Erik Bleich celebrates the release of his new album Sumac with an intimate performance at Peterborough’s Sadleir House.

Sadleir House (also known as P. R. Community and Student Association)
is a charitable community centre fostering arts, culture, and heritage
in the Nogojiwanong (Peterborough) community.

This special evening features a stripped-down set with longtime collaborators Lea Kirstein (cello, viola) and Kathryn Merriam (piano, vocal), along with special guests.

Erik Bleich writes songs that live in-between, a kind of Liminal Americana that never settles in one place for long.

A Toronto-based singer-songwriter raised in the isolated mill town of Dryden, Ontario, his work is grounded in a plainspoken, conversational voice. Cinematic indie folk meets blue-collar poetry. His songs often circle what goes unnoticed, the quiet patterns beneath ordinary life, the feeling of something just out of frame.

His latest album, Sumac, traces the moment when those patterns come into focus. Written through years of chronic pain and an uneven recovery following a life-altering car accident, alongside a late diagnosis of neurodivergence, the record holds both the grief and relief of finally naming what was always there. It opens at a crossroads and moves toward something harder to name, not quite resolution, but recognition

Sonically, Sumac moves between hushed intimacy and more expansive arrangements built on lush, reverberant guitars, cinematic strings, and a rhythm section that leaves room to breathe. Songs begin in a conversational tone and open outward, sitting somewhere near Sufjan Stevens, John K. Samson, and Big Thief. Expansive in arrangement but intimate in writing, the music holds to a simple principle, three chords and the honest truth, carried through shifting textures and changing light.

Pre-sale tickets coming May 2026