is a multi-award winning composer, musician, musical director, singer. songwriter and performer based in Vancouver, the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaɬ First Nations.

She has studied classical, jazz, African, Indonesian gamelan, electro-acoustic music and also audio production and electroacoustic music. Among her six recordings to date, she has won five Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, an Indian Summer Music Award (U.S.A.), a Western Canadian Music Award and she received three consecutive Juno nominations.

Over the years, she has mentored innumerable First Nations singers and songwriters in rudimentary music theory, vocal techniques, songwriting craft and music-industry protocol. She has toured to festivals on five continents, including 2024 WOMAD South Africa (Cape Town), Crossing Cultures (Seoul S.Korea), N’gan Girra (Albury, Australia), First People’s Festival (Smithsonian Institute, opening of the Museum of the American Indian), World Music Festival (Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia), Ollin Kan (Mexico City) and all of the bigger Canadian folk festivals.

She was commissioned in 2023 by Quebec’s Art Chorale for an unaccompanied SATB choral piece, Sacred One, about the important role of women in her ancestral culture, which they also recorded and released to the public.

Sandy was Musical Director and composer for three of Kevin Loring’s Nlakapa’mux community plays, presented her work in 2021 at the Canadian New Music Network, performed at the 2 Rivers Remix Feast of Contemporary Indigenous Music and Culture, was Mentor for Emergence women’s music retreat two years in a row, was the sounddesign for MIssing, Vancouver Opera’s MMIW Opera and lastly, performed a concert with Tanya Tagaq at the National Arts Centre.

She has taken the tool box that she has enhanced as a touring musician, through her composition work at SFU, and from the young musicians she has mentored and applied them to her sense of melody, harmony and rhythm, resulting in what writer Phil Paine described as “a high-level synthesis of jazz, blues, rock and pop” with First Nations traditions. “Her music is original, refined and intelligent.”

She leads a First Nation’s traditional women’s trio, Iskwew Singers, and is currently writing for her 7th album. Sandy is also composing music to support the release of a collaborative spoken word project for the late playwright Vera Manuel (Secwepemc-Ktunaxa).

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