Things have been pretty tumultuous for the last few months. We took If Cows Could Fly to Ottawa in February/March, with great success. Cows will be at the Ashkenaz festival in Harbourfront August 31 and September 1.
The big news (most people know this already) is that Judith and I have moved to Hamilton, to a big lovely house with enough room to rehearse a whole show in the living room! Just recently, we formed an alliance with another couple just as crazy as we are called Gary Santucci and Barbara Milne. They bought an old factory building and have turned it into a theatre and gallery. (Sound familiar?) They asked us to join them, and we figured that we should combine forces against the creeping meatball. So Artword is now at The Pearl Company on Steven Street in Hamilton, and we have an ambitious program planned for the coming year!
And what with keeping Artwordlist up to date, I haven't had much time for my Blog. This will change! (I know, you've heard that before.)
The thing is, I have all sorts of great pictures of events we've attended. So I'm going to start backfilling the past with what I should have been covering at the time. In the spirit of full disclosure, however, I'm telling you in advance that I'm doing it now, not then.
Kleztory is one of the two or three top Klezmer Ensembles in Canada. Based in Montreal, they have an international reputation — well deserved. There music is polished and tightly arranged, and very respectful of the tradition. They forgo the undisciplined crazyness that is sometimes thought to characterize the Klezmer revival. Perhaps that’s why they get asked to play and record with symphony orchestras and classical ensembles, such as I Musici de Montreal. More »
Wacky and elegant: two qualities that are not generally associated. And yet, Friday’s art crawl saw the two hand-in-hand more than once.
Brian Kelly’s sculptures, at the You Me gallery on James Street North, are free-standing assemblages of cast-off objects. They are high-spirited, witty, whimsical — all of that. And yet, something more. Let your eye draw away from the detail, and each melange of random objects resolves into a structure that’s graceful and pleasing to the eye. More »
Went to a meeting last night ( July 9) on the third floor of the Police Station on King William Street, across from Theatre Aquarius. It seems that a group of arts-lovers, including some civic planners, involved citizens and Arts Hamilton, are excited about the idea of transforming a portion of King William Street into an Art Walk. More »
Campbellville is a quiet little community just up and over from Hamilton on the Guelph Line. In fact, Campbellville’s Main Street is the Guelph Line, which obligingly changes its name for a few blocks.
We piled in the car in the blazing afternoon to see David Morris do his interpretation of Robert Land, Hamilton’s first settler. The performance took place at the bottom of a gentle slope by the river. More »
Hamilton’s “It’s Your Festival” Festival is held at Gage Park over the Canada Day weekend (June 27 to July 1). Multiculturalism is the theme.
We were there for a couple of hours, and didn’t see any of the feature entertainers at the bandshell, so my perspective is somewhat limited.
However, my overall impression is of a festival that is going through the motions. More »
June 28, Landsdale Area Neighbourhood Association declared a cleanup day in J.C. Beemer Park and three churches in the neighbourhood. There was supposed to be a yard sale, and Judith and I planned to rent a table and get rid of some stuff. But at 2 a.m., there was a ferocious thunderstorm and in the morning a dreary, socked-in rain. So the tables were cancelled, but the cleanup went on Judith and I helped a classy and indefatigable woman named Bea weed and plant the garden at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian on Tisdale. Afterwards, we had classic hot dogs, just like at the CNE in my childhood, at J.C. Beemer Park. More »
We arrived rather late in the afternoon to catch the last couple of traditional dances in the Aboriginal Pow Wow in Gage Park. The sun was shining, the singing and drumming were hypnotic and inspiring.
I was impressed with the commitment of the people who had organized the festival. At the end, there was a long exercise of persuading everyone who had helped to assemble and be thanked. Then there was the ceremony of retiring the flags: we were asked to stand and men were asked to remove their hats. Dignity and dedication.
The Turkish Festival was smaller than some, but made up for it in enthusiam, particularly the spontaneous dancing in front of the bandshell stage. Almost all the speech from the stage was in Arabic, so it wasn’t clear what was going on, but we enjoyed it all anyhow. There was a somewhat strange (to our untutored eyes) children’s dance involving plates on heads. More »
Is anyone (everyone?) getting tired of the postmodern opera design at the COC? Last night, at Pelleus and Mélisande, I couldn’t make sense of it at all. The sets were visually striking, but I couldn’t make them resolve into anything that related to the opera. There is a great high structure, something like a wooden ocean-front pier. Down below, there is shiny tin-foil that never becomes anything else. Six Home Depot lighting fixtures hang over the pier (from the sky?) When Mélisande drops her ring down the well, there’s no well. Just a manhole cover up on the pier that she lifts up, with Pelleus down below. More »
Sunday afternoon, May 4, Rachel Mercer plays all six solo cello suites by Bach in the YouMe gallery on James Street North. She plays superbly, on a nineteenth-century cello with rich, warm low notes that send shivers. Twenty-thirty people listen attentively, reverently.
This is Hamilton. Shhh. Let’s not tell Toronto. They’ll just come blundering in with their high heels, and shrill voices.
Listen. She’s starting the next one.
Ron & Judith's reviews and views.