Preview: SummerWorks 2017

SummerWorks Performance Festival

August 3-13, 2016

Pushing further with its initiatives around accessibility and cross-discipline pollination, the SummerWorks Festival is less than ever a place to go and just sit down to passively watch a performance. There are indeed, some shows where an audience just watches something on a stage, but much of the festival seems to be seeking to upend that model, to mix/remix/recombine concepts in new ways.

For music fans, that means digging deeper than one used to have to — gone are the days where the Music Series presented night after night of innovatively-staged spectacles by rising local musicians. Instead, musical content is more scattered and mixed among the other productions — so this preview's goal is to dig through some of the diverse landing points for the Festival's music offerings, and then offer some suggestions for a few further avenues that curious ears might go exploring down. [Listen! tags mean you can check out a live recording of that artist from the MFS archive.]

• Are We Not Horses – The Sci-Fi Summer Musical This re-visioning is a celebration of the tenth anniversary of Rock Plaza Central's breakthrough album — one of those epochal moments where the folkies and weirdo improvisers in the Tranzac's front room teamed up to craft an artifact that made not insignificant inroads into the broader culture. A concept album about mechanical horses in the midst of an epic battle between good and evil, there's plenty of narrative grist to exploit in a stage version — and there's also some pretty cool, memorable songs. It'll be interesting to see if all of that can be brought together into a coherent vision, but whether it's a disciplined gallop or rearing back as it spits the bit, this should be fascinating to behold.

• Erased: Billy & Bayard The Queer Songbook Orchestra has been workshopping its tribute to Billy Strayhon (Duke Ellington's long-time writing partner) for a little while now, and those efforts are emerging in this show that not only attempts to re-insert him into his rightful place in the musical firmament, but to connect his cultural "erasure" as a gay black man with Bayard Rustin, the pioneering civil rights activist whose efforts were similarly marginalized. Known for its mixture of storytelling/reclaiming narratives and lush musical excellence, the QSO's shows are always emotionally stirring, and this promises to extend that even further.
  Listen! The Queer Songbook Orchestra Geordie Gordon - Don't You Pay Them No Mind

• Crush On Humans Closest in spirit to the sort of shows that used to be the Music Series' calling card (and including some guest turns by former performers in it), this multi-episode extravaganza promises to reveal the origin story of Toronto's Alphabot — oh, and an "attempt to save humanity from its tyrannical robot oppressors". Should be a fun romp and don't get too hung up on narrative continuity — individual performances during the run should stand on their own just fine.
  Listen! Alphabot! - Rabbit Ears

• BODIES OF WATER Just another evening of Iranian afrofunk folk-rock from the Zuze ensemble... except with live synchronized swimming and video streams. [n.b.: Please note this event has been cancelled.]

• Who Runs the World?/Out a Road/Body Brake 8.5 One innovation this year's festival is offering is free late-night programming at the SummerWorks Back Patio at Pia Bouman Studio, just over from Queen and Dufferin. There are some nights with cool DJ's (including John Caffery, Regina Gently, and New Chance) plus some "themed" nights with some excellent live entertainment. Who Runs the World? is programmed by Girls Rock Camp Toronto and will include performances by some of the always-awesome camper bands, Out a Road offers a chance to catch a preview of some of Bonjay's long-awaited new material, and Body Brake 8.5 mixes live dance performance with a set from Witch Prophet.
  Listen! Denim Roses - We Hate Cake
  Listen! Bonjay - Creepin
  Listen! Witch Prophet - Funeral For a Killer

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Meanwhile, the festival's workshop series contains a couple entries that may be of interest to folks organizing in the music community, on Anti-Oppression and Anti-Racism organizational strategies and integrating indigeneity and decolonizing performance practice. And there's a lot more interesting stuff in the festival, as well: I'm interested in Pearle Harbour's Chautauqua, DIVINE, August, Augusta, and Explosions for the 21st Century. SummerWorks is always a well-curated festival, so if you've got time and a curious mind, it doesn't hurt just to dive into something that fits into your schedule.

The fine print: single-performance tickets are from $15, and there are various pass options available. You can find all the ticket information here.

Recording: DATU x HATAW

Artist: DATU x HATAW

Song: World Gong Crazy

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet (SummerWorks: High Blood). August 13, 2016.

DATU x HATAW - World Gong Crazy

Capping off the music shows at this year's SummerWorks Festival was this joint entry from future-R&B crew DATU and dance group HATAW. Both groups share an artistic vision of examining diasporic Filipino culture through a Canadian lens — realized here by going to church and presenting the show as an examination of rituals, Catholic and otherwise.

