Folk - my/maSCENA

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Inspiring the Canadian Indigenous Music Scene

By Susan Gray on 4 June 2018 Canadian Music, Folk, Indigenous, Popular Music, Vocal

Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is a trailblazer, the first Indigenous musician to come to prominence in Canada. Her first album, It’s My Way!, was released by Vanguard Records in 1964. Last November, Medicine Songs, her 19th album, was released to critical acclaim. It contains some new material, like You Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind), in which she is joined on vocals by well-known throat singer Tanya Tagaq. Almost all the other songs have new arrangements. Overall, Sainte-Marie continues to have a remarkable career, enriched (although commercially hindered at one point) by her educator/outreach work and activism on behalf of…

Leonard Cohen: Not Happiness. Meaning

By Robert Kilborn on 2 April 2018 Folk, Popular Music, Visual Arts

Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything – Like an aurora of dreams, quirks, and visions, this major art exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal shimmers to a close on 9 April. The brokenness of existence Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in — “Anthem” (1992) The Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi (1207–1273) wrote that “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” The Canadian poet, novelist and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) wrote that “There is a crack in everything…

Symphony Nova Scotia presents Free concerts across the city with its first-ever summer season

By Newswire on 17 July 2017 150/375, Canadian Music, Chamber Music, Folk, Newswire, Orchestral

HALIFAX, NS – This summer, Symphony Nova Scotia proudly presents its first-ever summer season, featuring 13 FREE concerts and events in public venues throughout Halifax from July 17 to 31. The festivities will feature Symphony Nova Scotia musicians giving live performances at venues like the Alderney Landing Theatre, the Keshen Goodman Public Library, and the Halifax Central Library’s O’Regan Hall. Highlights include the RDV 2017 Tall Ships Regatta Celebration on the waterfront with Natalie MacMaster, full-orchestra performances celebrating Nova Scotia with singer Reeny Smith and Mi’kmaq drummer Trevor Gould in Halifax and Dartmouth, and a charming afternoon Tea Dance with Halifax Pride at the Halifax Citadel. The full-orchestra concerts will be conducted by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, Symphony Nova Scotia’s Artist in Residence and Community…

Danish String Quartet

Daily News Roundup: 2 August 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 2 August 2016 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Daily News Roundup, Folk, Literature, Orchestral, Piano, Romantic

+ The Heckeler’s Andrew Burn takes on Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum & Jubilate with respect to the context around its creation and performance. “I’m not saying that this music shouldn’t be performed, quite the contrary. Its presentation, however, could be better geared to outlining the complex nature of its creation and allow for us to better appreciate our own history through live performance. What I am advocating for is an embrace of the whole truth to a work, even if that means acknowledging certain facts which may run contrary to the intent of its performance.” + The Danish String Quartet…

Video of the Day – Lara St. John

By Weiyu Dang on 27 July 2016 Canadian Music, Folk, Video of the day, Violin

At La Scena, we rather enjoy NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts because they’re always well curated and quite often line up with what goes on in the festival circuit. Today’s video of the day features Canadian violinist Lara St. John who will be performing later tonight at the Ottawa Chamberfest. Born in London to two educators, St. John began violin at age two and made her orchestral debut two years later. Something of a precocious talent, it could be said. Now forty-years into her career, St. John is now a powerful virtuoso performer and “owner of Ancalagon record label and the…

Carlos Santana

This Day in Music – 1947: Carlos Santana is born

By Weiyu Dang on 20 July 2016 Folk, Popular Music, This Day in Music

Legendary Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana, who brought Latin fire to American rock with his group Santana, was born this day in music. Mixing American influences of B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix with Latin ones of Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria, Santana continued to develop the genre of electric blues. With such classics as “Smooth,” “Black Magic Woman,” and “Oye Como Va,” Santana endures as a pioneer and legend of contemporary music. Santana – “Oye Como Va”

Photo credit: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

“When you sing, I can’t die, I live forever” Lila Downs at the FIJM

By Camilo Lanfranco on 6 July 2016 Concert Reviews, Experimental Jazz, Folk, Popular Music, Scena Jazz, World Music

Lila Downs performed last Saturday night at the Métropolis theatre for the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Close to 2,000 fans gathered to see the singer-songwriter and her band perform a repertoire of Mexican rhythms fused with jazz instruments and players. It was precisely because of this capacity for mixing styles, while remaining true to her cultural roots, that she received the 2016 Antonio Carlos Jobim award as “an artist distinguished in the field of world music whose influence on the evolution of jazz and cultural crossover is widely recognized.” These cultural and musical crossovers are an important part of Lila Downs’s…

This Day in Music – 1881 Bela Bartok was born

By Camilo Lanfranco on 25 March 2016 Folk, This Day in Music, World Music

135 Years ago this day, March 25th 1881, Bela Bartok was born. Regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest composers, Bela had a musical curiosity that would change the way the West sees and understands music. He was in his early 30s when he decided to pack the most modern recording instrument of the time, the Edison Phonograph, and head to Algeria to research Arab Folk Music. Originally Bela was set to go alone, but it the last minute he suggested Marta (wife) to join him. And off they went. They traveled from Marseille to the port of Sakîkdah in Algeria…

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