Sultans of String – Sanctuary
There are places in the world where for reasons that are beyond logic, you cannot visit or even contemplate living a life of safety and calm. War, politics, terrorism, poverty, crime, environmental degradation and persecution are just some of the ...
Elizabeth Szekeres gets us ready for this year’s Festival Mémoire ...
I might just have to clone myself about four times to go to everything I want to see on this year’s program at Festival Mémoire et Racines in Joliette, QC. After two years of restricted pandemic programming, this great festival ...
Over the Moon – Chinook Waltz
A chinook is a warm wind that blows eastward over the Rocky Mountains and warms up parts of western North America in the winter. When you live on a ranch in the foothills of southern Alberta, like Craig Bicknell and ...
Shane Cook and the Woodchippers – Be Here for a ...
This is definitely not your grandpa’s fiddle record. Shane Cook, with three of his very talented friends, has put together a magnificent selection of tunes on this CD, all superbly composed, arranged and played. Listening to Shane’s playing on this ...
“La Ziguezon”: 40 plus years for this call-and-response song celebrated ...
Jean Desrochers, artistic director of Festival Memoire et Racines in Québec, got a brilliant idea this past summer. He put a group of five superb singers from diverse cultural backgrounds in a park with huge trees with two camera operators ...
Festival Mémoire et Racines 2021: Re-starting this legendary festival
You’ve been really missing live music, and you’ve been missing even more the live music that is weekend-long music festivals. With the re-start of Festival Mémoire et Racines in Joliette, QC next month (July 23-25), the wait for some ...
Pete’s Posse – Ya Know, Ya Never Know
It’s epic. Not only do we have a two disc set from the Posse here, but a newly minted Canadian too. Dyed in the wool Vermonter Tristan Henderson, married his Québecoise sweetheart and moved to Montreal last year (yes they ...
Grosse Isle – Le Bonhomme Sept Heures / The Bonesetter
Québec and Ireland have a long and intertwined cultural relationship that goes back centuries. In 1847, at the height of the great potato famine of 1845 to 1852, 441 ships sailed for Québec, and many on board were sick ...
Nicolas Boulerice – Maison de Pierres
It is said that English is a very technical language, and that in contrast, French is much more poetic. You hear this nature of the language very clearly on this new recording in the perfect and atmospheric singing of Nicolas ...
Alexis Chartrand and Colin Savoie-Levac – Le Tranino
Two of the finest young players in Québec’s traditional music scene got together in a studio one weekend last September and jammed, improvising arrangements while their friend recorded them. The result is a simply superb collection of tunes from the ...