Posted on July 6, 2011
By Mike Ross
Comedy, Culture, Family, Front Slider, Theatre
Jugglers! Tricksters! Clowns! Fools! But enough about the Harper government – the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival opens tomorrow! By fantastic coincidence, Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion plays through Sunday (July 10) at Rexall Place. This is the famous French-Canadian acrobatic circus that was started by – you guessed it – a street performer. What are […]
Posted on July 5, 2011
By Mike Ross
Culture, Front Slider, Lit, Theatre
New York in the ’50s, Switzerland in the ’30s, Monte Carlo in the ’20s, tea with a vaudeville star, champagne with the ambassador, a conga line at a wedding, a murder mystery at the symphony, a discussion of green peppers during a cocktail party – don’t ever accuse Stewart Lemoine of being stuck in the […]
Posted on July 2, 2011
By Mike Ross
Comedy, Front Slider
Besides sexual bias, there is another reason you don’t see as many female comics as male ones: Female comics tend to have babies, from time to time, which is not conductive to being on the road performing nasty jokes for drunks. Performing July 6-10 at the Comic Strip, Felicia Michaels says she has had two […]
Posted on June 28, 2011
By Mike Ross
Comedy, Front Slider
News scoop! Neil Hamburger was fake! He’s actually some former punk rock musician named Gregg Turkington, who was only pretending to be an old school Catskills-style comedian, using the form to explore the concept of the “anti-joke.” Of course the problem with making a joke about jokes that aren’t funny is that the joke can […]
Posted on June 27, 2011
By Mike Ross
Music, The Latest
Once in a while you come across a band that sounds like its name: Metallica, Trent Reznor, the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This can be both a blessing and a curse. For the members of Gypsophila, they are instantly identifiable as enthusiasts of the great Django Reinhardt, who invented so-called “gypsy jazz” by fusing swing […]
Posted on June 25, 2011
By Mike Ross
Front Slider, Music, Visual Arts
If you didn’t know that the Works Art and Design Festival was going on, you might not know there was a festival at all. This is a good thing. Thanks to events like the Works, downtown Edmonton in the summer has become a non-stop riot of audio-visual happenings whose various festival organizers are indistinguishable from […]
Posted on June 25, 2011
By Mike Ross
Culture, Music, The Latest
The memorial service for Gaye Delorme, who died suddenly in Calgary on June 24, will be held at the Polish Hall, 10960 104 Street, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 10. Other memorials are being planned for Calgary and Vancouver. Local drummer Greg Pretty called the death of his friend a “huge loss … he […]
Posted on June 23, 2011
By Mike Ross
Culture, Film, The Latest
Sad news for movie nerds: Sneak Preview Video – Edmonton’s coolest and most venerable independent video store – will be closing its doors on July 20, its entire inventory of 18,000 rare and hard-to-find videos sold off. Owner Sandy Muldrew issued the following statement, a beautiful piece of prose that deserves posting the full version: […]
Posted on June 23, 2011
By Mike Ross
Front Slider, Music
American jazz singer and smoker Madeleine Peyroux has temporarily switched to du Maurier Light because the Lucky Strikes she asked for aren’t available in Canada. Coincidence? We think not! It’s a Big Tobacco Conspiracy! Jazz festivals in Canada wouldn’t be where they are today – or where they aren’t, depending on how you look at […]
Posted on June 21, 2011
By Mike Ross
Front Slider, Music
It’s interesting to examine Rihanna’s musical trajectory since she was beaten up by her boyfriend Chris Brown in 2009. You have to wonder if things might be different if it had never happened. She performs tonight (Wednesday, June 22) at Rexall Place (buy). Maybe S&M wouldn’t have become such a massive hit, its sexy video […]
Posted on June 18, 2011
By Mike Ross
Comedy, Culture, Front Slider
Matt Lisac has attacked Edmonton’s comedy scene by stealth. He did a one-man show at the 2010 Fringe, innocuously called “A New Canadian Century,” for which he appeared on stage as a kindly, bearded Christian with guitar and a story to tell. About one minute into his opening number, it became obvious that this performer […]
Posted on June 17, 2011
By Mike Ross
Music, The Latest
There aren’t a lot of stories of drug abuse, groupies and biker brawls at pig roasts among classical musicians. That’s why they call them “legit,” isn’t it? But that doesn’t mean crazy things don’t occasionally happen in symphonic circles. We caught up with Edmonton Symphony Orchestra conductor Bill Eddins recently as he was getting ready […]
