Recording: Holy Oak Family Singers

Artist: Holy Oak Family Singers

Songs: Greenfields [The Brothers Four cover] + The Way You Look Tonight [Betty Carter cover] + Madame George [Van Morrison cover]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Holy Oak Family Singers present), May 6, 2026.

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Luka Kuplowsky & Robin Dann - Greenfields

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Robin Dann - The Way You Look Tonight

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Ivy Mairi - Madame George

With my work schedule the way it is, it's a rare treat to get to see the Holy Oak Family Singers in action. Unsurprisingly, their montly showcases have become local Events of Note, with the Southern Cross jam-packed very early on. Once one reaches a certain age, an event called "Our Parents' Tapes" might be attended with apprehension, as the gap collapses towards "tapes I had". We're not quite there yet, and in any case, the group brought a pretty wide range of formative we-listened-to-this-in-the-car memories.

Recording: Holy Oak Family Singers

Artist: Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Ryan Driver / Alex Lukashevsky / Dorothea Paas / Luka Kuplowsky

Songs: Picture a World / Bein' Green / The First Time It Happens / Everybody Eats [all composed by Joe Raposo]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Tribute to Joe Raposo), July 3, 2024.

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Ryan Driver - Picture a World

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Alex Lukashevsky - Bein' Green

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Dorothea Paas - The First Time It Happens

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Luka Kuplowsky - Everybody Eats

The name Joe Raposo might not ring a bell, but chances are good you've got some of his songs lodged in your brain. One of the key writers in the classic Sesame Street/Muppets era, he not only composed the Sesame Street theme, but piles of instantly-familiar tunes, including "C is for Cookie", "Doin' the Pigeon", "Would You Like to Buy an O?", and "Sing" — as well as a fair few other TV themes. That meant there was plenty of material for the usual mix'n'match insta-ensembles at H.O.F.S.' regular night of musical tribute. The best results came when the singers mined the vein of bummed-out melancholy that's just below the surface of many of these songs — but the bursts of pure ebullience worked pretty swell too (Alex Lukashevsky tackling the Three's Company theme was everything you could hope for).

[Do note that H.O.F.S. are taking August off! You'll find them back in the Southern Cross on the first Wednesday in September.]

Recording: Holy Oak Family Singers

Artist: Justin Orok & Maggie Keogh / Holy Oak Family Singers

Songs: Summer's End [John Prine cover] + Ever New [Beverly Glenn-Copeland cover]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), August 2, 2023.

Justin Orok & Maggie Keogh - Summer's End

Holy Oak Family Singers - Ever New

Celebrating "The Songs of Summer", this evening with the rotating cast of H.O.F.S. guests and regulars essayed, as usual, a mix of hits and deep cuts, stripping things back to their essential songerwriterly cores. (And proving, once more, that no songs are too uncool to be reclaimed, as Ben Gunning showed on an astoundingly-refreshing take on Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer".) Nursing a broken arm and unable to play guitar, host Luke Kuplowsky played some one-handed piano in a spare setting of the McGarrigle's "Saratoga Summer Song", but also pulled together an impromptu ensemble for a couple set-closing pieces, including this Beverly Glenn-Copeland song with backing from Evan Cartwright, Justin Orok and Ted Crosby.

[Maggie Keogh and Justin Orok are half of Andrew Downing's Utopia Ontario, who will be playing The Rex next Monday (August 28th). The Holy Oak Family Singers will be back on at the Tranzac on Wednesday, September 6th.]

Recording: Holy Oak Family Singers

Artist: Carlyn Bezic with Joseph Shabason + Danika Vandersteen & Aiya McNee + Madelyn Kirby & Luke Robinson + Luke Kuplowsky & co.

Songs: Stay Loose + Steel Rail Blues + Saturday Clothes + A Lesson in Love [Gordon Lightfoor covers]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Holy Oak Family Singers present), June 7, 2023.

Carlyn Bezic with Joseph Shabason - Stay Loose

Danika Vandersteen & Aiya McNee - Steel Rail Blues

Madelyn Kirby & Luke Robinson - Saturday Clothes

Luke Kuplowsky & Co. - A Lesson in Love

This gathering of the Holy Oak Family Singers was themed as a tribute to recently-passed icon Gordon Lightfoot, a songwriter with whom this loose collective has a longstanding connection. Once more "later Gord" (especially East of Midnight) was tackled with as much zeal as the more well-known early material, though for this show the more elaborate backing band was replaced by a stripped-down rotating crew of musicians.

[This month's HOFS timeslot — which is tonight (July 5th) — will instead see Luke Kuplowsky joined by Felicity Williams, Anh Phung, Josh Cole, and Alex Lukashevsky for two sets of his own songs + poetry interpretations.]

Recording: Justin Orok + Heraclitus Akimbo

Artist: Justin Orok + Heraclitus Akimbo

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Belljar Café, September 29, 2017.

Justin Orok + Heraclitus Akimbo - [excerpt 1]

Justin Orok + Heraclitus Akimbo - [excerpt 2]

It was an unexpected delight when Justin Orok, one of the city's more skilful emerging guitar players, invited me to join him for a duo set at this night of "experimental sounds" put together by Justin Haynes. I still feel the occasional twinge of awkwardness when playing with "real musicians", though not so much that I didn't show up with a couple ideas in my pocket. I'd been hearing birdsongs a lot (maybe enhanced by this delightful recent acquisition that has been said by some to turn everything into bird songs) so I wanted to add some of that into the mix. Orok caught onto the vibe right away and responded with some wonderful textures and guit-string twitterings of his own.

[Justin Orok will be playing as part of Decoration Day at the Junction City Music Hall alongside Darling Cora and Places Erupt on Saturday, November 18th. Heraclitus Akimbo will be among a cadre of improvisers undertaking some Spontaneous Group Explorations at Del Stephen's Spirit Of The Inner Child, Wednesday, November 22nd at Array.]

Recording: The Science of What?

Artist: The Science of What?

Song: Who Am I [composer: Leonard Bernstein]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (Emergents III), April 8, 2016.

The Science of What? - Who Am I

Alex Samaras has one of the city's most beautiful singing voices, so anyone he chose to spotlight for that talent at a show he was curating is definitely worth taking note of. In fact, it turned out that I had heard Jessica Chen sing a couple months back as a standout member of the Humber Composers Collective at the Somewhere There Festival. But when joined only by guitarist Justin Orok, there was even more room for her voice to shine. The pair tackled an intriguing range of material, from standards to Messiaen to the showtune heard here from the stage version of Peter Pan with music by Leonard Bernstein (Chen noted her rendition owed a heavy debt to Nine Simone's interpretation). Orok's contributions ranged from unnderstated accompaniment to some noisier abstracted textures on an "out" interpretation of "Someone To Watch Over Me". Technically accomplished but not too precious about their material (they've tackled Elliot Smith and Thom Yorke on stage alongside their own original material), this is recommended to local fans of, say, Thom Gill and Felicity Williams-styled sophisto-pop.

[This year's Emergents series concludes on Thursday, May 26th. Curated by Ben Dietschi, the night will match the Kiri Koto Ensemble with a set of music performed on Boomwhackers (yes, those plastic tubed people band together at sporting events).]