Scott Burke was walking down a street in Paris when he heard an accident behind him. He turned around, like the hundreds of other tourists in the crowd. “It stopped everybody,” he remembers. “Everybody stopped in the middle of their beautiful, fabulous trip to Paris, trip of a lifetime.” Burke didn’t see what exactly happened, […]
Michael Fraiman
Posted inArts + Music
Zuppa meets the market
Zuppa Theatre’s new play will open with Jasper (Stewart Legere), staring meditatively ahead, a piano accompanying his silence. It will be in the basement of the Historic Farmers’ Market, so the lights will be dim and the audience crammed all around him, part of the scene itself. He’ll start slow, with a monologue, but then […]
Posted inArts + Music
Halifax Pop Explosion on parade
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21 Tasseomancy The Company House, 10pm, $10 Sisters Sari and Romy Lightman play the Pop Explosion in mid-transformation. They’ve already changed their band name from Ghost Bees to Tasseomancy, the title of their excellent 2008 release. The changes are going deeper, explains Sari Lightman by email: “We’re focused on developing our skills as […]
Posted inArts + Music
Nocturne spotlight: A Year In the Making
As I turn on my recorder, Scott Saunders leans in to ask, “So, uh…This isn’t gonna be coming across as anti-government, eh?” It’s a fair question. Saunders has been “battling,” as he puts it, with the Halifax Regional Municipality for just under a year over his desire to curate an immersive art show in the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Keep ’em rolling
Of the 15 roller-skaters circling the Olympic Community Centre, almost every one has fallen down at least once. The guy in racquetball goggles and a red tie-dye tank top might be the most adventurous, but the newly formd Halifax Roller Derby Girls are clearly the most skilled; there’s a white-and-blue afro wig, a heavy-set gentleman […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Bus Stop’s here
The Bus Stop Theatre doesn’t look like much. Ask for a tour, and managing director Clare Waqué will show you the small but newly renovated lobby; the short but newly painted black box stage; the cumbersome 70-year-old safes in the back room, remnants from the venue’s former pharmacy days and her office, a small desk […]
Posted inArts + Music
Krasnogorsk the great
There’s an older couple watching Krasnogorsk play. They don’t say much, but when the band finishes a song, they’re the first to applaud. They seem impressed, not just with the Roma-influenced, vaguely Eastern European music, but also Krasnogorsk’s entire image: their unshaven faces; rustic instruments and the dozen small gemstones covering their patio table. “I […]
Posted inArts + Music
Svec’s football folk
Just before Henry Svec stood up to sing in a Sackville, New Brunswick, bar last year, an elderly man approached him. “Make sure you turn up the vocals,” he said. “I really want to hear the lyrics.” He believed that Svec’s songs—off his latest album, The CFL Sessions—were written in the 1970s by real Canadian […]
Posted inArts + Music
All you need is foodclothingshelter
Last summer, Owen Steel was unpacking at his dad’s place. His friend was over. He had things to do—but instead, he checked his email, found one unread message, and learned that he would soon be playing his first-ever set at the Evolve music festival. “I got really excited,” he recalls. “I think I jumped off […]
Posted inArts + Music
Naming nggrfg
Odds are no one on earth has ever said “nigger fag” as candidly as Berend McKenzie. “I’m not one to sugarcoat things,” he says. “If we ban those words, does that mean they don’t exist? And if they don’t exist, what happens to my stories of being called a nigger?” The answer to that question […]
Posted inArts + Music
Lee-Anne Poole Splinters off
Don’t let the plot fool you: Splinters is not based on a true story. It’s just a story that happens to be true. “The actual events of the play are not autobiographical,” insists playwright Lee-Anne Poole. “Besides the fact that, you know, I have experienced some of them.” She calls Splinters, opening at the Plutonium […]