REVIEW: Big Stage Musical Offers Insight Into Serious Teen Struggles
Dear Evan Hansen arrives at the Jubilee Auditorium trailing a tsunami of audience love, a sheaf of great reviews and six Tony Awards – and it’s a musical that deals with mental health. It runs through Feb. 16. Totally contemporary, it’s the story of Evan (Stephen Christopher Anthony), an anti-social, awkward and painfully shy 17-year-old […]
REVIEW: Waitress a sweet, satisfying confection
To everyone’s surprise, the modest but charming little 2007 movie rom-com Waitress turned out to be a sleeper hit. It told the story of a small-town waitress (and terrific baker) named Jenna who yearns to enter a pie-baking contest to win prize money so she can escape an unhappy life. The film gave TV star […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Walk Off the Earth on a Fast Run to the Top
Generally referred to as an “indie band,” Burlington, Ontario’s Walk Off the Earth finds influences and inspirations from all manners of music, with virtually no limits on what they might pull out of the musicsphere to craft their material – from more traditional guitars, bass, and drums, to banjos, glockenspiels, ukuleles, and even a theremin. […]
Scary Good Alice Cooper Returns to Edmonton in Spring 2020
Like all of us, the older Alice Cooper gets, the scarier he looks – which works out well for the original King of Shock Rock. Even if it’s more burlesque these days, as much laugh as scream, the 71-year-old rocker is still going strong – thanks to clean living in his senior years (a contrast […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Morrissey Shows Up in Edmonton
The joke here is that people were taking bets on when Morrissey would cancel his Edmonton show – again. This guy is George “No Show” Jones-famous for cancelling concerts. But no! Although he’d postponed the previously scheduled April show here, the Pope of Mope fulfilled his contract for the make-up date Thursday night in Edmonton, […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Shinedown, you crazy diamond
Florida act Shinedown blitzkriegs through the city Friday night as part of their “Attention Attention” World Tour, supporting their 2018 album of the same name. A concept album, it finds an individual in the throes of negativity and charts their course to becoming reborn as a new and positive one. The alt-hard rock band was […]
REVIEW: Taj Express a bombastic bonafide Bollywood bonanza!
Last year, India’s Bollywood film industry sold more tickets than Hollywood. The plots of these films are as thin as a Bombay fakir but are tricked out in massive production numbers featuring a combination of traditional and modern elements. The films tend not to take themselves seriously, are self-aware, funny, bright and entertaining. Because of […]
REVIEW: AIDS-era musical RENT holds up because it’s about the people
It was 20 years ago that RENT premiered on Broadway. Perhaps a couple of decades have blunted the musical’s ability to shock us – but it still is able to pack a considerable musical and emotional wallop. For a while, the musical was the longest running in Broadway history – 12 years. It won a […]
ANNOUNCES: Walk Off The Earth, The Debaters
If video killed the radio star, then it follows that YouTube made the video star. The perfect case is Walk Off the Earth – the Burlington, Ontario band that parlayed their hobby of making videos of clever pop covers into fame and fortune and a No. 1 AAA hit (adult album alternative) with Red Hands. […]
REVIEW: Alessia Cara inspires little girls in Edmonton
Security sure had their hands full at the Alessia Cara concert in Edmonton on Wednesday night. What a tough crowd. Once the 22-year-old star started high-fiving and clasping hands with all the girls in the front row of the Jubilee Auditorium, everyone wanted a piece of her. Moms carried up their little ones to get […]
WEEKEND MUSIC: A match made in folk music heaven
Imagine, if you will, two of Western Canada’s most outstanding folk artists on tour together. Then imagine if they decided that instead of doing separate sets, one opening for the other, they’d play on each other’s songs, together. It’s not The Twilight Zone. It just what Michael Bernard Fitzgerald and J. J. Shiplett have decided […]
LISTEN HERE: Dancing to Joni Mitchell
Hear music from Alberta Ballet’s The Fiddle & The Drum Joni Mitchell was the first pop star that Canadian ballet-meister Jean Grand-Maitre pitched to do a ballet. Jean has since done so-called “portrait” ballets about Elton John, Sarah McLachlan, Gordon Lightfoot, k.d. lang, and The Tragically Hip – but Joni was the first. Ten […]
