OTTAWA — Friends and admirers are gathering in Ottawa to toast Canadian crooner k.d. lang at a tribute concert tonight, flipping the script on the artist whose career is peppered with covers of other artists' work.
The likes of Michael Bublé, Jann Arden and Allison Russell are set to perform lang's hits.
The tribute concert at the National Arts Centre, "k.d. lang: has always been," coincides with an exhibition of lang's stagewear.
Walking through the exhibit during a photoshoot Thursday, lang nodded toward one of the costumes: a blue western shirt with long white fringe across the chest and a green-and-blue floral A-line skirt.
She wore it at the 1984 Edmonton Folk Festival, where, according to the placard on the display case, she drew out her set because the headliners got lost on the way to the festival.
The placard says the outfit's designer is unknown, but Lang corrects the record: her mother made the skirt.
"It used to be my sister's curtain," she said.
The Consort, Alta.-born singer, whose body of work encompasses everything from cowpunk twang to smooth adult contemporary, is among Canada's most celebrated musicians.
Her hits include "Constant Craving" and "Miss Chatelaine" off the 1992 album "Ingenue," and "Crying," a duet she recorded with Roy Orbison in 1987.
The performers tonight include some of lang's collaborators, such as Jane Siberry, whom lang inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame last year.
The pair sang together on Siberry's track "Calling All Angels," and lang covered two of Siberry's other songs on her 2004 album "Hymns of the 49th Parallel": "The Valley" and "Love is Everything."
Ron Sexmith, another artist lang covered on that album, is also among the performers expected tonight.
Others set to hit the stage include Jill Barber, Mariel Buckley, Wyatt C. Louis and William Prince.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 2, 2026.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
