(416)
677-5883
langfieldent@rogers.com
www.langfieldentertainment.com
LE
NEWSLETTER
February 7, 2008
Another storm hits Toronto ... at times like this, I'm glad that
I live downtown to avoid the massive accumulations!
One week left to get your tickets for Andrew Craig's Valentine's concert
entitled Celebrate Love - a special night out with your special someone! Log into
www.celebratelove.ca and get a taste of what the show will be like.
Two amazing nights of entertainment is on its way to Toronto at Sony Centre -
Richard Loring’s African Footprint at the Sony
Centre coming in early February! Also, mark those calendars now for when
the renowned Harlem Gospel Choir hits the stage!
Now there's the cue to you - take your time and take a walk into your weekly
entertainment news!
::HOT EVENTS::
Richard Loring’s African Footprint – February 7-9, 2008
Source: Sony
Centre for the Performing Arts
African Footprint combines dance and song in an
incredible 90 minute spectacle. The show melds the hypnotic heartbeat of the
African drum, with the soulful saxophone and the haunting pennywhistle,
marrying Afro- and Euro-centric music and dance to create an exhilarating
series of numbers featuring Kwela-jive, traditional gumboot, tap, contemporary
ballet and hip-hop pantsula! African Footprint is so entertaining that
critics have dubbed the show “the Riverdance of Africa”. Yet by structuring the
show around the poetry of Don Mattera, South Africa’s foremost poet, African
Footprint also makes an important and emotional commentary on how Africa
can heal the past and reach the hopes and dreams of the future.
In 1999, Richard Loring, television and theatre star and show producer,
recruited a group of young people from the dusty streets of Soweto. From
hundreds of hopefuls, only 30 young aspiring performers were chosen. The next
year was taken up with vocal classes and intensive dance instruction which, for
most of these youngsters, was their first opportunity to enter the world of
professional theater. Seemingly going nowhere, the long hours of rehearsal were
rewarded when, on December 31st 1999, African Footprint was invited to perform
before Nelson Mandela in Block B on Robben Island, the very place where South
Africa’s leader had been a prisoner for some 18 years. The result was an
explosive and emotional performance televised around the world and seen by over
250 million viewers. This is how the journey began…
GET A SNEAK PEEK ONLINE!
“Don’t miss this hugely successful show!”
- Atlantic Sun, South Africa
“African Footprint is to South Africa what Riverdance is to
the Irish and Stomp is to the Brits!”
- Entertainment iafrica.com, South Africa
“A night of amazement!”
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany
“A show of polished gold!”
- Newcastle Herald, Australia
“Run to get tickets to this exhilarating spectacle!”
- Times Picayune
FEBRUARY 7-9, 2008
RICHARD LORING'S AFRICAN FOOTPRINT
The Sony Centre For The Performing Arts
1 Front Street East
Tickets: $25 to $75
Buy Tickets HERE
Performance times:
Thursday February 7 @ 1PM (Special Senior’s Price $25!*)
Thursday February 7 @ 8PM
Friday February 8 @ 8PM
Saturday February 9 @ 2PM
Saturday February 9 @ 8PM
*Some conditions apply. Service charge applicable.
For tickets: www.ticketmaster.ca or
(416)872-2262
For group tickets, call (416)393-7463 or 1-866-737-0805
Celebrate Love – Thursday,
February 14, 2008
Source: Andrew Craig
You’ve made all the plans for the perfect Valentine’s Day. You’ve
reserved your favourite table at your
favourite restaurant. You have the flowers, the chocolates, the card, the gift.
The limousine picks you both up after work, and you slip across town to dine. Once
you arrive at the restaurant, everything is perfect: the ambience, the food,
the wine, the conversation. You decide to top off a sumptuous meal with a
decadent dessert and coffee.
It’s only 7:30 p.m. Now what? It’s too early to retire to the bedroom, and yet
you don’t want the magic to end. What to do?
It’s time to Celebrate Love!
Celebrate Love is, simply put, an evening of the world’s greatest
love songs, sung by some of
Canada’s greatest voices, accompanied by top-flight musicians. Celebrate Love
is the brainchild of musician, producer, broadcaster and impresario Andrew
Craig, and is the realization of a decade-old dream: to create a
Valentine’s Day event so compelling and beautiful that it would draw fans back
year after year.