A true multimedia spectacular with a cast of more than twenty, this involved elaborate choreography and eye-popping costumes besides the music. Those ingredients came together in different ways for each song, pausing to take confessions from audience-members mid-way through. This track was the show-stopping climax, featuring a rap from HanHan while the dancers performed a tinikling dance. Intense, wonderful stuff. This was the clear standout of this year's crop of music shows and it seems inconceivable that it wouldn't get remounted somewhere else.

Recording: Special Costello

Artist: Special Costello

Song: Late Night

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet (SummerWorks: Sound Circuitz), August 12, 2016.

Special Costello - Late Night

Sometimes, a single moment of flotsam on the pop-culture sea can get lodged in the back of your head and become a personal beacon that endures for years. Like, say, the image of a bird and fish falling in love in an early computer-animation clip. That scene, and others from the Mind's Eye computer animation demos that were repackaged for a generation of Canadian teens as YTV's Short Circutz, was the inspiration for Basement Studio Project (Halloway Jones, Natalie Logan and Heather Rappard), who turned the theatre space into an analogue reconstruction of a computer animated landscape. Giving a huge amount of depth to the room, the audience were welcomed to wander (or dance) around the performers.

Although Jeremy Costello's project works on a different terrain than Baby Cages, the two sets were fine complements for each other. Costello's slo-mo r&b-influenced new romantic constructions were in no hurry to get where they were going, stretching out with a sort of languid satisfaction, though Nick Dourado, on drums and sax, helped nudge things along.

Recording: Baby Cages

Artist: Baby Cages

Song: Dark Arts

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet (SummerWorks: Sound Circuitz), August 12, 2016.

Baby Cages - Dark Arts

Sometimes, a single moment of flotsam on the pop-culture sea can get lodged in the back of your head and become a personal beacon that endures for years. Like, say, the image of a bird and fish falling in love in an early computer-animation clip. That scene, and others from the Mind's Eye computer animation demos that were repackaged for a generation of Canadian teens as YTV's Short Circutz, was the inspiration for Basement Studio Project (Halloway Jones, Natalie Logan and Heather Rappard), who turned the theatre space into an analogue reconstruction of a computer animated landscape. Giving a huge amount of depth to the room, the audience were welcomed to wander (or dance) around the performers.

Besides contributing to the visual concept, Halloway Jones also performed, fronting her band Baby Cages in a set of ruminative guitar pop. This was the first time I managed to catch Katie Jensen's keyb work with the band, which added some welcome extra textures. Jeremy Costello, a longtime collaborator who also played with his project Special Costello, also adds some backing vox here.

Recording: Kurt Marble

Artist: Kurt Marble

Songs: Domestic + Spirit in the Sky [Norman Greenbaum cover]

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks: Glitter Jesus), August 11, 2016.

Kurt Marble - Domestic

Kurt Marble - Spirit in the Sky

With his glam/grunge take on classic riff rock, Kurt Marble is not, perhaps, such an unlikely candidate to head down the concept album path. Like a lot of concept albums (including several that are considered stone classics) this one was a little daft as a coherent story, but it gave more than enough material for a jukebox musical that took us into the creator's mind-world. Starting with cult-y white robes and spiralling outward from there, it's salient to note of this production that it involved several costume changes and that Roxanne Ignatius' striking costume design was one of its most important elements. It also gave a chance to expand on the band's musical template with guests including Neil Rankin (in his Slime guise) and Maddy Wilde (of Moon King/Spiral Beach fame) who was also the show's co-writer.

Its central tale of the Glitter Jesus was never quite in focus and it was never clear if the whole thing was a sort of satire on hippie earth-mother peace-and-love vibes (or an ardent embrace of same) or a commentary on rockstar ego trips (or a backhanded embrace of same). In that sense, the presence of "Spirit in the Sky", an evangelical gospel song written as a sort of conceptual lark by a Jewish songwriter feels right at home with the piece's unfocused aw-sucks eschatology. But as our hero kept emerging in increasingly-fabulous outfits, eventually taking to the crowd to anoint his seekers with glitter, such concerns simply fell by the wayside. All hail Glitter Jesus!

Recording: Zoo Owl

Artist: Zoo Owl

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks: Goggles Must Be Worn at All Times), August 11, 2016.

