Big weekend for Ottawa festivals
By AEDAN HELMER, QMI Agency
Okay, music lovers of the nation’s capital. You’ve had a good five days now to rest up, give your ear drums a break, sleep off that hangover and soothe that sunburn.
Between the Jazz Festival, HOPE Summerfest, Music and Beyond, and Bluesfest, it’s been a solid month of nightly live music, but there’s no rest for the weary in Ottawa’s festival season.
Country music lovers will soon get their day in the sun with Carleton Place’s Riverside Jam (July 30 to Aug. 1). The inaugural Capital Hoedown (Aug. 5 to 7) just over the horizon and the countdown is on for family-favourite Folk Festival (Aug. 13 to 15), but in the meantime, the weekend has plenty to offer on a crowded festival calendar.
Classical music lovers, from the casual to the aficionado, will delight in a double helping of orchestral and chamber music, with Saturday’s launch of the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival and with Orchestras in the Park already in full swing at Lebreton Flats.
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Folk Festival fills out its main stage, headline lineup
Arrested Development, Calexico, Jim Cuddy Band among top attractions
By AEDAN HELMER, Ottawa Sun
The Jim Cuddy Band is among the headliners for this year’s Ottawa Folk Festival at Britannia Park. (Ottawa Sun file photo)
The Ottawa Folk Festival has put the finishing touches on its evening schedule, which includes headliners Arrested Development, Calexico, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and The Jim Cuddy Band.
The full evening schedule for three-day festival, from Aug. 13 to 15 at Britannia Park, is available online now at ottawafolk.org, with a full daytime schedule to be announced next week.
The festival’s opening night is headlined by alt hip hop collective Arrested Development, perhaps not the first name that comes to mind when you think “folk fest,” but the fusion artists cap an already eclectic opening day.
Keeping with festival tradition, Ottawa’s Folka Voca choir kicks off main stage festivities on Friday after the 6 p.m. opening ceremony, followed by folk troubadour Jon Brooks.
Local indie darlings The Acorn are up next promoting their latest soft-spun No Ghost release, followed by Toronto roots orchestra Rock Plaza Central.
Read more: Folk Festival fills out its main stage, headline lineup
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
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.
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Rush on epic journey
Prog power trio takes trip through time
By AEDAN HELMER, Ottawa Sun
On Stick it Out, from 1993’s Counterparts, Rush frontman Geddy Lee sings in his trademark faux falsetto, “Don’t swallow your pride, stick it out.”
It seems the band has been living by that creed, sticking it out through the better part of four decades.
And love ’em or lump ’em — and it seems there’s no real in-between — there can be no denying Rush has ascended to the heights of Canadian rock royalty.
With an odd mix of progressive metal sensibilities and out there sci-fi lyrics, most penned by drummer Neil Peart, the prog power trio has become a worldwide phenomenon.
The Canadian Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famers have 24 gold records to their credit, an incredible run since their 1974 debut with album sales that have them ranked third all-time — behind only the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — in consecutive gold records for a rock band.
Read more: Rush on epic journey
