Here we go. It’s the start of the 2007 ECMA Weekend and the city is abuzz with musicians, media, and industry folk, gearing up for another edition of the best sounds the Maritimes have to offer. My day starts with a visit to the ECMA media centre. Personally, I think the organizers of the weekend […]
Cultural Festivals
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Day 1 The Start of a Long Weekend
Here we go. It’s the start of the East Coast Music Awards Weekend, in which the city will be beset by musician and general industry folk, all milling about
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Fall arts preview: September 2006
Written by Sue Carter Flinn, Johnston Farrow, Sean Flinn, Carsten Knox, Lis van Berkel. FUN 100 at Gus’ Pub There’s a good chance Vancouver indie-punk band FUN 100 will partake in just that when they hit Gus’ Pub stage on September 29 with The Maynards and Windom Earle. The quintet arrives in Halifax after being […]
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Fall arts preview: October 2006
Written by Sue Carter Flinn, Johnston Farrow, Sean Flinn, Carsten Knox, Lis van Berkel. Halifax Pop Explosion The fall in Halifax is synonymous with busting out scarves, wearing long sleeves and experiencing exciting concerts. The biggest annual alternative music festival in Halifax returns with another amazing line-up of rock, hip-hop, folk and experimental acts, set […]
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Fall arts preview: November 2006
Written by Sue Carter Flinn, Johnston Farrow, Sean Flinn, Carsten Knox, Lis van Berkel. The Hidden Cameras at Stage Nine The one thing that you can expect from a Hidden Cameras concert is to expect anything. There might be 30 musicians dancing with glockenspiels and Mexican wrestling masks, or there might be five souls, harmonizing […]
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Ace of Bass (part two) straight ahead with chasers
Thursday night, foremost T-dot bassist Roberto Occhipinti brought a quintet of fabulous players into the Commons Room to entertain a near capacity audience of (I would hazard to guess)university music students and upmarket middle-aged listeners. Occhipinti, Cuban piano god Hilario Duran, trumpeter Kevin Turcotte, alto-saxophonist Luis Denis and drum wunderkindDafnis Prieto, held court playing (with […]
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Jazz man crushes
I’ve had my share of man-crushes. Too many to list here. Normally they’re musicians, sometimes visual artists. I end up like George in that Seinfeld episode where he’s all agog over Tony, a mountain-climbing boyfriend of Elaine. I’ve never offered to make sandwiches though for my man-crushes, as George does. Or there’s Jerry’s crush on […]
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Ace of Bass (part one): the song cycle
A number of years ago, living in Toronto, I bought a ticket for a Miles Davis concert at Roy Thomson Hall. Miles’s career at that time had spanned more than three decades and the audience filing in the hall reflected that span. Old men leaning on their canes hoping to hear Miles from the big […]
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Sights and Sounds, Words and Music
Tuesday night I hopped over to the Dal Architecture Building to catch Sageev Oore improvising music to a showing of Charlie Chaplin movies. Figuring on a wait (I like to arrive at venues in plenty of time for a broad range of seating choice), I brought along with my notebook a copy of the current […]
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Open competition
Catherine Meade still cringes whenever she walks by a schoolyard and hears the insults kids hurl at each other on the playing field. “Even though it’s 2006,” Meade says, “and we’ve had the right to marry for two years now, you still walk by many school grounds, and what do you hear, ‘fag,’ or ‘dyke.’ […]
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The destruction, rebuilding, vindication and progression of Lindsay Willow
Lindsay Willow is not who you think she is. For one thing, she’s not a jock; she’s a gym teacher, in part because she couldn’t imagine being stuck in a classroom all day. She’s a lesbian too. And she didn’t molest 17-year old Nadia Ibrahim, although that was the misguided allegation of John Orlando in […]
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Metro transition
When Eric MacDonald first thought about becoming a man in 1992, he backed away from the idea. “There was very little information available to me about the transition process,” says the 35-year-old female-to-male transsexual, “and what I did know made me want to stay as far away (from it) as possible.” Transsexuals were freaks, and […]