Zoo Owl - unknown

Outside, the weather was as hot and muggy as a rainforest, which felt like an extra bit of stage dressing, as a coastal rainforest is the Zoo Owl's preferred environment. Inside, the theatre was dressed to suggest a scientist's hidden bunker, the setting of an unorthodox "product demo", including Zoo Owl's signature glowing goggles. Mixing his aw-shucks keenness with some slightly-menacing undertones (including maximal corporate surveillance) this felt like the origin story of a mad scientist, flashing back to his days as an idealistic youthful do-gooder before some Terrible Accident sent him down the Wrong Path.

A deeply cinematic thinker, one gets the impression that this is the show that is going on in Bryan Sutherland's head every time he takes the stage. Here, it was enhanced into a true production that included three assistants dashing about to do his bidding with leaf-blowing "crowd scanners" and later a giant, spinning illuminated wheel. There were protagonists as well, including a red-eyed Nemesis and the mysterious Moss Man. Like a summer blockbuster film, the whole thing was a bit narratively thin but its constant momentum meant that while it plowed ahead there was no time to worry whether the underlying story hung together. Taken as a situation with these characters in this particular bunker, it made a weird kind of sense. And like a summer blockbuster, one gets the impression that a sequel could bring twice the spectacle.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: d'bi. & The 333

Artist: d'bi. & The 333

Songs: Revolution Rising + Rest in Peace

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks), August 9, 2016.

d'bi. & The 333 - Revolution Rising

d'bi. & The 333 - Rest in Peace

Besides presenting the Audience Choice Award-winning "Afro-futurist dub-opera" Bleeders at the festival, d'bi.young anitafrika was also front and centre at this musical performance alongside a powerful backing band that featured some familiar faces such as Waleed Abdulhamid and Patrick O'Reilly. The space was left in its bare-bones black-box theatre configuration, which anitafrika used to her advantage, turning the zone between band and audience into a stage for some monologues between songs. But as a performer with immense presence, her focused eye-contact tended to create dialogical space rather than pulling all the attention onto herself diva-style.

This music pulled from her recent #CivilRightsMixtape EP and beyond, starting and ending with call-to-arms anthem "#BlackLivesMatter". The theme resonated throughout the set that racism and disempowerment must be faced with joy and heart-song to give the necessary energy for the rising-together. There were reflective and tender moments, such as the empathetic "Begging is a Ting" and "Rest in Peace" (which, besides its many spoken-word antecedants in dub poetry and talkover also nudged precisely into the same jangly-guitar sing-speak zone as The Blue Aeroplanes) and no shortage of massive energy-bursts like "Revolution Rising", which brought the audience out into that shared zone between stage and seats to sing together.

Recording: Summer Drift Ensemble

Artist: Summer Drift Ensemble

Songs: Drift [four excerpts]

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks: Summer Drift), August 6, 2015.

Summer Drift Ensemble - Drift [excerpt 1]

Summer Drift Ensemble - Drift [excerpt 2]

Summer Drift Ensemble - Drift [excerpt 3]

Summer Drift Ensemble - Drift [excerpt 4]

An inversion of the "spectacle" of most of SummerWorks music shows, this afternoon drone installation moved the performers to the edge of the room and let the audience wander (to create their own personal "mix") or relax on the lily pad-like astroturf "islands" in the centre of the room. Conceived by Brandon Hocura, the event's score consisted of more than a dozen short instructions, including "play when you feel like it"/"take a break when you feel like it", "take 10 minutes to play what you would normally play in 1 minute", "repeat slowly" and "fall asleep". That meant that out of the collective ensemble (Victoria Cheong, Craig Dunsmuir, Sandro Perri, Matthew Shaw, Randy Gagne, Kevin Hainey, Andrew Zukerman, Jaclyn Blumas, Trevor Blumas, Brandon Hocura) maybe half would be playing at any given time. I hung out for not quite three hours in the first half of the event, which is where these samples are drawn from.

Preview/Contest: SummerWorks 2016

SummerWorks Performance Festival

August 4-14, 2016

The SummerWorks Festival's Music Series is no more. In the interest of promoting the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the the festival's offerings, the separate streams for music and dance have been folded into the greater whole. This proves a point and reflects an on-the-ground reality, but the conceptual elegance of this approach can make it feel like a bit of a slog to a music fan trying to dig through the undifferentiated mass of offerings in the festival schedule.

