Festival Updates and News
News about Ottawa Festivals and our Member festivals, special events and fairs.
Concert Review: The Arcade Fire
Lebreton Flats, Ottawa
By AEDAN HELMER – QMI Agency
OTTAWA – Bluesfest was burning up both ends of Lebreton Flats Tuesday night with a double-headed snarling monster of Canadian A-list rock, with baroque indie darlings Arcade Fire and post-hardcore punkers Alexisonfire on competing stages.
For fans of Arcade Fire — whose 2004 breakout Funeral signalled a sea change in indie rock and made their Montreal hometown a music hotspot — it was a long-awaited and all-too-rare appearance in the nation’s capital.
Considering the band make their home 200 km down the road and boast two members with Ottawa roots — drummer Jeremy Gara and guitarist Richard Reed Parry — fans in the 613 area have been treated to a mere handful of glimpses, from a 2004 show at the Black Sheep Inn to a 2007 invite-only gig at Canterbury High School to an opening slot when U2 rolled through town.
Read more: Concert Review: The Arcade Fire
Have a Summer Fling
New theatre festival offers nine shows in six venues
By Patrick Langston, The Ottawa Citizen
Sarah McVie plays the free-spirited Susan, a.k.a. Rita, in the Arts Court Production of Educating Rita. The ambitious production was made famous by the 1983 film of the same name starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters.
Sarah McVie plays the free-spirited Susan, a.k.a. Rita, in the Arts Court Production of Educating Rita. The ambitious production was made famous by the 1983 film of the same name starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters
Thanks to a summer fling, Ottawa actor Sarah McVie can breathe a little easier about her mortgage.
McVie plays the title role in Educating Rita, Willy Russell’s two-person comedy-with-a-dark-side opening today at Arts Court Theatre. The play launches Summer Fling — A Theatrical Affair!, the new performing arts festival running until Aug. 28 in downtown Ottawa. Consisting of nine shows in six venues, the festival is a joint effort between the Ottawa Arts Court Foundation and the Downtown Rideau Business Improvement Association.
For McVie, the gig means income during the summer, a normally fallow period for many in Ottawa’s professional theatre community. And since the 32-year-old recently bought a house — a brave move in a profession where bodies seriously outnumber paying roles and where McVie says she supports herself “with great difficulty” — the chance to play Rita is a good thing both financially and artistically.
Read more: Have a Summer Fling
Iron Maiden Ottawa Show Great Even Without The Classics
.jpg "Iron Maidon")
Rockstar Weekly, By Mike Elliot
When one of the largest grossing metal bands of all times decides to visit Ottawa, who am I to pass up an opportunity to see it right? That’s the reasoning in my mind when I pressed the submit button to purchase my tickets to Iron Maiden! My 20 year old son and I then ventured out to Ottawa Bluesfest to take in the show.
The opening act was Dream Theater. Their progressive metal is groove oriented and accentuates the theoretical and technical aspects of the metal genre. They were quite entertaining at the same time. It was obvious that they were having a great time, and the crowd seemed to love them. I don’t know a heck of a lot about them, but John Pretrucci is quite possibly the most accurate, and technical player I’ve ever witnessed.
Just before Iron Maiden hit the stage, we just happened to have made our way to the very front of the crowd. This was our first mistake. If you can imagine the most crowded concert you’ve ever been to, then triple the number of people, this was what we experienced. There was barely a few inches of my body that were not in contact with someone else’s body. We were sweaty, and everyone wanted into the same small area.
Read more: Iron Maiden Ottawa Show Great Even Without The Classics
Review: Arcade Fire plays with passion
By Lynn Saxberg, The Ottawa Citizen
Arcade Fire took to the MBNA Stage Tuesday July 13, 2010 during the 2010 Bluesfest held at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
OTTAWA-Arcade Fire’s first full-length, headlining show in Ottawa finally took place at Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest on Tuesday night, a long overdue affair that attracted close to 30,000 people.
Believe it or not, the indie Montreal band that rose to global superstardom a few years back has only played two concerts in the nation’s capital in recent memory: a Black Sheep Inn gig in 2004 and a 2005 opening slot for U2 at Scotiabank Place.
“We’re called the Arcade Fire, we’re from Montreal, Quebec, Canada,” declared singer Win Butler early in last night’s show, just in case anyone had forgotten about them. “We don’t know any blues songs.”
No problem.
Read more: Review: Arcade Fire plays with passion
Rock generations old and young collide at Bluesfest
Flaming Lips, Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson and Metric wow large crowd of 28,000
By Lynn Saxberg, The Ottawa Citizen
Two distinct generations of music fans flocked to Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest last night, making it the biggest crowd so far of the festival.
The boomers came to see Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson, while their offspring went bonkers over Metric. In all, organizers estimated the audience at 28,000 people.
