Cultural Festivals

Susanne Chui, soon-to-be artistic director of Mocean Dance, has been working hard with three contemporary dance artists choreographing six pieces by nationally-recognized jazz guitarist Geordie Haley. A novel performance for the Halifax Jazz Festival, Threnodies unites music and dance to give shape to the mood that the music inspires. Drawing on blues, Threnodies laments the […]

Onstage, Alejandra Ribera is fierce and focused, her giant voice overtaking whatever room she is in. So it’s surprising to hear that Ribera gets nervous, saying a prayer and removing her shoes before she performs, worried her shaking will cause her to fall over. “I don’t remember performances,” she says. “I sort of black out […]

Shara Worden has no shortage of musical training. A multi instrumentalist as a child, Worden went on to study opera at the University of North Texas. However, it was when she branched out from her formal studies, learning to play guitar and penning lyrics, that her career began to blossom. “Doing classical music in my […]

Percussionist Mark Adam has had a career-long relationship with experimental American composer Steve Reich’s work. When Adam wanted to assemble a crew to start rehearsing Reich’s 2008 piece, 2×5, in his Wolfville barn studio, it wasn’t hard to find other musicians who were equally excited about the project. “It sounded too fun to pass up,” […]

Lumar Leblanc, one of the founding members of The Soul Rebels, is just as pleasant on the phone as you’d expect from his band’s upbeat performances. He’s relaxed and in no rush, despite the fact that he’s calling from a van in the middle of a packed tour, and entirely unfazed when our connection gets […]

With a custom-made Richtone amp, one-man-rockabilly-band Bloodshot Bill is a pastiche of smoky dance halls, grain-mash bourbon and monochrome broadcasts. Touring the world for about 15 years, the prolific Montrealer keeps taking us back to the era of American music that mixed southern railway songs with the pomade pompadours of post-war sexual and social rebellion. […]

Life is all about timing, and chance. Cliched sure, but it’s true. It’s how Hey Mother Death—the experimental art-goth project of Halifax expat Denma Peisinger and Parisian actress Laurence Strelka—came to be. A serendipitous encounter on a subway platform outside of Paris led to the two meeting, who eventually began dating and later, recording music […]

Gary War is bringing some high potency truth to his first Halifax show. The experimental psychedelic rock outfit from Brooklyn, New York takes no influence outside of personal interpretation and experience. Cassette tapes and various forms of releases over the last decade have culminated in the kaleidoscope sound wave that is Jared’s Lot, his third […]

Heather Rappard’s video pieces are like looking through psychedelic goggles, they swirl and glide, take dark turns and make you want to adjust your visual tracking. This love of video carries over to her OBEY Convention offering—under the name Chromatic Visions, Rappard curated a visual mixtape, full of analog warmth, sleek digital, local artists and […]

Along with the bevy of psychy avant-garde experimental performers slowly trickling into town this week, Toronto trashrock villains The Soupcans are on their way, toting a garbage bag full of their own particular brand of frenetic energy. Picture G.G. (RIP) covering Arab on Radar without the matching outfits and you’ll get a loose idea of […]

At the age of 10, Arkansas blues musician CeDell Davis began suffering from polio. The disease struck him so severely it rendered his hands all but useless. He loved making music so in order to keep playing he flipped his guitar, restrung it and began fingering notes on the neck with a butter knife. The […]

Enter the dreamy soundscape of You’ll Never Get To Heaven and you’ll experience an ambience that you’ll want to believe in. Studying in London, Ontario for the last few years, the electric pop project of Halifax’s Chuck Blazevik (Dreamsploitation) and Alice Hansen is a high voltage of creative harmonies. You’ll Never Get to Heaven plays […]