Canada
David Nice
“Cry sorrow, sorrow, but let the good prevail”. The refrain of Aeschylus’s chorus near the start of the Oresteia is alive and honoured in Henryk Górecki’s rhetoric-free symphonic memorial and Crystal Pite’s response to the dynamism under its seemingly static surface. 44 dancers of all ages, soprano, orchestra and design all work towards a timeless work of art, resonating now but bound to hold up in whatever future remains to us.A confession first: until last night, I’d never heard the Polish composer’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, his Third, in a live performance. The media circus around the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats during her career but is most associated with singer-songwriterly folk-pop. Her last album was the melancholic, string-swathed The Garden but with Basia’s Palace, her seventh album, she seems in a jollier frame of mind. She has veered into overtly electronic pop before, especially on her 2016 album Good Advice, but this time it’s a bubblier, warmer version. Then again, these nine songs still find room for heartache.Bulat’s voice and style remind of Emmy the Great. This isn’t to hint at plagiarism – both singers started releasing Read more ...
joe.muggs
The question of personality in abstract and ambient music has always been a fascinating one. Without conventional signifiers of expressiveness, and especially in the age of AI, it’s easy for people to think “a computer could have done that”. Indeed, there’ve been plenty of musicians from Brian Eno levels of prominence on down who have played with this, using algorithmic generation, anonymity and so forth as part of the project.That’s never been the case for Canadian musician Tim Hecker, though. The fact that this is a collection of extracts from Hecker’s recent film and TV soundtrack Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Weeknd is a global megastar, one of the biggest music sensations of the age. Last year, his compilation, The Highlights, was the second best-selling album in the world, and he has 27 songs with over a billion streams on Spotify, which is a record. His latest album is the third part of a trilogy which started, back in 2020 with After Hours. Unfortunately, where that, and its sequel, Dawn FM, were vibrant, contagious, catchy electronic pop, Hurry Up Tomorrow, is morose, lacking tunes and, boy, does it go on and on.There’s a fair bit worth listening to but, at almost an hour-and-a-half long Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they mostly lack singing. Instrumentation is jazzy, leaning on piano and wind instruments. Drones and white noise evoke ocean spray or wind. In one case, a wordless vocal edges towards articulating recognisable syllables.While these harmonise with the whole of Humanhood so are not discrete musical sketches, they point to the feelings of disassociation and fragmentation informing Tamara Lindeman’s seventh album as The Weather Station (the multiple selves seen in the Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Somewhere in Germany, G7 conference leaders including German Chancellor Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and US President Wolcott (Charles Dance) repair to a gazebo to collaborate on a “clear, but not so clear” communique addressing an unnamed, possibly apocalyptic crisis. Farcically human, they pocket hors d’oeuvres, flirt and pull rank, lose tempers and trousers. Meanwhile red flames lick the sky, a HAL-like sex chatbot commandeers comms, and the excavation of “bog men” - primeval leaders castrated, bound and buried by disgruntled constituents - serves as ominous warning of their power’s precarity Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It must have seemed such a delicious premise – a Buñuel-esque comedy about world leaders trapped at a luxury retreat as the apocalypse looms. With cult director and installation artist Guy Maddin directing alongside his regular collaborators Galen and Evan Johnson, one can understand why Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, and the rest of the starry cast signed up for Rumours. Unfortunately, it all wears a little thin. And while there are some excellent jokes and startling visuals, there isn’t enough going on in the movie to sustain its running time. Political satires date rapidly. This one, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For most of Canada’s listening public, their country-man Stefan Gnyś – pronounced G'neesh – wasn’t a concern. The 300 copies of his 1969 single didn’t make it to shops. There was little promotion and limited radio play. Gnyś had paid RCA Limited Recording Services to press the seven-incher. Beyond this transaction, there was no record company involvement.“Horizoning” and its B-side “Evangeline” were recorded on 21 April 1969 at St. Catherine, Ontario’s Heidebrecht Recording Services, a facility usually dedicated to recording radio jingles. Eight other tracks were recorded that day. John Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
When the Venezuelan Rafael Payare was appointed as conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) two years ago, his first action was to blast his way through a French Berlitz course. A graduate of the El Sistema music-teaching project – where he had made his mark in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra as a horn player – one of his key challenges was to master from scratch the language in which this staunchly Francophone orchestra conducts its rehearsals.Watching him conduct however – his tall angular frame sometimes hunched-bird-of-prey like on the podium, sometimes erupting into a nimble Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
What to expect of the National Ballet of Canada since its last London visit 11 years ago? Dance with an eco-message, a world-peace message, or more visible diversity on stage?It's all there in the homegrown triple bill the company has brought to Sadler’s Wells. But the primary message seems to be that The Great White North has undergone a choreographic renaissance over the past decade, becoming a purveyor of hot-ticket choreographers to the wider world. This programme spans three generations of creators, each of whom challenges ballet tradition in their own way.In the case of James Read more ...
Gary Naylor
One wonders what sitcom writers will do when supermarkets finally sweep the last corner shops away with nobody left old enough to buy cigarettes, nobody so offline that they buy newspapers and nobody eating sweets, priced out by sugar taxes. The convenience shop is already acquiring a patina of nostalgia, crowned by a warm glow of happier days. My mother used to send me out aged seven to buy her Embassy Number 1s with me levying a charge of one gobstopper in payment - see, I’m a victim already. Appropriately, that old-school shop is on hand when you want a setting for a gentle, heartwarming, Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
A woman sits at her computer. She copy-pastes an address into a search engine. She goes to street view. She zooms in. Click. Opens a new tab. Click. Searches a name. There are no lines of green code on a black screen or indecipherable programmes that we associate with sketchy online activity. Instead the woman is doing the kind of amateur sleuthing that anybody with a computer and internet connection can do. Red Rooms' portrayal of an aspect of everyday life that too often feels stilted on the big screen is one of the many things this Quebecois thriller gets right. It Read more ...