of hope and renewal for a community that has struggled for more than 40 years to reinvent itself after the decline of the coal and steel industries. 

ABOUT WILD LOTS 

Wild Lots is a curious and irregular event and object series occurring in and around post-industrial Unama’ki, Cape Breton Island. Each program is purpose-built for its artists, place, and moment—bringing together contemporary sound and visions, community, curiosity, experimentation and play. What grows goes; the definition expands with each event, finding new ways to weave people, practices, and places together.