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 ...
Festival Mémoire et Racines: Day 3 in words and ...
The four young people in the band Inn Echo come from Ireland, British Columbia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, but they sound like they’ve grown up together. They are musically that tight of a band. Their two fiddles, concertina and ...
Festival Mémoire et Racines: Day 2 in words and ...
Starting off the daytime workshop stages on Saturday was the duo of Sébastien Dubé and Michel Bordeleau. Born in Québec and now living in Sweden, Sébastien is a world renowned player of five-string acoustic bass. He and Michel are the ...
Dispatches from Festival Mémoire et Racines – Day One (Friday)
Friday night at Mémoire et Racines opened with a bang. The 25th anniversary festival is under way with the best weather you could order. We arrived at the mainstage in time for Rosier, the newly re-christened five-piece band that was ...
Festival Mémoire et Racines celebrates 25 years at this weekend’s ...
This weekend, the 25th anniversary Festival Mémoire et Racines will take flight in Joliette, QC a mere 50-minute drive from downtown Montréal. This is, bar none, my favourite Canadian folk festival. It’s worth your attention and definitely worth the drive ...
Sultans of String are crowdfunding this very important project
If you’ve been at all perturbed by the demonization of immigrants, migrants and refugees that has been going on recently in many western nations, you’re not alone. Chris McKhool and the Sultans of String believe in using their art to ...
Sabin Jacques & Rachel Aucoin – Grandes Rencontres
Once in a while something unique and memorable comes your way. This superb CD is one of those things. Rachel Aucoin and Sabin Jacques from Québec are partners musically and in life. Rachel is a highly accomplished classical pianist from ...
Mélisande [Electrotrad] – Les Millésimes
Elizabeth Szekeres has been working her way through all of the albums she picked up at this year’s Folk Alliance International conference and introducing us to some of her favourite discoveries – some new; some old. This album was released ...