RIP Tommy Banks: Godfather of Edmonton music
“I can’t wait to read it” is the last thing Tommy Banks said to me a few months ago – in anticipation of the book I’m struggling to finish about the history of the Edmonton music scene. He’s a key chapter. What a sad deadline to miss. Tommy never got to read it. He died […]
K.Flay rocks hip hop and headbangers in Edmonton
The music of K.Flay can make you dance – but her lyrics can break your heart. Her music is almost enough to make you forget that the Union Hall is one of Edmonton’s least favourite concert spots – where she performed a sold-out show on Tuesday night. The pit is fun enough, but if you’re […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: No cheese in this Romano
Daniel Romano is back again this weekend, after a solo show just a couple of weeks ago. This time it’s with his side project Ancient Shapes, which has grown into a life of its own with an experimental mixture of power pop and punk exploring vast crevices of the sounds inside and between those genres, […]
PLAYBILL: Whose Worst Year Ever?
One wonders how much of himself – or current politics – Trevor Schmidt will bring to his role of a grumpy 12-year-old girl in Worst Year Ever. The Northern Light Theatre artistic director will play “Charlotte” in what we must presume is an autobiographical tale by playwright Charlotte Miller (who’s given Schmidt “permission” to do […]
REVIEW: Shakespeare’s R&J gives new life to classic romance
Shakespeare’s R&J, from Edmonton’s adventurous indie-theatre Kill Your Television, is a remount of their successful original, which won a Sterling Award for Outstanding Independent Production. The play is billed as a “re-imagining” of the original by director Kevin Sutley, and has been retooled several times by the playwright Joe Calarco – who is credited in […]
Sweet seedy dreams in Slumberland Motel
C.M. Zuby’s set design for the world premiere of Shadow Theatre’s comedy-drama Slumberland Motel drops us down in every seedy motel room you’ve ever seen – shabby tiles on the floor, plastic lampshades, chintzy clown posters on the wall. You can practically smell the sour stench of cheap beer in the air. Into this bereft […]
Russian opera hacked in superb Onegin
Back in February of 2014, two gleeful Vancouver musical buffs, Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone, presented A Craigslist Cantata in The Club at the Citadel. It was a sprightly song-and-dance look at some of the weird items presented for sale on the internet bazaar. It was a hit here, as it was elsewhere across the […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: K.Flay cuts deep
Kristine Flaherty isn’t the only artist to reference self-harming in a song. From Alessia Cara’s Scars to Your Beautiful to Linkin Park’s Breaking the Habit, to Johnny Cash singing about hurting himself with Nine Inch Nails, it’s a thing. Blood in the Cut is just the latest self-harming hit to strike a nerve. Playing the […]
PLAYBILL: Onegin, twogin, threegin
It’s nice to imagine that the great classical composers could jump into a time machine to see their work made into “rock operas” hundreds of years later – and that they’d like it. Hey, if there’d been rock ‘n’ roll back then, they would’ve rocked – or so rockers like to think. Moot point, as […]
