Monday, May 25, 2020

Concert Listings Roundup #355

You can read more about why I'm doing listings here. Long story short: This curated and decidedly non-comprehensive list contains nothin' but shows that I am going to/would go to if I had more time.


Special note:

For the past six-and-a-half years, I've faithfully been cranking out these listings every Monday. Because of the unprecedented situation we now find ourselves in, this week's listings remain blank. Stay safe and sheltered.


Livestream nation:

  • The first online edition of Michael Palumbo's Exit Points series was both musically satisfying and well-executed from the technical end of things — no surprise seeing that Palumbo has been working with remote live sound for a while before everyone started switching to livestream mode. Wednesday night's instalment features two electroacoustic improvising ensembles, the first with Mike Hansen, MJ Wright, Bea Labikova, Kavi and Michael Palumbo and the second with Heidi Chan, Yoni Newman, Kieran Maraj, Lex Metcalfe, and Curtis Whittaker. That'll be followed by shorter mini-sets remixing the performers plus some guests.
  • The AMBiENT PiNG are taking their annual Drone Day live show online Saturday night, with a live set from dreamSTATE plus some specially-selected video works.
  • Thin Edge New Music Collective is examining the possibilities of livestreams/distanced musicians with "heard from a distance", streaming on Sunday afternoon. The show will see pianist Cheryl Duvall and cellist Amahl Arulanandam performing works "from 45 seconds to 45 minutes long" by Dai Fujikura, Anna Hostman, Jocelyn Morlock, Nick Storring and Linda Catlin Smith.

Monday, May 18, 2020

Concert Listings Roundup #354

You can read more about why I'm doing listings here. Long story short: This curated and decidedly non-comprehensive list contains nothin' but shows that I am going to/would go to if I had more time.


Special note:

For the past six-and-a-half years, I've faithfully been cranking out these listings every Monday. Because of the unprecedented situation we now find ourselves in, this week's listings remain blank. Stay safe and sheltered. Covid-19 hasn't gotten any less deadly just because they've opened marinas and golf courses for the moneyed classes. The things we love to do — gathering together in small spaces, talking, singing — remain near the top of the list of ways of most efficiently spreading the virus, so let our separation show our solidarity.


Bandcamp corner:

  • In case you need some delicate folk-pop on a gusty, rainy day, Kieran Smyth & Mingjia Chen offer "a collection of songs that we hope can bring comfort to you & to those made vulnerable during this strange time".

Monday, May 11, 2020

Concert Listings Roundup #353

You can read more about why I'm doing listings here. Long story short: This curated and decidedly non-comprehensive list contains nothin' but shows that I am going to/would go to if I had more time.


Special note:

For the past six-and-a-half years, I've faithfully been cranking out these listings every Monday. Because of the unprecedented situation we now find ourselves in, this week's listings remain blank. Stay safe and sheltered.


Livestream nation:

  • The interviews in the Music Gallery at Home series are done for now, but music continues for a couple more weeks, with the amazing Nick Dourado interpreting Xuan Ye's "Even a Blind Squirrel Finds a Nut Once in a While" and other pieces on Friday night.

Bandcamp corner:

  • Pantayo's long-awaited album is finally available from Telephone Explosion. The subtly-electronic kulintang grooves are a real joy to listen to, and quite handy for putting a spring in your step.

Monday, May 4, 2020

Concert Listings Roundup #352

You can read more about why I'm doing listings here. Long story short: This curated and decidedly non-comprehensive list contains nothin' but shows that I am going to/would go to if I had more time.


Special note:

For the past six-and-a-half years, I've faithfully been cranking out these listings every Monday. Because of the unprecedented situation we now find ourselves in, this week's listings remain blank. Stay safe and sheltered.


Livestream nation:

  • The Music Gallery at Home series continues tonight at 7 p.m. with history (featuring Anne Bourne in conversation with Kritty Uranowki and Jesse Locke), and on Friday with music (Slowpitchsound interpreting Xuan Ye's "Even a Blind Squirrel Finds a Nut Once in a While" and other pieces).
  • Beloved local record store Sonic Boom have been putting on a series of virtual in-stores, which continues on Thursday with a performance by Witch Prophet.

Bandcamp corner:

  • last week saw an excellent release from Eternalrealworld, the solo drone project from visual/sonic artist Ilyse Krivel. Living Water mixes field recordings (the Atlantic Ocean in Nova Scotia, a creek in northern Ontario, a sewer in Toronto) with electronic sounds that freeze and flow with meditative beauty.
  • Thought lost on the seas of time and entropy, Bruce Peninsula's No Earthly Sound has finally arrived, nearly a decade (!) after 2011's Open Flames. Although the band has never quite gone away, they were mostly in an extended slumber, emerging on a soundtrack and occasional live dates. Anyone who caught them over the past few years will have heard some of these songs and will have a better sense of how the group has been evolving. Most significantly, this album repositions Misha Bower as a co-frontperson rather than a choir leader, and the recorded versions pivot away somewhat from the band's primordial call-and-response, singer-plus-chorus foundations. I'm sure the many friends that make up the choir will be on stage whenever the band is allowed to properly celebrate this album's release, but in the meantime the album's themes of togtherness-versus-aloneness and life-seeking-versus-death-seeking register with a new force in these times we are in.
  • Although he hasn't spent much time in the spotlight in the time since Steamboat's dissolution, Matt McLaren has often been seen off to the side in many of the projects that spun out of that band's former ubiquity as backing band and rhythm section to a wide range of artists. This "solo" effort calls on many friends from those past efforts (including a laundry-list of MFS faves like Sandro Perri, Jay Anderson, Mike Smith, Blake Howard, Micheal Davidson, Christine Bougie, Ali Berkok, and Andrew Scott) for an instrumental affair that moves from shag-carpet-and-waterbed soul/funk to sophisticated yacht rock in the Tortoise/Sea and Cake vein.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Pause and Reconsider: Jason Doell

While live music is on pause, I've asked some friends of MFS to dig through the archives and put together a playlist of some things I've posted that have registered with them in one way or another — contextualizing blurbs preferred but not required. Expect to see a variety of different takes and approaches as the playlists get posted — and hopefully we'll all be reminded of some cool things that have happened in the past. This list comes from don't-call-him-a-composer Jason Doell.


Here is a broad sampling of what I believe to be the boundless and genre defiant "Toronto Croon" (as captured by Joe). Not all of the voices heard in this playlist live here still, but all have done so in the past, and all have adopted or adapted the Toronto croon in their own special way.

S W A N H E R D S - The Turning Larch

Marker Starling - Author

L CON - Oh How Love

Eric Chenaux - Social Living

ZOË - The Rock

Bernice - Talking About Her

Thom Gill + Musica Reflecta - Consider Me Gone

The Ryan Driver Sextet - Two Sleepy People