Popular Music - my/maSCENA

Indigenous Music Awards and the Manito Ahbee Festival

By Nathalie de Han on 4 June 2018 Canadian Music, Folk, Indigenous, Popular Music

The awards ceremony of the Indigenous Music Awards is a celebration of First Nations creativity. It is also an important event in the larger program of the Manito Ahbee Festival of Winnipeg, which is named after a sacred site for all peoples in the west part of the Whiteshell area of Manitoba. In Ojibwe, Manito Ahbee means “the place where the Creator sits.” The name of Manitoba finds its origin in this special place. The Manito Ahbee Festival, whose 13th edition just ended, celebrates Indigenous arts, music and culture at large. It presents international powwows, a conference on international Indigenous…

Elisapie’s Return: The Ballad of the Runaway Girl

By Nathalie de Han on 4 June 2018 Folk, Indigenous, Popular Music, Vocal

Now residing in Montreal, Inuit singer-songwriter, film director and activist Elisapie will release The Ballad of the Runway Girl at the end of summer. About 30 concerts are already planned in connection with this new album. Elisapie launches her cross-province tour in Lavaltrie and travels to Val-d’Or. Montreal welcomes her on Sept. 27. Elisapie’s fourth album was inspired by the life of Willie Thrasher, an Inuit singer. “Sent to a residential school in the south, deprived of his language and traditional lifestyle, Willie Thrasher did not have an easy life, but this fighter gave me force and influenced my work,”…

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Inspiring the Canadian Indigenous Music Scene

By Susan Gray on 4 June 2018 Canadian Music, Folk, Indigenous, Popular Music, Vocal

Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is a trailblazer, the first Indigenous musician to come to prominence in Canada. Her first album, It’s My Way!, was released by Vanguard Records in 1964. Last November, Medicine Songs, her 19th album, was released to critical acclaim. It contains some new material, like You Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind), in which she is joined on vocals by well-known throat singer Tanya Tagaq. Almost all the other songs have new arrangements. Overall, Sainte-Marie continues to have a remarkable career, enriched (although commercially hindered at one point) by her educator/outreach work and activism on behalf of…

Jeremy Dutcher: A Musical Mosaic

By Véronique Demers on 4 June 2018 Canadian Music, Indigenous, Popular Music, Vocal

Last April, First Nations musician, composer and activist Jeremy Dutcher released his first album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. Bridging traditional music, pop and classical, it pays tribute to his beloved roots in the Wolastoqiyik reserve where he grew up. Can his style be described as Indigenous pop? “I prefer not to be labelled,” says the 27-year-old classically-trained tenor. “I’m more than an First Nation singer. I see myself as metamorphosing from pop to traditional music. A hybrid, if you like.” Dutcher is keen to point out that his pieces were written to be as accessible as possible to a young audience.…

Festival Classica 2018: A Moveable Feast for Every Musical Taste

By Charles Geyer on 9 April 2018 Classical Music, Popular Music

Get down, get casual, get classical – consider this the cultural mantra for the city of Saint-Lambert this spring from May 25 through June 16, as the eighth annual edition of Festival Classica rolls out with a dazzling and eclectic array of rhythms and sonorities. The festival title promises everything “from Schubert to the Stones.” Yes, that’s Franz Schubert; and yes, that’s the Rolling Stones. Talk about something for everyone. Founder and artistic director Marc Boucher is proud of the annual event’s enormous popularity and dizzying growth over a relatively short span. The festival was conceived in no less august…

Leonard Cohen: Not Happiness. Meaning

By Robert Kilborn on 2 April 2018 Folk, Popular Music, Visual Arts

Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything – Like an aurora of dreams, quirks, and visions, this major art exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal shimmers to a close on 9 April. The brokenness of existence Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in — “Anthem” (1992) The Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi (1207–1273) wrote that “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” The Canadian poet, novelist and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) wrote that “There is a crack in everything…

Eclectic, Eccentric, and Essential Sounds of Revolution, from Shostakovich to The Beatles to Frank Zappa

By Newswire on 14 September 2017 Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Music, Newswire, Popular Music, Violin, Visual Arts

*Very limited seats remaining!* September 14, 2017, Montreal, QC – The MCO, under its Artistic Director Boris Brott, opens its 78th season with Revolution, an eclectic evening of music from the 60s and 70s, including Shostakovich, The Beatles, and Frank Zappa, in conjunction with the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s boisterous current exhibition, “You Say You Want a Revolution.” The MCO performs a new work based on songs from the iconic Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in newly-minted arrangements by François Vallières. Infamous Canadian fiddler Ashley Maclsaac will then join the MCO to transport the public into his eccentric sonorities.…

Illustration: Tommy Tallstig

The Long and Winding Jazz Solo

By Robert Lewis on 1 September 2017 Experimental Jazz, La Scena Spotlight, Mainstream Jazz, Popular Music

Once you play the music, it’s in the air. It’s gone. But when you record it, it comes back to haunt you. – Eric Dolphy What is it that attracts music lovers to jazz (improvised music)? Is it the loose structure, or the beat or the notes and melodies we have never heard before and will never hear again, unless the performance has been recorded; or is it the musician’s uncanny ability to spontaneously translate feelings that inform the notes into the language of music? Perhaps it is his audacity and courage — daring to play without a script; to…

Arts Alive! Québec : The Successful Multi-Region Arts Festival Continues

By Newswire on 2 August 2017 Newswire, Popular Music

Montreal, August 2017 – Arts Alive! Québec (AAQ) is at the halfway mark with successful events held in Knowlton, Québec City and Hudson during June and July. This year’s Huntingdon events again showcase the artistic and cultural richness of this beautiful region. Enjoy an irresistible program of dance, music, theatre, visual arts and workshops at Grove Hall, a new performing arts centre in an historic reclaimed church sitting on a lovely riverside campus, on Friday, August 18 and Saturday, August 19. Huntingdon’s Rural Arts Project Co-Artistic Director, Tina Bye is delighted with the way the community gets involved, often suggesting acts they’d like to see. She explains, “There is a…

Symphony Nova Scotia presents Free concerts across the city with its first-ever summer season

By Newswire on 17 July 2017 150/375, Canadian Music, Chamber Music, Folk, Newswire, Orchestral

HALIFAX, NS – This summer, Symphony Nova Scotia proudly presents its first-ever summer season, featuring 13 FREE concerts and events in public venues throughout Halifax from July 17 to 31. The festivities will feature Symphony Nova Scotia musicians giving live performances at venues like the Alderney Landing Theatre, the Keshen Goodman Public Library, and the Halifax Central Library’s O’Regan Hall. Highlights include the RDV 2017 Tall Ships Regatta Celebration on the waterfront with Natalie MacMaster, full-orchestra performances celebrating Nova Scotia with singer Reeny Smith and Mi’kmaq drummer Trevor Gould in Halifax and Dartmouth, and a charming afternoon Tea Dance with Halifax Pride at the Halifax Citadel. The full-orchestra concerts will be conducted by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, Symphony Nova Scotia’s Artist in Residence and Community…

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