Of course, at the top of the bill was the Flaming Lips, an alt-rock band that was expected to unite fans of all ages with their homage to a landmark classic-rock album, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
But that’s not how they started. The Oklahoma outfit began with a psychedelic interlude of noise and lights that gave frontman Wayne Coyne the time to install himself in a plastic bubble, inflate it and roll out over the first few rows of fans.
Read more: Rock generations old and young collide at Bluesfest
Social media helps fans sing praises of Bluesfest
Tech Now – Blues
ctvottawa.ca
Bluesfest is rocking the capital again, and while it is one of the top 10 music festivals in North America, it has also become a leader in how to use the web.
All the social media tools help fans make concert plans, and then once on site there is free wi-fi, live Twitter posts, location-based cell phone apps and more to help you.
Bluesfest may be all about the music but delivering the whole festival package is very much a web and social media exercise.
Steve Marriner is lead singer for Ottawa’s Monkey Junk band. He says running a band is a business, and you need to look after business.
That means being on YouTube, Facebook and other sites in order to reach as many fans as possible.
Read more: Social media helps fans sing praises of Bluesfest
Blues on wheels
Festival’s parking service a huge hit with cyclists
By Bruce Ward, The Ottawa Citizen
Electric guitars rule at Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest. But the sound that delights Charles Akben-Marchand is the ticking of wheels turning on an acoustic motorcycle — a bicycle, that is.
Akben-Marchand, former president of the advocacy group Citizens for Safe Cycling, oversees the bicycle parking compounds at Bluesfest. The two sites are at the far east end and far west end of Bluesfest along Wellington Street.
“We parked 566 bikes last night (Thursday) and we still had room in the east compound,” Akben-Marchand when interviewed last week.
The larger lot has parking space for 400 bicycles; the smaller can accommodate 200 bikes.
Read more: Blues on wheels
Melodious meal
Festival pairs classical quartet with high-end food and wine
By Ron Eade, The Ottawa Citizen
The Moscow String Quartet performs as part of the Music and Beyond festival ówhere classical music is paired with the menu and winesó at Juniper Kitchen and Wine Bar in Westboro on July 11, 2010.
It’s hardly novel to pair food and drink with music. That much plays out every day as upbeat ditties waft over the supermarket aisles while shoppers pick over lettuce, or a crooner sings old chestnuts in a darkened corner of a piano bar.
But choosing classical music to introduce each of six courses on a menu of haute cuisine — now, that has more lofty potential.
Which was exactly the plan Sunday at a unique sold-out performance of the Moscow String Quartet at Juniper Kitchen and Wine Bar, where chef/owner Richard Nigro created what may be Ottawa’s first six-course menu paired with vintage wines to accompany some sweet and savoury notes from timeless Russian masters.
Read more: Melodious meal
Educating Rita to kick off Summer Fling at Arts Court
Ottawa Tonight, by Andrew Snowdon
A little over a week ago, the wrought-iron fence surrounding Arts Court was a solid mass of posters promoting Ottawa Fringe Festival shows. Today, all that’s left are strands of packing tape flapping in the wind.
Despite appearances, however, evening theatre in the area is far from over for the summer.
In Willy Russell’s Educating Rita, a classic comedy with a melancholy tinge, Director Kate Hurman puts veteran actor John Koensgen (fresh from his role in the well-received Great Canadian Theatre Company production of Heroes) opposite Sarah McVie (a Stratford Festival fixture and herself a veteran of GCTC productions Zadie’s Shoes, Swollen Tongues, and The Man from the Capital). The plot revolves around the developing interpersonal relationship between Rita (McVie), a young hairdresser from Liverpool who decides to take an Open University course, and her tutor, Frank (Koensgen), a jaded, embittered professor.
Read more: Educating Rita to kick off Summer Fling at Arts Court
Bluesfest market stage a hit
By AEDAN HELMER, Ottawa Sun
A $1.5-million federal stimulus grant is what helped make the Byward market Pop Life stage possible but future funding is far from guaranteed.
Tuesday night’s performance by blues legend Taj Mahal could be the last chance to take advantage of Ottawa Bluesfest’s free slate of programming, despite the resounding thumbs up the Pop Life stage has received by music lovers, festival organizers and the business community.
For the last two years, Bluesfest audiences have spilled over the bustling Lebreton Flats festival grounds and into the Byward Market, where the Pop Life stage resides on York St.
But this year’s edition was made possible primarily by a $1.5-million federal stimulus grant through the Marquee Tourism Events Program, and future funding is far from guaranteed.
Read more: Bluesfest market stage a hit
- 3 May:
- 4 May:
- 11 May:
- 24 May:
- 30 May:
- 1 June:
- 2 June:
- 5 June:
- 7 June:
