Presented by The Halifax Pop Explosion, The Halifax Film Explosion announces its 2009 schedule (click for full schedule and trailers). This is the Halifax Film Explosion’s first year and coincides with the final two days of the Halifax Pop Explosion, taking place on Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24 at Empire 8 Park Lane. […]
Music Festivals
Posted inArts + Music
Full Halifax Pop Explosion schedule now online
Ladies, meet Barn Burner Why don’t you peep the heck out of the Halifax Pop Explosion full schedule? Who are you most excited for? I’m stoked to see Dog Day (with new drummer Rob Shedden from Beat Material and The Got To Get Got), Bike Rodeo with the Pack A.D. and The Memories Attack with […]
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Sappyfest Day Three
Sunday at Sappy had a slow start, we were pretty partied out after Saturday’s hijinx. I was pretty impressed when we spotted a group of musicians and volunteers playing baseball at 10:30; we thought about stopping by and hitting some dingers but we decided to skip out on the action and head to the performers’ brunch. No other festival treats musicians as well Sappy does, they pay well, they give performers a pass for the entire weekend and they also provide a musicians’ free brunch and dinner every day of the festival. The Sunday brunch took place in the university
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Atlantic Jazz Festival Shortlist
Valery Gore is not a pseudonym. At 26, the Fort Erie native strives for creative purity and truth. But it wasn’t always this way. “Coming from where I was at when I went to school, I was classically trained and I didn’t know anything about jazz,” she says, calling from her home in Toronto. “Maybe […]
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Burning questions for Granelli about Spontaneous Combustion
Last October, a reed-thin, restlessly imaginative, master percussionist approached the Atlantic Jazz Festival’s new artistic director Lulu Healy with a concept for a scintillating festival event. He proposed matching up musicians—all renowned for their musical jouissance (over-the-top enjoyment and pleasure), whiz-bang inventiveness and a no-self-doubt command of their instruments—to create music without preordained strictures. In […]
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Bell Orchestre says it out loud and clear
Though quantifiable or measurable, loudness isn’t a skill used rightly or wrongly, nor a right held by some and not by others. Really, all music can be, and perhaps should be, played loud. True, when KISS alights on the Common next week they may try to light up the crowd with “Shout it out Loud” […]
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Wednesday Night, Part 2: Bands that didn’t take the show on the road
I headed to the Marquee to see a couple stylish indie bands in Hell’s Kitchen, and generally stray back and forth between floors showing off my press pass. I caught the last couple songs of The Love Machine, who’ve got this sort of timeless movie credit thing going on with their music, that sounds like […]
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I’m Tired
Yesterday was a gong show. It ended nicely, but getting there was a bit of a grind. I was stricken with terminal overambition and am paying for it today. I started off all gung ho and ready to see Spiral Beach at Saint Matt’s. I saw these guys once opening a few years back for […]
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Teenage prodigies and the elusive Marquee pizza slice
I had breakfast yesterday morning with Will Robinson of i see rowboats, who are playing St. Matthew’s Church tonight, and I said, “That’s the perfect venue for you guys.” Which is not necessarily what I’d assume with Spiral Beach, four exuberant Torontonians barely out of their teens who first hit success at age 15 or […]
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Now I eat humble pie
Nobody polarizes people more than Jian Gomeshi, other than shirts tucked in/shirts out (for the record—out. always out). But whether or not you think he’s a dreamboat, a king of Spain, or in the case of halifaxlocals.com, 25 pages worthy of douchebag, dude is the only person hosting an hour-long arts and culture show in […]
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Halifax Zine and Record Fair
I was going to finish writing about last night’s shows, but it seems I don’t have time to do that or resize my photos down to tiny pixelated things small enough to upload to the blog before I have to leave. I’ll be selling comics all day at the Halifax Zine and Record Fair at […]
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Friday night downtown
I arrived at St. Matthew’s Church last night midway through the Prospector’s Union, who played this kind of wool-hatted, folk/ country sort of music I’ve been listening to far more than expected for most of this year, reminding me a little of the Great Lake Swimmers. They played some nicely crafted songs about New Brunswick, […]