Molly Johnson, Canada’s first lady of jazz, headlines a stellar cast of
vocalists, including Kellylee Evans (the 2007 Canadian Smooth Jazz
Awards Female Vocalist of the Year), rising star DK Ibomeka,
Indo-Canadian vocal sensation Kiran Ahluwalila, and Mary Jane Lamond,
Canada’s preeminent interpreter of Gaelic songs from the East Coast. Add to
this mix some of Toronto’s finest emerging vocal talents, the exquisite sounds
of the Toronto-based cello quartet Lush, and the Celebrate Love
Orchestra, and the result is magical.
Don’t think this show is just for couples! Featuring a unique blend of classic
popular songs, rare musical gems from across the planet, poetry and
reflections, Celebrate Love is the perfect Valentine’s Day activity for people
in all stages of love: from new love, to unrequited love, to jilted love, to
old love, to true love.
Andrew Craig first produced Celebrate Love as a proof-of-concept show in 2004,
in Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre. Despite minimal advertising, the show
sold-out completely, and patrons anxious to get in caused a major traffic jam
at Bloor and Avenue Rd!
Audience response to Celebrate Love was overwhelmingly positive. Here are but a
few quotes from ecstatic attendees:
“Congratulations on an outstanding
performance. Wow! We were totally blown away. The music selection, the
individual vocal performances, the tremendous musicians, lighting, sound, and
an enthusiastic audience just spoke volumes about the true heart of Canadian
music.” - K.S., Toronto
“I want to say that last night was FANTASTIC 10 out of 10, please do it
again, Toronto missed the best show in town, if you do the same as last night
you will have triple as you did last night.” - J.A., Toronto
“Celebrate Love - WOW! I attended Saturday night’s show...and was blown
away. Andrew Craig...remarkable job. The mix and choice of music and culture
and diversity beautifully represented the Toronto scene.” - R.T., Toronto
“Amazing Valentines Performance! Thank you so much for making our 9th
Valentines together so special.” - S.T., Toronto
“I was at the "Celebrate Love" concert on Saturday, February
14. It was one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to (and I've been
to quite a few concerts).” - I.D., Toronto
“What a great show! The last time I left a show feeling that good was when
I saw Luther Vandross and the Voices of Blackness at Maple Leaf Gardens. Keep
up the great work!” - C.P., Toronto
Celebrate Love 2008 promises to be even bigger
and better. There simply is no better place to be this Valentine’s Day than The
Music Hall.
Log into www.celebratelove.ca and get a taste of what the show will be like.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2008
Celebrate Love: An Evening of the
World’s Greatest Love Songs
The Music Hall
147 Danforth Ave., east of Broadview
8:00 p.m.
$50
Click HERE
to purchase tickets
Members of Harlem Gospel Choir -
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Source: Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
The world famous Harlem Gospel Choir is one of the
pre-eminent gospel choirs in the world. It travels the globe, sharing its joy
of faith through its music, & raising funds for children's charities. The
Choir was founded in 1986 by Allen Bailey, who got the idea for the Choir while
attending a celebration in honour of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the
renowned Cotton Club in Harlem. The Choir presents the finest singers and
musicians from Harlem's Black Churches.
The Harlem Gospel Choir has shared its message of love, peace and harmony with
thousands of people from various nations, backgrounds, and cultures. The Choir
strives to make the world a more loving and peaceful place, and through its
music and dynamic performances creates a better understanding of the African-American
culture and the inspirational music called Gospel as it relates to the Black
Church. The theme of every performance is bringing
people & nations together & giving something back. The
Choir's songs of gospel and inspiration will touch the depths of your soul and
raise your spirits to angelic heights.
Click on the songs below to hear a clip!
“Perfect
Praise”
“O
Happy Day”
“They blended the groovy with the sassy, the funky with the sweet… all the
singers were strong both in solo and in harmony.”
The Herald Sun, Melbourne
“I feel truly blessed. Thank you for the tribute”
Nelson Mandela
“Joyous music that spreads its infectious and irresistible message of
celebration of the human spirit”
Newcastle Herald, Australia
“Run to get tickets to this exhilarating spectacle!”
Times Picayune
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2008
MEMBERS OF HARLEM GOSPEL CHOIR
The Sony Centre For The
Performing Arts
1 Front Street East
8:00 PM
For tickets: www.ticketmaster.ca or
(416)872-2262
For group tickets, call (416)393-7463 or 1-866-737-0805
Click HERE
to buy now!
::TOP STORIES::
Russell Peters to Host 2008 JUNO Awards airing April 6 on CTV
Source: 2008 Juno Awards
(February 5, 2008) Toronto, ON –
Internationally renowned
comedian Russell Peters will host The 2008 JUNO Awards
broadcast, CTV and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS)
confirmed today. The announcement was made by Susanne Boyce, President,
Creative, Content and Channels, CTV Inc., during the JUNO Award Nominees
Announcement in Toronto. The 2008 JUNO Awards will air Sunday, April 6
on CTV from the Pengrowth Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta.
