How trad music aficionado Elizabeth Szekeres fell for Patrick Watson
It was last December. In my local record store, I was selecting new music to give to the young men in my family. “I don’t have it in stock,” said the middle-aged, long-haired record shop owner, “but you absolutely have ...
Rufus Wainwright – multiple streaming concerts on Facebook Live
Rufus Wainwright could perform in his bathrobe and still have me spellbou…. Oh wait! He IS in his bathrobe! Starting last week, Rufus began a series of at-home concerts broadcast as part of the #TogetherAtHome initiative. He is fundraising for ...
Alan Doyle – Mar. 21 and 22 on Facebook Live
Fourteen thousand dollars. That’s what Alan Doyle brought in for the Kids Help Phone during this weekend’s basement coronavirus concerts. I’d say that was pretty good going. We are all going a little stir crazy with what this pandemic is ...
Rhizome – Double Capture
This gorgeous CD, cloaked in its mysterious red cover, came across my desk a few weeks ago. I finally had time to listen and can honestly say, this is completely a winner. I have heard it multiple times, enjoying it ...
A Piece of the Rock – Feb. 1 at the ...
On a snowy Saturday night in the historic village of Port Credit, ON, we had a wonderful evening of Newfoundland music from A Piece of the Rock, performing at the Unitarian congregation’s coffee house folk night. That night, the band’s ...
Babineau-Chartrand: Un Beau P’tit Son
Alexis Chartrand and Nicolas Babineau have so much music in them that they pretty much had no choice but to produce a new CD hot on the heels of their 2017 tour de force, Gigues à 2 Faces. This year’s ...
An update on Toronto’s Hugh’s Room Live
On a chilly Sunday afternoon this past November, about 50 of us met warmly at Hugh’s Room Live, our iconic listening room in Toronto, to hear the new board talk about the progress they have made in the room’s re-birth. ...
Janet Bates – It is Here I Leave You, Dragon
Photo by Lisa Novak. This is a voice you feel like you’ve known forever. Like a clear mountain river running unto the sea, it surrounds and envelops you as you bathe in its warm sunshine. This is the voice of ...
Elizabeth Szekeres sets up this weekend’s Sutton Traditional Fiddle Festival
I’m thrilled to see the 2019 lineup of performers for the Sutton Festival Violon Traditionnel, one of my very favourite Trad Québec gatherings of the summer. Sutton is a small, quite bilingual mountain town close to the Vermont border, where ...
The Sunday daytime workshops at Mémoire et Racines – in ...
Sunday’s program started off with a blast of tunes from some of Québec’s most accomplished players at the Atelier Des Violons: André Brunet, Stephanie Lepine, Dávid Boulanger together with Vermont’s Oliver Scanlon and Lisa Ornstein from California. The gang explored ...