That said, the same team of Adam Bradley and Andrew Pulsifer (who did an excellent job with last year's music offerings) are back at the helm this year, so once again there's a lot of excellent music content in the festival. To make things a little easier, I'm going to break down the music offerings here — and then offer some suggestions for a few further avenues that curious ears might go exploring down.

[These shows all take place at the Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement, not far from Queen and Dufferin. The songs tagged with Listen! below are live recordings from the MFS archive.]

• Inamorata sees the awesome musical force that is Maylee Todd celebrating the release of her third record by having La-Nai Gabriel rearrange its songs to be performed by an all female band. Todd turned the Great Hall into a Musical Planetarium at her previous SummerWorks appearance. That one encouraged her audience to bring their own blankets and lie back in quiet contemplation; this time out things will probably be more raucous.
  Listen! Maylee Todd - I Can't Stand It

• Summer Drift Speaking of lying on the floor, this afternoon-long drop-in/drop-out drift promises that "yoga mats and pillows will be provided so the audience and performers can lie down, relax and take in the immersive sounds." Read that again and note that this one is going to be so laid-back that even the performers have the option to lie down. The new age/ambient meditative sounds and drones will be distributed throughout the room, so those that do want to remain ambulatory can create their own "mix" simply by shifting their location. Conceptualized by Brandon Hocura, he'll be joined by an all-star team of local musicians, including Craig Dunsmuir, Jonathan Adjemian, Vic Cheong, Matt Shaw, Randy Gagne, Andrew Zuckerman, Sandro Perri, and the members of Doomsquad. Not to be missed!
• D'BI. & THE 333 Live Concert The fiercely-multidisciplinary d'bi.young anitafrika (an internationally celebrated African-Jamaican dubpoet, playwright-monodramatist, arts-educator and more) focuses her energy in a musical direction here, fronting a band composed of some top-notch players from across several different scenes, mixing her conscious lyrics with dancefloor grooves.

• Glitter Jesus / GOGGLES MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES This double-feature brings together a couple different flavours from two faves in local indie rock circles. Kurt Marble's glam-grunge pop-shred sounds fall headlong into concept-album territory with the tale of the Glitter Jesus, while Zoo Owl, who has always given equal conceptual space to both his visual and musical output presents a high-concept cinematic tech demo.
  Listen! Kurt Marble - Replacement

• Sound Circuitz More than just a pair of performances from Baby Cages and Special Costello, this production from Basement Studio Project (Natalie Logan, Heather Rappard, and Baby Cages' Halloway Jones) deploys "sculpture, light, and mirrors to create an immersive environment inspired by early computer generated animations." Live a life of virtual reality well outside the uncanny valley.
  Listen! Baby Cages - In Time

• High Blood is a joint effort from electro/RnB crew DATU and dance collective HATAW. Members of the Filipino-Canadian community, both groups celebrate traditional elements of their culture while also responding to new technologies and their own diasporic context. In performance, these crews are dynamite; having a chance to present a "participatory theatre experience inside an immersive world of Filipino superstition, mythology, and ritual that clashes ancient Philippine customs with North-American swagger" should make this a memorable experience.
  Listen! DATU - Halo Halo Man

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CONTEST

Thanks to SummerWorks, I am giving away two tickets to any of these music shows — your pick! To enter, shoot me an email to mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com, with "summerworks" in the title and your name and choice of show in the body. I'll randomly draw a winner on Friday, August 5th at noon.

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Meanwhile, outside the now-imaginary constraints of the music series, there are a few other things that caught my eye:

• Bleeders Besides performing with her band, d’bi.young anitafrika brings this "Afro-futurist dub-opera" (set in a far-future post-apocalyptic Toronto) to the festival.
• Duets for Beginners Clayton Lee's series of intimate pop-up performances will see him making his grandmother's wonton recipe, chatting with strangers online, and joining with his mother to attempt to animate her entire collection of wind-up toys.

• Tomorrow's Child Billed as "a one-of-kind audio-only theatre experience", this presents an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury short science-fiction story to a blindfolded audience.

• Empire of Night A sleepover party for grown-ups, this night-long event "enacts an eight-hour dreamscape structured around the biological rhythms that make up a good night’s sleep." Created by theatre artist Adam Paolozza, musician Matt Smith (aka Prince Nifty), sound/video artist Charles Ketchabaw, and dance artist Kari Pederson.
• No Context Although this solo dance improvisation from Amelia Ehrhardt is developed out of the formal constraints of meta-commentary on past artistic practices (the original commission was to create new work inspired by archival documents from one of Canada's seminal experimental dance groups from active the 1970s) I wouldn't expect it to be academic or merely dry historicism. Indeed, it's more a launching point for some of Ehrhardt's personal concerns, with a text composed "while drunk for the past year and a half" and read by Catherine Ribeiro. ("The work touches on, but is not about, gender imbalance, frustration, city council, bureaucracy, The Creative Process, desire, and pop music.")