Peters returns to the network that broadcast his 2003 CTV Comedy Now!
special which propelled him into an international phenomenon when it was posted
anonymously on the internet and made its way around the globe. The Brampton,
Ontario native now sells out theatres and arenas around the world including
England, Australia, Singapore and Dubai – and last week became one of only a
handful of comedians to ever headline and sell-out New York City's Madison
Square Garden. In June, 2007, Peters became the first comedian to sell-out
Toronto's Air Canada Centre, performing to over 30,000 fans over two nights.
Later this month, Peters is scheduled to perform before a sold-out audience at
the Sydney Opera House.
"I'm excited to be hosting The Juno Awards - a show which I never
would have watched...until now," said Peters.
**Media Note** Download photos of Russell Peters at ctvmedia.ca.
Peters has made his reputation by speaking to immigrant communities – Indian,
Arab, Caribbean, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, and other South and
Southeast Asian audiences around the world. He's performed in China, South
Africa, Australia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Jamaica, St. Maarten, Trinidad,
Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. In 2007, he was the first North
American comic to tour India. During his recent tour of Dubai, tickets sold at
a rate of one ticket every two seconds, eventually crashing the computer
systems and causing near riots at ticket outlets.
"The 2008 JUNO Awards is a national television homecoming for this
multi-talented comedian who has taken the world by storm," said Susanne
Boyce, President, Creative, Content and Channels, CTV Inc. "He's a huge
‘get' and we know he will bring a whole new element to the broadcast."
"The JUNO Awards is thrilled to have Russell Peters join the
growing list of talented Canadians who have hosted the show over the
years," said Melanie Berry, President of CARAS and an Executive Producer
of the broadcast.
"Meshing the best in music and Russell's comedic flavour will make for one
of the most entertaining celebrations of Canadian music."
In December, 2007, Peters landed a deal to develop his own sitcom for FOX. The
new project will be based on his own family. "Basically, it's a snapshot
of my family 10 years ago. My brother and I are both still living at home with
our parents," said Peters. "I come from a working-class South Asian
family and this show is about exactly that."
Recently voted the No. 1 fan favourite performer of the past 25 years at
Montreal's Just for Laughs Festival, Peters has been doing stand-up comedy for
18 years and has built an impressive body of work. He has been featured at
Montreal's Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival, the
Edinburgh Comedy Festival and many others across the globe.
Peters has been nominated for four Gemini Awards. His TV appearances include
two, one-hour Comedy Now! specials on CTV and The Comedy Network as well
as CBC's Comics! He had a recurring role in the Gemini-nominated
Canadian sitcom Lord Have Mercy! and hosted his own BBC chat show Network
East Late, where he interviewed both South Asian and mainstream artists and
personalities. His movie credits include the comedy Quarter Life Crisis,
My Baby's Daddy and the martial arts flick Tiger Claws III.
Peters' current DVD and CD, Outsourced, was taped before a sold-out
audience at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco and has gone ten-times
platinum in Canada. YouTube videos of his comedy segments have been seen by
over seven million individual viewers. His website, www.russellpeters.com,
gets over 10,000 hits a day.
Broadcast in High-Definition and 5.1 Surround Sound, The 2008 JUNO Awards,
Canada's Music Awards, will be broadcast for the seventh year in a row on CTV
on Sunday, April 6 from the Pengrowth Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta. Previous
hosts of The JUNO Awards include Nelly Furtado in Saskatoon (2007),
Pamela Anderson in Halifax (2006), Brent Butt in Winnipeg (2005), Alanis
Morissette in Edmonton (2004), Shania Twain in Ottawa (2003) and Barenaked
Ladies in St. John's (2002).
The 2008 JUNO Awards is produced by Insight Productions in association
with CTV and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS).
Executive producers are John Brunton and Barbara Bowlby for Insight
Productions, and Melanie Berry and Stephen Stohn for CARAS. Louise Wood is
Producer and Lindsay Cox is Supervising Producer. Ed Robinson is Executive
Vice-President Programming, CTV. Susanne Boyce is President, Creative, Content
and Channels, CTV Inc.
Broadcast sponsors of The 2008 JUNO Awards are Rogers, Doritos, Pontiac
and TD Canada Trust.
