Akin to Dylan plugging in way back when, Brent Randall leaves behind the keyboard to shoulder the guitar. Now, before you get your knickers in a knot, the scale of these two events obviously differs, but the spirit’s the same. Randall’s known for leading a pop-orchestra (previously, His Pinecones) from the piano/organ, so playing more […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design, Sarah Bonnemaison and Ronit Eisenbach (Princeton Architectural Press)
With the book’s very first theme, tectonics, one thinks of plate tectonics, the earthquake in Haiti. But in architecture tectonics refers to architects’ thoughts on and uses of “construction details.” These fall into “materials and assemblies.” As with the book’s other four sections, specific projects are considered in accessible language and design. One starts to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Postdata
What have you done for your mom lately? Paul Murphy (Wintersleep) and his bro Michael formed an informal duo, called it Postdata and recorded an album of the same name as a gift for their mother, who had faced some tough losses. It’s nine songs written and sung by Paul and performed by both brothers. […]
Posted inArts + Music
An Horse
This Brisbane, Australia, duo opens for Tegan and Sara in Halifax on Wednesday. Kate Cooper (guitar/vocals) and Damon Cox (drums/harmonies) tend often to a pattern of slash-bash-bring-it- down and repeat. And Cooper can over-enunciate her words. But An Horse can and does loosen up and let themselves go in different direction on Rearrange Beds. On […]
Posted inArts + Music
Spend the weekend with Just Friends
All the best-of-decade lists have come and gone. It’s time to just get on with it, the now sound. What that is, of course, is always up for debate. At Just Friends Records, hosting a weekend of music releases, getting on with it means going back to a degree. Even looking at their releases reveals […]
Posted inLifestyle
The picture of health?
Consider the following set of priorities facing the province today: increasing population health, maintaining a healthy economy and providing healthy support for athletes, the people at the pinnacle of physical fitness and wellness. At first glance, they appear to be in competition. Reconsider them, and you see how these priorities are connected, and how we’re […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Moon of Letting Go, Richard Van Camp (Enfield & Wizenty)
Vancouver-based Richard Van Camp is arguably one of the leading short story writers in Canada. Van Camp, in his first collection of stories since 2002's Angel Wing Splash Pattern, has so clearly listened to how people talk, the music and spirit of their language becoming his. These characters are his people, the Dogrib, living regular […]
Posted inArts + Music
Hall of fame: The Kids return to TV
From their early days on Toronto stages and then nationally, via a CBC show running from 1988-94, Kids in the Hall innovated and helped build Canadian comic tradition. The quintet returns to TV this Tuesday with a miniseries, Death Comes to Town, a murder-mystery send-up set in a small Ontario town. For the occasion, three […]
Posted inArts + Music
Lukas Pearse goes on the record
It’s a contemporary question with deep historical roots. Is technology “better for music or does it take the soul out of the music?” asks vocalist Janice Jackson on the phone before a rehearsal of Vonda De Ville in Temporal Follies—An Electropera, a piece created for her by Lukas Pearse. The hour-long work will be performed […]
Posted inArts + Music
Forro in the Dark
Four Brazilian ex-pats filter forró (a syncopated rhythmic music originating in mainly rural northeastern Brazil) through their lives and experiences in New York. On this follow-up to its 2006 debut, Bonfires of São João, the band comes into its own. Guilherme Monteiro’s contributions come to mind as the true badge of the band at this […]
Posted inArts + Music
AGNS’ portrait of problems
Ray Cronin has an office with a gaping picture window giving view to the provincial legislature across the street. After 18 months as director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Cronin’s gone through the looking glass and is still winding his way through wonderland. Running a provincial art institution, Cronin works with […]
Posted inArts + Music
Thirst
A deeply committed Christian priest in South Korea, Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho Song), offers himself as a test subject in the fight against a mysterious global pandemic. He travels out of the country to a clinic where he’s deliberately infected with the virus and accidentally receives a tainted blood transfusion. A host of new vampiric cravings and […]