The fine print: single-performance tickets are $15, and there are various pass options available. You can find all the ticket information here. Remember (even for those music events!) that the festival runs on theatre time, so do not be fashionably late!

Recording: Still Boys

Artist: Still Boys

Song: [a song about juice]^*

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: 2016 Spring Collection), August 14, 2015.

Still Boys - [a song about juice]

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd and Snowblink. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

The Music Series was capped off with a special appearance this this giant face (?) / alien boy band (?!) whose very manifestation still leaves more questions than answers. I have seen Still Boys a few times now, and as of yet, nothing about this polymorphously perverse experience feels normal. Sometime after the giant ear went around with a pillow asking to be blocked ("they call themselves musicians?" was its lament) and shotglasses of juice were handed out to the audience I mostly gave up trying to keep track of what was going on — "eye licking... invagination" were the last clear entries in my notes before being fully consumed. For the uninitiated, imagining what Funkadelic might have sounded like with ecstasy and sequencers instead of angel dust and guitars gives a vague hint of the musical vibe — but the whole experience of it is otherwise hard to relate. Keep an eye out for this to land again and plan to experience it for your own self.

^* I will update this descriptive placeholder title if I hear anything more formal.

Recording: Listening Choir

Artist: SummerWorks Listening Choir #1

Songs: [five scenes from a Listening Choir walk]

Recorded in and around The Theatre Centre (SummerWorks Festival: Listening Songs: Listening Choir), August 13, 2015.

SummerWorks Listening Choir #1 - Part 1 [sound poetry]

SummerWorks Listening Choir #1 - Part 2 [development proposal]

SummerWorks Listening Choir #1 - Part 3 [wandering balladeer]

SummerWorks Listening Choir #1 - Part 4 [keys, fences, arches, birds]

SummerWorks Listening Choir #1 - Part 5 [patio pop]

For a half-dozen sessions over three days during the SummerWorks Festival, Christopher Willes and Adam Kinner led small groups in the West Queen West neighbourhood around The Theatre Centre calling on participants to interact with their sonic environment — and above all, to listen. Armed with DIY recorder/speaker boxes, the walkers both added to the neighbourhood's sonic diversity and sampled it to play back in a floating zone of slightly-distorted loops. This walking tour was a bit of a spectacle to passers-by, but more stirringly a call to the participants to remember that in their own daily strolls that there are so many sounds to attend to and secret places to playfully unlock: from air-conditioning ducts to the echo-chamber possibilities of a condo window; from the ringing echo of a set of keys on a metal fence to the secret codes of a hidden speaker on a restaurant patio. And meanwhile in the background is the city's own sonic weave and weft: trains rumble by, a siren's tocsin pushes past, birds chirp on sidewalk trees. We're in it all the time, but so rarely consciously of it.

Later in the day after participating in the Choir, I was making my way back along Queen on the streetcar, reflecting on the new details I'd learned about the neighbourhood I was rolling through. And just then, with perfect timing, a later Choir group emerged from the arch between the condo buildings across from Northcote, setting down their speaker boxes to create a temporary clanging symphony. The sounds surround us all the time, just waiting to be listened to.

Recording: Germaphobes

Artist: Germaphobes

Songs: Door in the Floor + She's in the Heat of Her Life^*

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: Heat Shuts Off Overnight), August 13, 2015.

Germaphobes - Door in the Floor

Germaphobes - She's in the Heat of Her Life

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd and Snowblink. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

In the tradition of The Bicycles' Young Drones, a band with songwriting energy to burn showed up at SummerWorks with a full set of new material, and a multimedia stage show to match. More of a loosely-defined concept album than a full-on rock opera, Heat Shuts Off Overnight nevertheless gained a reasonable amount of narrative heft thanks to the projection/puppetry work of Sarah Fairlie and Erin Fleck as well as Joanne Sarazen's acting as the band's on-stage avatar, an ennui-laden near-future urbanite looking for entertainment (or salvation) in her virtual-reality goggles. The storyline was left non-didactically loose, but the visual interplay of memory and desire was quite expressive enough — as well as the message that in the end, maybe what you need most is someone to dance with. (Not even some technical difficulties could derail the live presentation — in fact, in context of the show's themes, a couple ghosts in the system felt totally appropriate.)