Sponsors of The 2008 JUNO Awards include FACTOR, Canada's Private Radio
Broadcasters and the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian
Heritage's "Canada Music Fund", The Government of Alberta, The City
of Calgary, Tourism Calgary, Calgary Arts Development and Radio Starmaker Fund.
k.d. lang, A Musician And A Soul
Transformed
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com
- Robert Everett-Green
(February 01, 2008) LOS ANGELES
— At the end of k.d.
lang's sparse living room in the Hollywood
Hills,
there's a large black and white nude portrait by the American photographer
Joel-Peter Witkin, known for his interest in people with unusual bodies. From a
distance, the subject looked to me like a proud and beautiful Hispanic woman,
gazing straight at the camera with her hand resting on a Chihuahua. It was only
when I was standing almost right in front of it that I noticed that Witkin's
model had a penis.
“Women tend to see a woman, and men tend to see a man,” lang told me, about
the usual response from her visitors. She sees something else: a reminder of
her late friend Herb Ritts, who owned the photograph (it has, she noted, a
personal tribute from Witkin on the back) and who made what is still the most
famous image of lang, sitting in drag in a barber's chair on the cover of
Vanity Fair, being shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford. That 1993 photo, which
brought “lesbian chic” into the mainstream, also challenged you to decide what
you were seeing and to draw the line (or not) between artifice and reality.
There wasn't much artifice apparent in Lang's comfortable yet simple home near
Laurel Canyon. The Spartan main rooms were furnished with low seats and long
tables of seasoned wood that accentuate the horizontal. It was recognizably the
home of someone who grew up on the Alberta prairie, as she pointed out. Beyond
the window of the cozy tile and wood kitchen, the warm January sun shone
through the leaves of the young bamboo shooting up from where the land fell
away beneath the plain narrow porch.
She bought the house knowing that it had been a cottage getaway for Rock
Hudson, who found the relative
isolation good for concealing the side of his personal life that Hollywood
couldn't publicly accept. But whatever frisson she felt at moving into the
former pleasure pad of a reluctant gay icon has given way to an appreciation
for the natural serenity of the place.
“I write lyrics here sometimes,” she said, tapping the weathered wooden
surface of the kitchen table where we were sitting, as she tried to decide
whether she needed to eat something before her afternoon rehearsal.
At 46, she's stockier than the willowy androgyne who became a star 16 years
ago, and in repose her patient, high-cheeked face could be that of someone who
spent her whole life on the land, far from the speed and glamour of Hollywood.
She poured us some tea and told me about a kind of strong Tibetan infusion
laced with salt, sugar and water-buffalo milk – the perfect ingredients, she
said, to keep you going during a meditation retreat.
Happily ensconced with her two dogs and her partner of six years, deep in the
Tibetan Buddhist practice that she began in 2001, lang has managed to stay in
the public eye and even raise her profile without touring or putting out any
new music since Invincible Summer appeared nearly
eight years ago. She has done a Grammy-winning duets album with Tony Bennett ( A Wonderful World), reissued some of her early cowpunk
stuff ( Reintarnation) and made a covers album of
great Canadian songs ( Hymns of the 49th Parallel).
And now, rather suddenly, a record of good new songs called Watershed is about to shake up her peacefully
ordered life.
The word “watershed” often refers metaphorically to a defining moment, but in
geology it literally has to do with a gathering together of the runoff from a
wide area latticed with rivers and streams. It took lang six years to write,
record and produce the songs for the album, she said, but far longer for the
ideas, feelings and experiences behind them to trickle into her consciousness
in a form she could express.
“ Watershed is sort of the culmination of the past 25
years of my life,” she said. “It's a self-examining record. It's really looking
at the effects of my being in the world, and of my contribution in the
universe. … I love the metaphor of how water always finds its way around
obstacles. And I like trying to apply that to your everyday life – of seeing
obstacles, and rather than turn away and say, ‘Can't be done,' or ‘I'm too
afraid,' find a natural way around them.”
It sounded like common sense, or the wisdom that comes with age. But I could
hear something else in it, echoes of things that have come up in my own
concurrent practice of Zen Buddhism, in which a simple phrase such as “cause
and effect” means a great deal more than Newton imagined. Much of our
conversation, in Los Angeles and Toronto, ran on two planes simultaneously, the
one having to do with straightforward actions and perceptions, the other
resonant with meanings that only start to infiltrate your life when you've spent
a lot of time in meditation.
