Swans @ Yonge-Dundas Square (NXNE)

The birds were leaving. 

Mozart Masterworks Concert, Toronto Symphony Orchestra

January 22^nd, 2014, Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto ON

Program:

• Serenade No. 10, K. 370a/361 “Gran Partita”
• Violin Sonata No. 18, K. 301/293a
• Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482

Featured Performers:

• Louis Lortie, conductor and piano
• Jonathan Crow, violin

There’s a particular flavor to Mozart’s work. He never walks anywhere if he can cartwheel, if you get my meaning. The man was an inveterate showoff, and an indisputable genius.

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Things That I Forgot to Write About (2013 Edition)

During my prolonged writing hiatus of mid-2013, I had a few mind-blowing musical experiences that I didn’t write about at the time. As a wrap up to the past year, I’d like to briefly recap these events, as they were each great in their own unique way.

Meshuggah @ Sound Academy, February 19th

Devils horns and bone-rattling tunes. Meshuggah at Sound Academy, February 19th, 2013

Note: this post is entirely my own observations, not an objective review. Also the dialogues are fictionalized renderings of actual conversations. 

After bypassing the draconian security gauntlet at Sound Academy, my friends and I finally made it inside.

Interview: Steve Poltz

Steve Poltz is a restless and creative spirit. He is one-of-a-kind.  He’s a true Renaissance man who can change his artistic hat at any given moment. He is a musical shape-shifter who dances between genres. He is a well-spring of creative urges. Since his early days in the San Diego band The Rugburns, he has charted a unique and dynamic artistic path that few others would be able to pull off. Although he is presented as singer-songwriter, Poltz incorporates a wide background in music and the arts into his own unique stew of entertainment.

Mozart Symphony No. 40 @ TSO

One of the great gifts that age has bestowed upon me is my renewed appreciation for classical music. Music is a never-ending well of magic and beauty, and the deeper down into it you go, the more you are able to fathom the alchemy of sound and emotion.  

Mo Kenney @ Rivoli, October 15, 2012

Mo Kenney @ Rivoli. Photo courtesy of Noel Johnson.

Rivoli was warm and welcoming. Red walls and glittering Christmas lights hovered around us as we crossed the well-worn wooded floor to a small table near the stage.

Sigur Ros @ Echo Beach

It is the first of August, 2012. Sigur Ros are playing at Echo Beach. This glorified sandpit on the outskirts of a disused amusement park is an unlikely place to experience transcendent beauty.

“Dust” Never Sleeps

This is not an album review. If it was, it would be a ridiculously late one, since the album came out in 1996. But I was indulging myself in vintage 90s rock music recently, and the thought came to me (as it always does in revisionist thinking) that this particular record was unfairly ignored in its own time. Listening to this record in its entirety for the first time in ten years brought back all kinds of memories, and in a moment of epiphany I realized how much of an influence it had on me as a younger man. The album of course is “Dust” by Screaming Trees, which turned out to be their swan song. But my personal history with the Trees goes a bit deeper…

C’Mon @ The Dominion Tavern in Ottawa (video)

Ray Dickman, a fellow C’Mon fan, recently posted this video of their final show at Ottawa’s Dominion Tavern (a properly crusty rock venue if ever there was one). He and I were corresponding on Facebook, and he mentioned that he had actually joined the band onstage for ‘Too Bad for the Tin Man’.