Musically, Neil Rankin and Paul Erlichman have added keyboards to their core group since I last saw 'em, and added some additional musical heft with special guests Sean Dunal (a.k.a. Sexy Merlin, percussion) and Karen Ng (alto sax, flute) joining them for the whole set. But besides pushing their sound away from the garage and towards New Wave glory (there was no shortage of Talking Heads in this set), the biggest conceptual leap forward was in the songwriting, with the band moving from snark to sympathy. Still, most of these songs could easily slip right into their regular setlists — though hopefully someone will take the initiative to mount a restaging of this ambitious enterprise. (And in the meantime, let's hope that the band strikes while the iron is hot and records these tunes, preserving this creative outburst as a concept album, just as The Bicycles did.)

^* Thanks to Paul for passing along the titles to these ones.

Recording: ANAMAI

Artist: ANAMAI

Song: Abris

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: Heat Shuts Off Overnight), August 13, 2015.

ANAMAI - Abris

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

Leading off the night, Anna Mayberry and David Psutka got the crowd ready for the immersive theatricality of Germaphobes' Heat Shuts Off Overnight by pulling them in close to listen to Mayberry's folk-tinged tunes.

[ANAMAI play Camp Wavelength this Sunday (August 30th) at 4 p.m.]

Recording: LAL

Artist: LAL

Song: Tiny Mirrors

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: all you can hold), August 12, 2015.

LAL - Tiny Mirrors

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

Like some of the other Music Series shows, longstanding electronic duo LAL incorporated hints of ritual and a sense of celebration into their spectacular presentation, creating a joyful conscious dance party. Working with director Ange Loft (who is also known in music circles for her work with Yamantaka//Sonic Titan), the group moved beyond traditional staging, instead putting a catwalk down the length of the floor and sound technician Nicholas Murray at a table in the audience. Vocalist Rosina Kazi moved freely between those as models danced and strutted on the catwalk, reflecting and amplifying the music's themes of self-discovery, resilience and political action. The duo performed a whole new set of songs which I understand basically corresponds to their new album due at the start of next year. Bands that have been around for a while sometimes get short shrift for lacking the tang of the new, but this show weighty with ideas, energy and upliftment — a reminder that this city needs to celebrate groups like this who are working to push things forward.

Recording: The Melancholiac Ensemble

Artist: The Melancholiac Ensemble

Songs: It's Raining Today (feat. Alex Samaras, arr. Adam Scime) + Such a Small Love (feat. Patricia O'Callaghan) + Brando (Dwellers on the Bluff) (feat. John Millard)

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: Melancholiac: The Music of Scott Walker), August 9, 2015.

The Melancholiac Ensemble feat. Alex Samaras - It's Raining Today

The Melancholiac Ensemble feat. Patricia O'Callaghan - Such a Small Love

The Melancholiac Ensemble feat. John Millard - Brando (Dwellers on the Bluff)

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

This show featured something of a different vibe (and crowd) than the others in the Music Series, something more akin to a night out at the Music Gallery. Traipsing through the scope of Walker's career (though not chronologically, as that would just get increasingly weird and confusingly difficult) might have reduced the show to a sort of highbrow equivalent to one of those "jukebox musicals" which are apparently quite popular. But — probably for the best — there was no attempt to impose any sort of throughline or narrative sense on the material, save, perhaps for a point-of-view that privileged none of Walker's career phases.

The songs were presented by a Greg Oh-assembled big-band with many noteworthy members from the city's pop, improvised and new music scenes¹. The music was enhanced by an ensemble that acted as choir and dance troupe as required, adding dramatic flourishes and hinting at Walker's more outré musical practices. For example, the notorious meat-punching in "Clara" (from 2006's The Drift) was amended onstage to some vigourous, albeit more genteel, dough-punching. The spectacle and effort put into that particular slab of uneasy listening made it one of the night's centrepieces — showy but kinda not what one might want to sit down and listen to. (That, in fact, might be an apt description for latter-period Walker to many.)

Those "difficult" moments were balanced with ample selections from Walker's better known avant-crooning days and other youthful pop exercises. All told, it took no fewer than five vocalists to reflect all the facets the show examined. On the whole, the night was a most pleasing confluence of multiplicities — different fanbases, different singers, different Scott Walkers.