Twenty-five years is the span of Lang's entire career, from her early days as a
brash small-town girl with a big voice and bigger ambitions, through her
breakthrough to fame and notoriety in the early nineties, to her present status
as (among other things) a great interpreter of other people's songs. She
basically got what she wanted, in worldly terms, and found it wanting. The
woman I met in L.A. was after something much more essential, and had already
been transformed by the search.
Hearing her talk about a record in terms of her whole existence, I couldn't
help but recall a conversation with her eight years ago, when she told me that Invincible Summer was meant to be “like the soundtrack
for Charlie's Angels, like easy-listening music with
synthesizers thrown in.” I remember thinking at the time how glib and
product-minded that description was. I knew she would never talk about Watershed that way, because although it's still about
everyday experiences of love, doubt and endurance, her view of these things has
become much more panoramic. Clearly she has travelled a long way in eight
years, and much of the journey has been inside herself.
The smell of paint in the air
Her SUV crept out from behind the high wooden gate, and then we turned down the
hill and sped away toward Burbank, where her new band was already setting up at
a sprawling complex of music studios. This is another kind of watershed for
her: getting to know a new group of musicians, after playing with the same people
for two decades.
“They all play a thousand things, and they're very gung ho about everything,”
she said about the new group. “They don't have this self-consciousness about it
all.” They also don't really know her taste yet, not like the mostly Canadian
players (including guitarists Ben Mink and Greg Leisz, bassist David Piltch and
pianist Teddy Borowiecki) who have played with her for years and co-wrote most
of the new record with her, and who regard her “like a sister,” as Mink put it.
Those players have too many other commitments to go on the road with her.
“I think it's the end of an era,” she said, “because I want to take these new
guys and make them, you know, my guys.”
We passed through a level strip of blue-collar shops and industrial buildings.
“I love this part of L.A.,” she said. “It reminds me of Edmonton,” one of her
two favourite Canadian cities (the other is Saskatoon). She has lived in L.A.
for 16 years, loves its energy and its privacy, but she still responds in ways
that are all about the Alberta environments where she grew up: Consort, a tiny
town in the southeastern part of the province where she started singing; Red
Deer, where she went to art college and became a musician/performance artist;
and Edmonton, where she learned to love big, wild rivers and refined her first
incarnation as an eccentric country singer.
She began painting when she was 21 and maintains a studio over a fried-chicken
joint at a busy L.A. intersection. Her abstract-expressionist canvases, which
she exhibits mostly in her dining room, are closely related to her songwriting
process.
“I do a lot of painting before and during a record,” she said. “It's kind of
like a portal into what I'm thinking. It's a lot easier to put a daub of paint
on a canvas that it is to put ink or a word on paper. A word is such a big
commitment, and paint is so naive and childlike.” Much of the new album was
made with the smell of paint in the air.
We reached the Burbank studio, a square, high-ceilinged black room with piles
of gear and five lean, eager-looking guys picking over riffs and trying out
harmonies. They've been learning lang's new songs and some compatible old ones
from her recordings, but she's also gradually giving them licence to take the
tunes in other directions.
They started with a swinging version of A Kiss To Build a
Dream On, a Kalmar/Ruby classic from her duets disc with Tony Bennett. They
spent a lot of time working out the timing and texture of the last line, which
lang delivered out of tempo, pushing the microphone back and leaning away as
she went for the full-voice conclusion. She looked totally relaxed, sitting on
a stool in a rumpled pale-blue western shirt and pants, her short hair looking
as if she had dried it that morning with a couple of swift scuffs of the towel.
But she homed in relentlessly on the feeling she wanted the song to have and
worked the details till they felt natural.
“I like to get everything so you're not thinking,” she told the players.
“Thinking's overrated.”
They did Smoke Rings, a song from Drag, her sultry 1997 album of songs about the eros of
smoking. Smiles slowly crept across the faces of the band members as they
backed her up vocally in the soft-shoe chorus: “Puff … puff … puff … silky
little rings.” She showed them how to keep the initial consonants from
exploding on the mike, asked the drummer to make the triplets a little clearer
and told the bassist to keep his quarter-notes striding through the verses. It
sounded great, and I felt strange sitting silent at the end, instead of
applauding.
But lang wasn't quite satisfied, because she was already thinking about where
this song might fit in the set list for her Watershed tour,
which includes 12 theatre dates across central and western Canada (starting at
the National Arts Centre on May 24). She was worried that the song had too much
in common with A Kiss for the two to go together. She
asked for a vote, and even I got a say. Smoke Rings
won, but she didn't seem convinced. Part of her was still ready to experiment –
during Western Stars, she asked her Brazilian
guitarist to work up a Portuguese spoken-word verse – but she was also trying
to coax things toward a final sequence for concerts that were already playing
in her mind. By the break, she had changed her mind twice about whether to open
with I Dream of Spring, the big, stylistically
evasive song that opens Watershed, or with a more
subdued, bossa-based tune called Upstream.
