Toronto - Thursday night at the Summerworks was home to two artist who had impressed many at NXNE - Toronto's own Jennifer Castle and Toronto's own Bruce Peninsula . For me it was night two of Can con music and I was very much looking forward to exploring the sounds and songs of artists from all over the GTA west area. One of the oddest things I found about this year's Lower Ossington Theatre setup was the lack of chairs. They seem to have been removed after the theatre people were finished [...]
Toronto - Thursday night at the Summerworks was home to two artist who had impressed many at NXNE - Toronto's own Jennifer Castle and Toronto's own Bruce Peninsula . For me it was night two of Can con music and I was very much looking forward to exploring the sounds and songs of artists from all over the GTA west area. One of the oddest things I found about this year's Lower Ossington Theatre setup was the lack of chairs. They seem to have been removed after the theatre people were finished [...]
Frank Yang Bruce Peninsula's Fire Sale comeback campaign, announced back in April , served many purposes. Besides helping to build anticipation for the band's long-awaited second album Open Flames , out October 4, it re-established in no uncertain terms why they were one of Toronto's most unique and promising bands before they were sidelined by medical drama in the late part of last year, but also served to introduce a considerably different lineup from the one that recorded their debut A Mountain Is A Mouth [...]
Toronto - The term "supergroup" conjures up images of bands like Asia , The Travelling Wilburys or Damn Yankees . What it doesn't necessarily bring to mind is the Toronto indie scene. Yet House League was being billed as just that, a Toronto indie supergroup made up of members of Evening Hymns, Forest City Lovers, Matters, and The Magic, and this was their first and quite possibly last show. For the occasion, the band performed a few brand new songs along with an Evening Hymns song and a cover of The Flashing Lights' "Highschool," [...]
Toronto – If you were to make a list of great love affairs of the 20th century, you might not put Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger near the top. But Heidegger, a German philosopher who rather controversially joined and endorsed the Nazi Party in 1933, and Arendt, a Jewish thinker and student of Heidegger's, had a torrid love affair when both were at the University of Freiburg. We know this in part because they wrote a stack of love letters to one another, which were published in English in 2004 in a book containing their correspondence from 1925 [...]
Toronto - Is it weird that there seems to be great interest in ancient plays and myths in SummerWorks? Two years ago it was Gilgamesh , last year it was Iphigenia at Aulis , and this year there's not one, but three: there's Hero & Leander (which I haven't seen but have heard good things about), there's ONE , and there's this show, which, like ONE , revisits the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice . Rather than being a total re-interpretation, Eurydice tells the story [...]
Toronto - I suspect that most people who've lived in a condo or apartment building or similar shared space have had a neighbour they don't really know who does something that bugs them. I actually don't so much at the building I'm in now, except for the old couple next door who scream at each other in Greek most evenings. In Third Floor , the problem for the unnamed residents of condo 11 (Kristian Bruun) and condo 12 (Kaitlyn Riordan), respectively, is that the unseen woman who lives in 10 keeps leaving her trash bags out into [...]
Toronto - You know, there's probably as many parodies of the gritty, hard-boiled private eye stories as there are gritty, hard-boiled private eye stories. Long Dark Night is certainly one of them. I'm sure you know the setup. A gritty, hard-boiled private eye is in his office drinking bourbon when a leggy femme fatale enters with a case: her husband has been murdered, so he has to meet with a series of unsavoury characters to solve the crime, only to be double-crossed a few times before things are finally resolved in the end. In [...]
Toronto - I suppose that at some point in your career you might think of some conflict in your workplace in terms of a war. Maybe some passive aggressive type two cubicles over plays their music too loud, like they're firing a hail of bullets over your head, or there's a woman who acts abnormally sweet but is secretly hating everyone in the office and one day explodes like a grenade into screaming fragments of neuroses. It's not too difficult a metaphor to grasp. Combat drives it home by occasionally disrupting the action at a Shopping [...]
Toronto - On a hot, humid Saturday evening, inside the sweltering atmosphere of the Theatre Centre, Elora Gorge was a mystery show with a good enough hook to really reel me in, despite how much energy I had to expend to fan myself with the program. It got off to a good start, with nice usage of some hanging sheets as projection screens and some interesting lighting. Unfortunately, it's a mystery show with no payoff at the end, and as a result it's a rather frustrating play. In Elora Gorge, a man is discovered dead by [...]