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¹ I'm not sure if this is precisely correct, but combining the programme notes and my own notes, the ensemble included: Gregory Oh (music director, keyboards), Friendly Rich (vox), John Millard (vox), Patricia O’Callaghan (vox), Alex Samaras (vox), Zorana Sadiq (vox), Bram. Gielen (bass), Lina Allemano (trumpet), Amahl Arulanandam (cello), Anna Atkinson (violin), Shaun Mallinen (saxophone), Dan Morphy (percussion), David Quackenbush (french horn), Nichol Robertson (guitar), Laurence Schaufele (viola), Leslie Ting (violin), Dean Wales (drums)

Recording: Most People

Artist: Most People

Song: Telephone

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: What Fate Awaits Them?), August 9, 2015.

Most People - Telephone

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

The spectacle level of the series was cranked up a notch with this one, combining projections, puppetry, dancers and more to move the show beyond the stage. In one memorable sequence, a model of an undersea-exploring aquanaut was projected on the screen behind the band — and then its real-life equivalent appeared in the midst of the crowd, only to be attacked, and engage in a fight to the death with, a giant silvery eel. That was topped as the set ended with the emergence of a giant hooded puppet — like a blanket monster of a fevered childhood imagination brought to life — rising up behind the band. And just for a break, robot emissaries MATROX took over for a few songs mid-set.

[Most People will be playing a late-night set at Camp Wavelength, Saturday August 29th at Artscape Gibraltar Point.]

Recording: Animalia

Artist: Animalia

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement ("SummerWorks Music Series"), August 8, 2015

Animalia - unknown

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

Sort of like a good-vibes new age version of Eyes Wide Shut, this show saw the audience make a circle around Jill Krasnicki's pentagram and join in a purification ritual, shooing away negative feelings. Turning the series' usual notion of a large-scale spectacle on its ear, Krasnicki and director Ruth Madoc-Jones instead created an especially-intimate vibe by splitting the night into five performances for small audiences, giving the masked attendees the feeling of being at some secret conclave in an abandoned warehouse. At first brush, Krasnicki's synth-based songs hewed a little closer to straight pop than is necessarily my sweet spot, but further investigation shows some well-crafted songs — and there's no denying her powerful voice and presence. With a bit of a lower profile than some of the other bands in the Music Series, it was nonetheless encouraging to see the curators choose to work with a talent they could stand behind and wanted to present to new audiences.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: JOOJ

Artist: JOOJ

Song: Ghost of Love

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series), August 7, 2015.

JOOJ - Ghost of Love

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

Entitled What Happens to JOOJ in 24 Hours: According to Bojana & Alex, the series opener's stated methodology was "a concept that formally unbounds the notion of performance through a practice of duration" — artspeak for locking the performers in the theatre overnight, forcing them to stay awake and see what happens. Faced with a crowd and having to give a performance after twenty-three hours of tasks set by directors Bojana Stancic and Alex Wolfson, the most interesting effects upon Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Litovitz weren't so much musical (they pulled off their performances of the tunes from the debut album in fine style) as in their body language and reactions to what was going on around them. Not surprisingly, Lee bounced between punchy-tired and second-wind-manic as she spoke between songs, or prowled into the crowd with her wireless mic during them. After a few songs the fourth wall was broken altogether as Lee invited the crowd down from their seats to wander through the theatre as they pleased — people circulated and looked at the project's self-documentation that was taped on the walls while some of the band's friends settled into into their stage-side sleeping bags and nibbled on their snacks.

Preview: SummerWorks 2015

SummerWorks Performance Festival

August 7-17, 2014

The SummerWorks Festival is increasingly becoming a music destination because there's nothing else like it. Continuing its focus on constructing cross-disciplinary one-off events (rather than just plain ol' gigs), there's a chance here for local musicians to work with artists from other media to create the sort of immersive experience that is hard to assemble on the usual DIY shoestring.