“I feel there's a really strong momentum with this record, and part of me feels
really excited by that,” she told me. “But part of me is also thinking, ‘What
am I doing?' Because it's such a lot of work to carry it through.”
Finding her voice
Three years ago, k.d. lang sang two songs on the live Juno Awards broadcast
from Winnipeg: Neil Young's Helpless and Leonard
Cohen's Hallelujah. Pacing over the shiny stage in
bare feet and a robe-like dark outfit, lang single-handedly changed the tone of
the event, from a flashy awards show to an encounter with a kind of truth
that's rare in the age of reality TV. We always knew she was a great singer,
but those performances confronted a wide audience with the news that she had
moved to an entirely new level. The next day, copies of Hymns
of the 49th Parallel, which includes lang's studio performance of those
songs and other Canadian classics, began flying out of record stores.
Recording those songs, and the Tin Pan Alley numbers she did with Tony Bennett,
was a kind of tutorial in songwriting, she told me. It showed her what a song
could and should do, and renewed her interest in writing songs that had that
same flow and finish, and yet that would have more to do with her life and
personality.
“A lot of things came very clear to me when I did the Hymns
record,” she said. “I thought a lot about where I grew up, and about how the
Canadian Prairies inform my voice and my taste and my basic nature, which is
pretty minimal. That environment is basically just two things, earth and sky. …
“It was kind of an ominous challenge to try to write after experiencing those
songs as a singer,” she said. “But writing and interpretation feed off each
other for me. Interpretation is a chance to let someone else's emotions flow
through me, and I can build on the characterization, or the subtext or the
narrative of it. Songwriting is more like a bridge between my voice and my
personality. It gives me a chance to exercise my more alternative nature, which
my voice doesn't seem to be able to do naturally. … In some ways, my voice is
more conservative than my personality. My taste is a lot more indie than my
voice is.”
Much of her early career was about figuring out how to let the voice do what it
did best without sacrificing her own character. She worshipped Patsy Cline and
Anne Murray, both of them smooth mainstream musicians, but she wrote rockabilly
songs and cultivated a rambunctious cowpunk image. She brought an ironic,
art-school sensibility to country music, but she also revelled in the
plain-folks directness of Loretta Lynn and George Jones.
Ingénue, her breakout album of 1992, sheared off the rough edges of her
music and her image, and ushered in the yearning, torchy pop that made her a
star (the single Constant Craving hit No. 2 on the
U.S. charts). That was the first real watershed in her career and marked a
permanent shift in her singing style.
“The biggest change was from cowpunk to Ingénue,”
said Mink, who has written and performed with lang almost since the beginning
and who calls her the greatest pop singer ever. “Vocally, she doesn't blow hard
any more. She doesn't open the jets, except sometimes on the long notes.”
Her development as a singer has all been about working the details and pruning
out things that she regards as inessential. That live Hallelujah
performance from 2005, which is still on YouTube, sounds dead simple, but
it's the kind of simplicity it takes a lot of effort, attention and experience
to achieve.
“It's been a lifelong journey to tame my voice or to refine it,” she said, “to
use my vibrato less and less, or in more subtle ways, and to use volume and
ornamentation less, and to simplify things and get to the pith of something.”
The same drive to distill the thought and the statement comes through in the
new songs, because ultimately the voice and the song have to become one.
“I don't write songs for the sake of writing,” she said. “I write for myself as
a singer.”
Some of the writing and making of Watershed happened
very casually, like a game that had tangible results. She worked at home or in
her painting studio, recording to her computer whenever she felt like it,
without having to worry about how fast the meter was running. She became the
record's producer (her first time in that role) in part because the whole
process was so available to her.
“ Watershed is sort of genre-less, the way I really
hear music,” she said. That's also the way she'd prefer to be heard: as a
singer without any fixed stylistic address. She's one of the few pop singers
today who might please your grandmother (with the Bennett duets disc) and your
niece (with the cowpunk anthology Reintarnation).
Jealous Dog, the seriocomic country song at the end of Watershed, first started to form at her kitchen table.
She was there with Piltch, who has played bass with her for 20 years and who
co-wrote four other songs on the album.
