It’s a sunny day in Enfield, and life is good. Luke Boyd—better known as rapper Classified—is hours away from premiering his newest album, the 11-track Luke’s View, and he’s taking a moment to soak it all in. It’s a rare occasion for the 46-year-old, even in a career that has afforded plenty. Nearly 30 years […]
Arts + Music
Live theatre, art exhibits, comedy, literary, spoken word – The Coast guide to Halifax and Dartmouth, NS . The downtown, local arts scene – plays, writers, actors, artists and performers. Painting, sculpture, photography, stand-up, stage.
Posted inArts + Music
Old Man Luedecke is back off the scallop boat—and sounding as new as ever
Old Man Luedecke was feeling his age. It was the long days of COVID-19 isolation, and as the opportunity for live shows dwindled—let alone international tours and festivals—the Chester, NS, singer-songwriter wasn’t sure he wanted to get back on the road. Ditto for the studio, which had been a constant for the JUNO-winning banjo artist […]
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Atlantic Canada’s largest queer arts festival returns to Halifax
These are busy days for Isaac Mulè. The Halifax-based artistic director and founder of OutFest—the largest queer arts festival east of Montreal—has been working for months, trading calls and emails with artists across Canada, booking concert venues and readying the stage for what will mark the festival’s third year in Halifax. And the stage is, […]
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Every big show coming to Halifax (and beyond) in 2024
Thanks to some medical issues that sidelined a big part of The Coast’s tiny staff for most of 2024, this year’s list of major shows—music, theatre, comedy and events—suffered. But we’re trying to wrap the year on a strong note, and have already started the 2025 edition, so we hope you’ll still let us know […]
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Halifax author Elliott Gish’s Grey Dog will play with your mind
Of all the attempts to summarize Halifax author Elliott Gish’s debut novel, Grey Dog, about schoolmarm Ada Byrd’s unravelling in quiet Lowry Bridge, Canadian novelist Suzette Mayr’s words stick most in the mind. In her review of Gish’s story—a psychological horror that reads as if the Brontë sisters took a page from Stephen King—the Giller […]
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Hailey Rose a made-in-Nova Scotia tale of family, inheritance and forgiveness
Sandi Somers knows how to bring a character to the screen. Consider the opening scene in her latest feature film, the family-centred dramedy Hailey Rose: “Some people come into your life as blessings; some come in as lessons,” the family’s tough-nut matriarch, Olga, deadpans to the camera. “Blessings are worth shit all when it comes […]
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The many faces of Hawksley Workman
Hawksley Workman was strung out. It was the early 2000s, and the JUNO Award-winner was hanging onto the twilight of a dizzying—and destructive—period he describes as being “briefly famous” in France. There were tabloid and magazine photo spreads. Television ads with soccer star Zinedine Zidane backed by his music. Shows with Morrissey and Franz Ferdinand. […]
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Matchstick Theatre’s Leaving Home is a fresh spin on a Canadian classic
Jake Planinc has been dreaming of this moment for 10 years. Ever since the Matchstick Theatre artistic director picked up David French’s Leaving Home as an undergrad at Mount Allison University, he’s thought of ways to stage it. How the lighting would look; how the script—which follows the Mercer family on one fateful day in […]
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Pit sweat and drug checks: Dispatches from the JUNO Red Carpet
On second thought, the double-helping of afternoon coffee might’ve been a bad idea. They don’t warn you, upon arriving at the press check-in for the JUNO Awards, that you’re better off arriving with an empty bladder. Or a catheter. Either one, really. Beautiful people in immaculate outfits? The JUNOs has plenty of them. Politicians preening […]
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Halifax punk rockers Customer Service spearhead relief concert for unhoused Haligonians
Owen Harris and his bandmates knew they wanted to do something when they saw the HRM had cleared out and fenced off the Grand Parade tent encampment. Raised in Halifax, the Customer Service drummer had watched the city’s housing crisis turn “very severe” in recent years as the province grew and struggled to keep pace […]
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The Coast’s guide to all the JUNO Week events in Halifax
When Nelly Furtado steps onto the Scotiabank Centre stage to host the 2024 JUNO Awards this Sunday, Mar. 24, it will mark a big moment for Halifax: The first time since 2006 that Nova Scotia—or any part of the Maritimes, for that matter—has hosted the annual awards ceremony, and the first time since 2010 that […]
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Aysanabee’s long, winding and wild road to the JUNOs
Aysanabee was snowshoeing across a river in below-40-degree weather when he broke through the ice. He was working in the far reaches of Northern Ontario at the time. His job was to stake claims on land that could be mined. The then-teenaged musician would travel by bush plane and snowmobile with an axe. It was […]