Each of the seven shows in the Music Series would be worth going to just on musical merit alone; but with the special enhancements on offer, they're not to be missed. The thing that makes these compelling is that the tantalizingly vague descriptions are signposts beckoning the audience to one-time only events. Here's what's going down in the Music Series, with a few live recordings from my own archives as a hint of what you might hear:

• What Happens to JOOJ in 24 Hours: According to Bojana & Alex: Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Litovitz are undertaking a site-specific and time-specific challenge, sequestering themselves in the theatre for an entire day with the show acting as culmination. How directors Bojana Stancic and Alex Wolfson will interpret that day to the audience is a mystery, but do expect some of JOOJ's Suicide-meets-Dietrich cabaret tunes. [Friday August 7th, 10 p.m. @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Jooj - Crushed
• To Cast a Stone: this sees solo electronic musician Jill Krasnicki (a.k.a. Animalia) attempting "to create a sacred and otherworldly space to weave her songs through a spell casting ritual." Once again, that description is evocatively vague, but given that the show is being presented over five timeslots throughout the evening instead of one big show, you should expect the ritual to be a close-up and intimate experience. [Saturday August 8th, 6:00 PM/7:30 PM/9:00 PM/10:30 PM/midnight @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
• What Fate Awaits Them?: I didn't make Most People's EP release a couple months back, but its mix of music and large-scale puppetry was described as a knockout. Add alien robot emissaries/entertainment units MATROX and this sounds like fantastic fun. [Sunday, August 9th, 10:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Most People - Release
  Listen! MATROX - Thank You
• Melancholiac: The Music of Scott Walker: Adam Paolozza and Greg Oh combine to try and give shape to an artist whose singular career arc is rather difficult to conceptualize, never mind encapsulate. From teen idol to menacing avant-crooner, this is being billed as "part concert, part spectacle, part existential variety show", mixing "unique sonic and visual interpretations of Walker's music" and including some special guests. [Tuesday August 11th, 6:30 PM/9:30 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
• all you can hold: musicians like longstanding electro-experimentalists lal operate on the sort of terrain that gets swept under the rug a bit in the music scene's continual fetishization of the new. But they've been audaciously pushing boundaries and recombining various pop strains for long enough to deserve a helluva lot of respect. This show sees them performing a full set of new music embellished by "dance, costumes, digital painting and projections", representing their vision of a musical queer/straight alliance and mix of cultures. [Wednesday, August 12th, 10:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
• Heat Shuts Off Overnight: As Germaphobes, Paul Erlichman and Neil Rankin have been honing the sophisticated pop sounds they were previously pursuing as members of the now-defunct Gay. This show sees them bring a whole batch of new songs to a show that uses shadow puppets, stop motion, and projections for an exploration of quotidian banality and the digital consciousness. Expect a performance by ANAMAI somewhere in there as well. [Thursday, August 13th, 9:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Germaphobes - Everybody Else
  Listen! ANAMAI - Lucia
• 2016 Spring Collection: The unexplainable grinning manifestation that is (are?) Still Boys has been something of a whispered secret for the past while, being shared like a ritual that gladdens the hearts of even the most jaded music fan. Now, with Sasha Van Bon Bon and Jesi the Elder on board, there will be even more to be digested. Possibly even the audience. Don't try to explain, don't try to understand. Just see this. [Friday, August 14th, 10:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Still Boys - [popsong]

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Meanwhile, outside the Music Series, there's a lot more for music fans to investigate. Counting Sheep, the festival's "production-in-residence" deploys Balkan party-rockers Lemon Bucket Orkestra into the Maidan for an investigation of Ukraine's social revolution. Also, local music sensation (and visual artist) Lido Pimienta moves to the stage in Ayelen, a magical-realist tale of resistance to the exploitation of international mining companies.

There's also lots going on in the festival's wide-ranging Live Art stream. A lot of it's out of my field, but I can recommend the Listening Choir's Listening Songs, put together by Adam Kinner and the always-intriguing Christopher Willes. The practice of these dérivé-based jaunts is to "propose listening as an endangered practice worth reconsidering". Best of all, this little experiment is free (as long as you book a ticket in advance).

I also don't know a lot about the dance world, but the festival has ramped up their offerings on that side of things this year. The good news is that the Dance Series is curated by Amelia Ehrhardt (who chatted with me about dance before her SummerWorks offering last year), whose DIY spirit and enthusiasm for joyful experimentation parallels what I look for in exploring unfamiliar music. In that regard, the curious could have a go at any of the offerings in the Dance Series, but I would especially point people to Aimée Dawn Robinson's Ramble, which blends improvised and choreographed dance to music and live-mixed video. Currently based in Whitehorse, Robinson was a frequent collaborator with the city's creative musicians in her time in Toronto, and this one comes hotly-tipped from friends who know about these things.

The fine print: single-performance tickets are $15, and there are various pass options available. You can find all the ticket information here. Remember (especially for those music events!) that the festival runs on theatre time, so do not be fashionably late!