“It was like playing around the campfire,” Piltch said. “It started from this
funny little guitar she has that sounds like a banjo and it came together very
fast. We weren't set up to work at her house, so we had to rush down to the
studio to record the base tracks before we forgot, because neither of us can
actually write [music notation]. That song could easily have disappeared.” Her
first take is the one heard on the record, with the fan from the chicken joint
humming faintly in the background. She was keen to get as many early
impressions on the album as possible, in the belief that the first, most
instinctive takes were probably closest to the essence of the songs.
“She's a very sensitive, childlike person,” Mink said. “I think she retains a
lot of qualities an artist needs to be an artist, and they're mostly childlike
qualities.” Interestingly, lang used similar terms to describe her working
process with Piltch.
“David and I are sort of naive and childlike in the way that we write,” she
said. “We're both kind of retarded, in a good way. We don't take ourselves very
seriously and we don't edit ourselves in front of each other.”
The lyrics gave her the most trouble, as they always do, it being “such a big
commitment” to put a word on a page. That became even more the case as she
tried to write songs that somehow reflected the spiritual changes in her life,
but that didn't sound like a Buddhist speaking only to the like-minded.
“I'm sure you've experienced that when you practice [Buddhism], it completely
informs your whole consciousness,” she said. “But it was hard to write about
what was going on with me, so that it wouldn't turn out like ‘spin, spin the
dharma wheel.' But then it started to become very, very easy. Rumi said, ‘You
are not God's mouthpiece.' I'm just writing my life through my new philosophy,
though I've always, always thought of myself as a Buddhist.”
Shadow and the Frame, a slow ballad written with Borowiecki, is “a
meditation on karma,” she said. “It's about all the things you think and do and
say, and how you think maybe your actions go unnoticed, or you think there are
maybe no repercussions to some of the things you've done, but they're actually
woven into the fabric of who you are. You and your actions are exactly the same
thing. You embody your thoughts and your actions, and there's no separation.”
But you can get something from the song without hearing it as a description of
how she passed from unease with her own life to a relationship with a very
colourful and ancient religious tradition. The plain Christian churches of
rural Alberta always seemed alien to her (they get a knock in Jealous Dog), but a Tibetan Buddhist temple feels to her
like home.
She connected with it in a formal way when she met Lama Chodak Gyatso Nubpa, an
associate of the Dalai Lama who leads a Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist centre in L.A.
Lang now sits on the centre's board, is involved with plans to build a large
monastery north of the city and goes on meditation retreats several times a
year with her partner Jamie, who introduced her to the lama.
“Jamie is serious, grounded and very deeply involved in the Buddhist
community,” said Piltch. “They're involved the way a couple would be when
they're doing something that's about something bigger than them individually.”
Lang has been quieter about her spiritual journey than she was about her
vegetarianism or her sexual orientation, which she revealed in an interview in
The Advocate in 1992. For a few years, in the public mind, her image as a
playful, outspoken lesbian with celebrity girlfriends (including Leisha Hailey,
a regular on The L Word) almost overshadowed what she
did with her voice.
“I think she's gotten a little more careful,” Mink said. “I think she was a
little free with her thoughts and didn't understand the repercussions that some
of her words might have. … She made it as a star pretty quickly. She didn't
have to struggle in bars and be deceived by people in the business, and so her
perspective was more trusting than it might have been.”
She distanced herself from the gay community for several years, just as she
felt the need to pull away, for different reasons, from the country-music
community. They're both still close to her heart.
“I really love country music,” she said. “It's so much a part of my musical
DNA. But I kind of keep it in check, because I'm still trying to shed the image
of a country-music singer. I don't want to be anything.”
I thought I heard a Buddhist implication in that last line. All of us who
practise hope that as we loosen our grip on the things that cling to us, we'll
move closer to the infinity hidden in the present moment. She told me a joke
about a lama who goes up to a hot-dog stand and says to the vendor: “Can you
make me one with everything?” She laughed a big, honest, kitchen-table laugh,
and I saw a flash of the iconoclasm that still persists within this determined
seeker after truth.
“She's really a good party girl who likes to have fun,” said Mink. “As serious
as she gets, she's still a cowgirl.”
Teen Jazz Sensation Nikki Yanofsky
Debuts
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- John Terauds, Entertainment Reporter
(February 02, 2008) Not many kids get a
Carnegie Hall debut for their 14th birthday.
"I'm so thrilled," giggles budding Montreal singing sensation Nikki Yanofsky about her upcoming performance. She'll
share the spotlight Friday with the New York Pops.
