MSTRKRFT RCKS JZZ FST
After passing by the festival tent and strolling down a closed Spring Garden over the weekend, it was time for the first of many nights at the TD Canada Trust Atlantic Jazz Festival. Every year the festival deals Haligonians a wild card. Two years ago, it was the Stereolab meets My Bloody Valentine sounds from…
I like being a lab rat
Last night, I was a lab rat. The experiment: get all the people that can fit (maybe 45 or 50 tops?) into Sonic Temple Recording Studio on Hollis Street to sit in on a session, which will provide the basis for a forthcoming recording, by Jerry Granelli’s quartet, V16. This was the first of two…
Spice Night with Tasa and Niyaz
Sunday night. I could scarcely resist the come-on. “Hypnotic, ecstatic, and eminently danceable, Niyaz represents the best of both traditional world music and electronic music. Applying the jump-start to this vibrant evening will be Torotno’s award-winning Tasa in performance of an inspired repertoire based upon the traditons of Northern India. The effect can both haunt…
A night of firsts
Night two of the festival offered me a few first-time experiences, all linked by an exuberant energy. Top among those, AfroMusica. I’ve had ample opportunity to see this band that presents a joyful pan-African sound, but didn’t actually take the opportunity – for no real reason – until this year. I shouldn’t have procrastinated all…
The Night The Son Shone
Friday night, the 20th opening of the Atlantic Jazz Festival got things on high-boil with a night in the Jazz Tent of Afro-Cuban jazz and dance music. The all-ages capacity crowd was primed to party (and to dust off their latent Latino dance moves) by a set of high energy Latin grooves and Latino songs…
The short circuit
Since all you local filmmakers are already madly finishing up your late entries to the Atlantic Film Festival, you might as well burn yourself an extra copy: the Manhattan Short Film Festival will hit NSCAD on September 22 and 23, and it’s looking for entries. Now in its ninth year, the festival spans cities, provinces,…
Letters to the Editor
I’d like to first compliment the cover photo on this week’s The Coast. As a photographer I can appreciate its artistic quality. However, I am disappointed that your cover wasn’t given to a local photographer of equal caliber. I’m sure there is a qualified pool of local photographers who would fit the criteria of “accomplished…
Taste of Italy
Rogi Orazio Pasta and World Cucina is now open in the Hydrostone Market in the former home of the Pasta Cafe. Business partners Boris Mirtchev (owner of the Hamachi Houses) and Atho Kartsaklis took over the space on May 1 and have renovated extensively. “We gutted the whole place and started just with four walls,”…
Drop your weapons
Halifax Regional Police have been disappointed with the results of their most recent gun amnesty program. Since June 26, the program—which offers “law-abiding citizens the opportunity to turn over unregistered/unwanted guns and ammunition without penalty”—has only netted 21 firearms. To date, the police have collected a variety of weapons, including antiques (a rifle likely dating…
Critical point
Dear Mark Palermo, This is in response to your mostly negative review of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I have just seen it and have to strongly disagree with your review. I am sure nearly all of the people who have seen the film feel you’re being your typically harsh self, and thereby doing…
Float your boat
To The Coast, I read your Best of Halifax Guide 2006 and noticed a piece on the Public Gardens as the best public place. Thanks for mentioning the model of Titanic. About 11 years ago, several members of the Maritime Ship Modelers Guild built the Titanic and donated it to the city to display in…
Calling all perverts
To the editor, It’s sad to know that the only reason the majority of young or perverted people pick up your paper is to read “Savage Love.” As far as I’m concerned the paper is excellent except for this column, which ruins it!! Too bad for The Coast. By Julie Walker
Bombs away
Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some, like Peter Kelly, have greatness thrust upon them. Well, almost. Halifax peaceniks are striving to thrust some measure of greatness upon the Supercity mayor, but so far, he’s refusing to accept it. Kelly is balking at joining Mayors for Peace, an organization campaigning for the abolition…
In the Dogs’ house
A server brings smoothies over to the four Shedogs sitting around a small table in the Paperchase. “Mixed fruit?” she calls out. “That’s me!” says one of the Shedogs, and the others burst into resounding giggles and cackles. The “mixed fruit” is the Lusty Librarian of Shedogs’ Bathhouse, who is going by an alias for…
Sense of pace
Talk about the 10,000-foot view of an issue. I caught wind of measuring tape-wielding police entering the Barrington Street Superstore not from the orange juice aisle, but from a news ticker scrolling across the bottom of a television screen I happened to be plunked in front of a third of the way up the mountain…
Church music
Chris Church is sweating out a three-month tour around the continent. It started on May 4 in Scottsdale, Arizona, including stops in such far-flung places as Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, and Pomona, New Jersey, winding up in Boulder, Colorado, on July 29. Halifax isn’t among the 25 stops listed on the tour schedule at chrischurch.ca, but all…
Get with the program
“‘Why don’t you get Miles Davis?’” Susan Hunter, artistic director for the Atlantic Jazz Festival, laughs about one of the odder requests she’s received. “People look at the line-up and say, ‘I’ve never heard of anyone.’ Well, the truth is they’re either way too expensive or way too dead.” The famous horn player put down…
Sound samples
Sierra Maestra July 14, Festival Tent, Spring Garden & Queen, 7pm, $25. Along with samba, son is one of the leading musical forms to define music from Latin America, particularly Brazil and Cuba, at least to many North American listeners. Son combines African percussive rhythms with Spanish-based melodies and string instruments. It is the quintessential…
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest
“Two hours and 20 minutes is a wearying time to spend on a movie that’s really about nothing,” I wrote of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Not wanting to offend me the same way twice, Gore Verbinski’s follow-up to the Disneyland ride adaptation is just as innocuous, but runs…
Dinner and a show
Having a short attention span and a wariness of foods prepared for large groups, I’ve never given much thought to dinner theatre as a way to spend an evening. That is, until I found myself attending a function with a group of my coworkers the night before my birthday. After “ribbit, ribbitting” our way around…
Bud’s spuds
Q: How did you get into the business? A: My wife Nancy and I grew up in the Ottawa/Hull area, and I hated the winter. All through my life, I wondered what I could do that would allow me to work in the summer and then travel somewhere warm in the winter. Ottawa is full…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Get ready for mind-jiggling adventure, Aries, says Rob Brezsny.
SAVAGE LOVE
Group sex vs. no sex. Dan Savage breaks it down.
Loot for McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan’s birthday was July 11. Had he not died in 1980, the Canadian communications and media scholar would’ve been 95 this year. Imagine the party. There’s always one whose gifts outdo the rest. In McLuhan’s case, Terry Gordon—who teaches French, Italian and linguistics at Dalhousie—and his body of work on the “media analyst and…
The right Fitz
The perfect fit. We’re all seeking it—for our jobs, our jeans, our lovers and our leaders. But perfection usually proves elusive and we end up settling for pretty good or make-do solutions. Once in a while, though, fate throws us a bone. Like, for example, Thom Fitzgerald hooking up with Halifax Pride to curate and…
Wilco Photos
Wilco & The M’s. Alderney Landing, Dartmouth.