Toronto - To be honest, this play was a bit of a mess. It had it's enjoyable moments for sure, but it was kind of all over the place. This may have been intentional, but it still made for an uneven theatre experience. So what's the meaning behind the long winded title? I think the description given on the Summerworks website probably sums it up best: In exploring the mysterious and bountiful medical ailments suffered by many of history's most aggressive global dominators, we will get under the skin to probe the pitfalls of [...]
Toronto - It is rare that an audience leaves a theatre with concern for an actor's safety. I think most people who left Theatre Centre Saturday night with that feeling also left feeling dazed and stunned by what they'd just seen. I certainly did. White Rabbit, Red Rabbit is a play written by Iranian Nassim Soleimanpour. It's a sort of monologue from the writer to the audience, and a way for Soleimanpour, according to his writing, can feel free, as his writing travels the world in a way that he can't, as he's unable to [...]
Toronto - Apparently there is a Toronto choir collective who have been getting together every week since February to sing covers of classic rock songs. They are called Choir! Choir! Choir! and I first encountered them on Thursday for the Summerworks Opening Party. Comprising of over thirty individuals, Choir! Choir! Choir! is what it is, a bunch of people singing songs you enjoy loudly. I found the experience to be completely charming (except for the drunk theatre people screaming at the band) and I like the idea of a choir covering classic tracks. They have done [...]
Toronto - ONE , a show from Alberta-based RedtoBlue Performance, has a few things going for it, but above all is this: It's got to be one of the most visually interesting theatre festival shows I've seen in a long time. SummerWorks is a bit more forgiving than, say, Fringe in that there's an hour and a half of teardown and setup time between shows, rather than the Fringe's standard hour or less, but still, to get this much design detail not only in limited setup time, but also with a show that's travelled across the country, is impressive. [...]
Toronto - The beginning of August is synonymous with many things in Toronto - heat, Caribana, cottage weekends, the Blue Jays official elimination from playoff contention, etc. Lately, there has been one more entry to this exclusive list of summertime words - The Summerworks Theatre Festival . One of Canada's largest theater festivals, the festival return this year is extra sweet this year since it's funding got stripped by the man earlier this year . Thanks to a host of generous people, the festival was able to get funded privately and as a result, the festival [...]
SummerWorks Theatre Festival has been running in Toronto for 20 years. Four years ago they added a musical component with the SummerWorks Music Series. This year's version of the Music Series runs from August 4-14th at the Lower Ossington Theatre. The line-up has just been announced and shakes out like this: August 5 Steven McKay - 10:30 PM Hooded Fang - 11:30 PM August 6 Lioness - 10:30
Unlike last year, when I managed a top ten list of albums released in 2009, I'm pretty sure I didn't listen to more than five new albums all of this year. In fact, with the possible exception of Toronto Fringe plays , I don't think I managed to see, hear, or do enough of any one thing worth making a top ten list out of. So here's a meandering list of my favourites of 2010 in a variety of things. Best Dog Adoption In all humility, mine. Look at that picture! She's so cute. We [...]
Toronto - Hi! This post comes a bit late, but join me, Wade, Mark and Paul as we discuss things like Lollapalooza , Summerworks , Hillside , upcoming concerts at Massey Hall and the Scott Pilgrim movie! Featuring the music of Archie Bell and the Drells - Tighten Up Rich Aucoin - Push Soft Pack - Answer to Yourself Hidden Cameras - Origin - Orphan Ibrahim Ferrer - Marieta Gigi French - Jardinier [...]
Toronto - The lineup for Summerwork's music portion on Thursday night reads like titles from Farley Mowat novels - Wilderness of Manitoba , Mountain and the Trees , Entire Cities and The Weather Station . All four bands seem to draw inspiration from Canada's large and vast space and the gentle and quietness that comes with it. It was basically acoustic-folk power hour at the Upper Ossington Theatre. Knowing that I myself was heading to a cottage on the weekend, I thought these bands would be a nice primer for my foray into nature. [...]
promo photo for Atomic Vaudeville's Ride the Cyclone As SummerWorks winds down for another year, I'd like to thank the festival on behalf of the Panic Manual for accrediting us again. Here's a few more reviews, hopefully you were all lucky enough to catch one of these or a different show from this great festival. The posters for Suburban Beast's Post-Eden call it a live film. This is an apt enough term for a show where two large video screens dominate the stage and the cast monologues [...]
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Chromatics: “Into The Black”
Download: The Violet Lights - "Sex and Sound"
Sunday Means Eight Of The Best
[Listen/Download] Sean Nicholas Savage- She Was The One
Listen: Burial - Kindred [EP]
