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5 Songs: Pop!

First impressions are everything

by Eman El Husseini
07.05.2013

I am proud to tell you my taste in music and film is unanimously disrespected by everyone I know. I am not a music connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. I just found out the Rolling Stones are British and not American. Ya, no respect.

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MUSIC

Resistance is Futile

Elektra Digital Festival shows why Montreal is the North American capital for digital arts

by Shawn Katz
07.05.2013

Another week in Montréal, another festival to break new ground. The Elektra International Digital Arts Festival (May 1-5) wrapped up its 14th year on Sunday, and its central place in the creative fabric of this city grows more certain with every year.

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ART

Let the Good Times Roll

The Good Times, by Dan Brault, Galerie Laroche/Joncas, to May 12

by Suzanne Hood
06.05.2013

Dan Brault knows how to have a good time, at least as far as painting is concerned. In his current exhibition of new work at Galerie Laroche/Joncas, aptly titled “The Good Times,” the Quebec-based artist presents a vibrant, candy-coated universe in which cartoonish doodles, geometric patterns, and painterly gestures all bump and bounce against one another.

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BOOKS

Veils of Grey

Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, by Shireen El Feki, Pantheon

by Zeshaun Saleem
05.05.2013

Shereen El Feki’s Sex and the Citadel is neither a book on sexual pleasure nor a Middle Eastern Fifty Shades of Grey, unless of course, knowledge and awareness qualifies as a turn-on. In addition to being an academic, journalist and TED Global fellow, Shereen El Feki is the Vice-Chair and Commissioner of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law.

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DANCE

Bang On

ÉCLATS – Vitrine Festival CanAsian, MAI, May 5, 3 pm

by Rebecca Galloway
04.05.2013

I have to confess, the last time I went to a dance show with the word “butoh” in the press kit, I spent the second half of the evening mentally composing my grocery shopping list. The white makeup, the interminable slow-motion choreography… Frankly I’d rather eat a bag of hair than sit through two hours of that.

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MUSIC

What Are You Rebelling Against?

The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club begin their new tour

by Devon Gallant
03.05.2013

Back in January, mere weeks before I was set to embark for a year in Paris, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club announced tour dates for their upcoming album Specter at the Feast, stopping in Paris, March 15^th. BRMC is one of those bands so interconnected to my life that I intrinsically feel the divine sense of syncronicity whenever a new album is released.

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THEATRE

Sell Your Soul to See This Play

Faust, Directed by Alison Darcy, Scapegoat Carnivale, Segal Centre, to May 5th

by Anna Fuerstenberg
03.05.2013

Readers Theatre is common in the United States. It’s a style of theatre where the actors do not memorize their lines, but use various other forms of expression to convey the story. I once saw the best interpretation of The Ballad of a Sad Café in Colorado done in this style. Still, I was unprepared for the sheer delight of Scapegoat Carnivale’s production of Faust at the Segal Centre Studio.

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MUSIC

Not Coming Up For Air

Colin Stetson at the Sala Rosa, May 3 & 4

by Shawn Stenhouse
02.05.2013

Colin Stetson has a new album out. It’s called New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light. But, can we really just dive into that? Every review of every Colin Stetson album starts with a rundown of his musical resume, as though he needs to be validated outside of the actual music he creates. Can we avoid talking about it? No, I guess not.

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PLAYLIST

5 Songs: Beautiful

A music genre is like a box of chocolates: EAT IT

by Leila Marshy
01.05.2013

Ask somebody what type of music they like and they’ll name a genre. Rap, hip hop, alternative, indie, metal, classical, jazz, folk. Sometimes, if you’re in outlying territory, or at Thanksgiving, you might even hear country. Who cares. It’s rarely honest anyways. Am I going to admit that sometimes I like country? No. And you didn’t hear it from me either. Why do we define music by these kinds of genres anyways? There are other genres, and my favourite of them is Beautiful.

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THEATRE

Reflecting on us While Thinking of YU

Thinking of Yu, Imago Theatre, Centaur, to May 5

by Byron Toben
30.04.2013

In 1921, Luigi Pirandello electrified the theatrical world with Six Characters in Search of an Author. In 1989, three real young Chinese protesters (two named Yu) were tortured and jailed for throwing red paint at an image of Mao in Tiananmen Square. In 2012, three fictional characters in Canada, reflecting on these events, found their author in Montreal playwright Carole Frechette.

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BLOGGING THE BLUE

Almost Lost

Montreal’s Yiddish women writers

by Eric Hamovitch
29.04.2013

Incredible as it may seem today, Yiddish was once the third most widely spoken language in Montreal, after French and English. For several decades in the first half of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Central and Eastern European Jews formed the city’s largest immigrant group. As immigration patterns changed in the post-war years, Italian became the city’s third language, succeeded more recently by Spanish and Arabic.

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BLOGGING THE BLUE

Sergio Ramírez and the Writer’s Life in Central America

Blue Met, Spanish style

by Eric Hamovitch
29.04.2013

Among the delights of the Blue Met festival this year was the sight of a former vice-president of a Latin American republic wandering almost incognito among the public. Nicaraguan novelist Sergio Ramírez, whose literary career spans half a century, was in town to receive the festival’s first award for Spanish-language literature, in recognition of his [...]

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BLOGGING THE BLUE

A Day in the Life

Blue Met, Walrus, Infinithéâtre, Anarchism: making sense is overrated

by Marianne Ackerman
28.04.2013

Artistic genres may soon be a thing of the past, so quickly are the walls crumbling. Fusion, connection, hybridity are the order of the day. So it is with one’s own cultural programme. Hence I’ve elected to report one day’s events as a personal journal: Saturday, April 28, 2013. Yesterday once more.

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BLOGGING THE BLUE

Irish Eyes

Colm Toibin wins the Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix

by Heather Leighton
28.04.2013

The Blue Metropolis Literary Festival has grown tremendously in popularity since its inception in 1999. Not only have pre-festival ticket sales soared, but so has the festival’s ability to draw internationally acclaimed writers. On Thursday night, the Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix was presented to Colm Tóibín before a sold-out crowd at the Bibliothèque Nationale.

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BOOKS

Having a Wine Time

Author Shawna Gnutel collects the musings of the famous and infamous on the intoxicant and its virtues in Winebliss

by Matthew Hays
28.04.2013

While wine can certainly be classy, I tended not to think of it as an intellectual pursuit. That was until I got a copy of Winebliss, a funny, sharp anthology of quotes by various public figures on the topic of the alcoholic beverage.

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