A dazzling Two-Spirit cellist with deep connections to Vancouver has died in a car crash in Northern Alberta. UBC-educated composer and performer Cris Derksen, 45, was driving home from her father’s funeral when the collision occurred. Derksen’s wife, Tuscaroran and Scottish Two-Spirit Iroqueer vocalist Rebecca Bensen, is reportedly in critical condition.
Derksen’s aunt Theresa Johnson wrote a tribute on Facebook to her niece.
“My extraordinary, gifted, radiant, cherished niece Cris may have left us prematurely, but her profound legacy and enchanting music will perpetually uplift me. There has to be a divine purpose why I had to bid farewell to her merely a week after laying my brother Bernie, her dad, to rest,” Johnson wrote. “She serenaded him with her cello one final time, and this poignant moment will forever be etched in my memory as a testament to her remarkable talent.”
In a separate post on Facebook, the AIM Booking Agency said that Derksen (she/they) was much more than a client—she was family.
“To know Cris was to know a force of nature,” the company stated over social media. “She was fiercely authentic and deeply generous, and she brought an uncompromising spirit to everything she touched. Her art was a reflection of her soul: poignant, powerful, grounded in heritage, and relentlessly innovative.”
Many others have also expressed their incredible sadness over the Toronto-based cellist’s sudden passing.
Deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Cris Derksen, internationally renown Indigenous musician and composer, in a tragic vehicle accident in northern Alberta, returning from her father's funeral. A beautiful soul and musician. Such a loss.
— paulseesequasis (@paulseesequasis.bsky.social) 2026-05-17T01:13:29.029Z
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A Juno nominee, Derksen often incorporated traditional music into contemporary works. The Cree musician with Mennonite ancestry demonstrated this at last year’s Transform Festival when she performed in a show called Where the Rivers Meet. It also featured Corey Payette, Suzette Amaya, Emma Pennell, Sherryl Sewapagaham, and Russell Wallace at the Vancouver Playhouse.
Derksen also brought Indigenous music to the forefront through the Orchestral Powwow project, which included an Aniishinaabeg family drum group called the Chippewa Travellers. In these performances, the Chippewa Travellers led the orchestra rather than having a conductor do this.
Derksen was once the principal cellist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. In a 2021 conversation with VSO music director Otto Tausk, Derksen said that her music is deeply influenced by her mixed Indigenous and settler heritage.
“I find it speaks to both sides and it’s very Canadian, really,” Derksen noted.
Derksen’s scores were recently heard in two dance productions in Vancouver. Ballet Vancouver’s world premiere of Winterbourne, co-created by Joshua Beamish and Yolonda Skelton, was performed in late April. Derksen also wrote an original score for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of Cameron Fraser-Monroe’s T’əl: The Wild Man of the Woods. It was performed in Vancouver in February.
“She has this incredible breadth as an artist,” Fraser-Monroe told Pancouver earlier this year. “She has debuted at Carnegie Hall with 90 players from Orchestre Métropolitain [de Montréal] and also does incredible solo electronic work.”
In 2009, Derksen was curator-in-residence at the Cultch in East Vancouver. At the 2021 Transform Festival, she curated and co-hosted a classical music–circus collaboration called Connective T/issue – Classical Cirque. The festival made this available again in 2023 as a reprise. And last year, Derksen performed at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and hosted a workshop in Jericho Beach Park.
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