"I was telling one of my friends about it, and she said, `Oh, that's
nice.' So I said, `I guess you don't even know what Carnegie Hall is,' so I had
to explain it," Yanofsky relates over a poor Internet phone connection
from the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Unlike other Canadian families, who go to the Caribbean to soak up sun and rum,
it was strictly business for Yanofsky and her parents last weekend. She was
singing at the Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival.
"I think the audience really liked my performance and I had a really great
time," says the bubbly teen.
Yanofsky's increasingly busy touring schedule includes a solo Toronto debut at
the Isabel Bader Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday, jointly sponsored by the
Luminato and Toronto Jazz Festival.
She will be backed by a 12-piece big band and nine-member Imani Gospel Choir.
It was supposed to be one night only, but tickets for Tuesday's show sold out
within hours, prompting organizers to add the extra day. Those seats are long
gone, too.
The first tickets may have been snapped up by people who had heard Yanofsky at
last summer's Toronto Jazz Festival, where she reportedly blew her audience
away. It was at the time that the record label Verve released We All Love
Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song.
On it, Yanofsky sings the Fitzgerald staple "Airmail Special"
alongside contributions by Diana Krall and Michael Bublé.
Since then, Yanofsky has made several appearances on television, including the Telethon
of Stars. Her website (www.nikkionline.ca) bulges with highly charged
vocals that drag childhood favourites such as "Old MacDonald Had a
Farm" and "Wish Upon a Star" into adults-only jazz maturity.
(For those not familiar with her powerful vocal stylings, a simple search on
YouTube under her name provides ample evidence of her abilities.)
Despite the ease with which she has tackled Ella Fitzgerald's legendary
songbook, Yanofsky is not ready to be pigeonholed into a particular genre.
"I think I take after the style of Stevie Wonder," she explains.
"I sing jazz and pop and R&B. I love to sing all of them. I don't want
to be known as a jazz singer or a pop singer. I want to be known as a
songstress."
Besides Fitzgerald and Wonder, Yanofsky cites such diverse performers as Louis
Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, John Mayer and Christina Aguilera as favourites.
"I can't give you any favourite songs, because my list of favourite songs
changes every week," she says, laughing.
Some might want to compare Yanofsky to Aguilera, who tweaked Pittsburgh's
public pop consciousness around her 10th birthday.
But Yanofsky dismisses the comparison: "She and I are very different. She
got her start acting with Disney (Aguilera joined the TV channel's Mickey
Mouse Club in 1993). Me, I'm an artist and singer."
Yanofsky does concede, however, that Aguilera "made a good name for
herself in her teen years."
Unlike the American pop star's troubled childhood, Yanofsky says she has a
loving, tight-knit family, which includes two older brothers. "One is 17,
the other is 19," she relates. "We're all very close. They're way
more than just friends, because we share everything."
The singer does admit she doesn't have a lot of friends her own age – which
isn't surprising, given the conform-to-the-pack mentality that pervades our
teenage years. There's always a fine line between popularity and ostracism.
Yanofsky alludes to how her teenage girl peers are "not willing to be
friends." So she isn't going to bother trying.
"I have three guy friends, though," she adds brightly. "My other
best friend is 18."
Given that Yanofsky has now been performing in public, travelling and meeting
great artists for more than two years now, it's no surprise she is connecting
better with elders.
When she is not performing, the teen gets a semblance of a normal education, as
well as plenty of musical coaching.
The coming trip to New York isn't her first. "We went there for my 12th
birthday," she recalls. The family returned twice last summer. "We
went to see (hip-hop performer-producer) Wyclef Jean. I like to meet with
him."
Yanofsky giggles over another reason to love Manhattan: "The initials are
N.Y., just like mine, so it's my favourite city."
As for going on stage at Carnegie Hall in a few days, Yanofsky says it's just
part of her life's amazing adventure so far.
"Every day is my birthday."
Giants Upset Patriots
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- Dave Perkins, Sports Columnist
(February 04, 2008) GLENDALE, Ariz.-The New England Patriots may come back and win another
Super Bowl some day, but for the rest of their lives
this will be the one that got away.
Or should it be said the New York Giants
took it away, and emphatically so, with last-minute heroics maybe only
Hollywood could consider plausible.
The Giants, who have heard for a solid
month that they couldn't beat their next opponent, beat the biggest one
imaginable, stunning the previously unbeaten Patriots out of the record books
by winning the Super Bowl, 17-14.
Only the 1972 Miami Dolphins had ever
completed an unbeaten season.
They won their 17th game that shorter season
in the Super Bowl. The Patriots, so dominant this season in winning all 18 of
their games, now exit the conversation about the identity of the best team in
NFL history and there is no sense that something else should have happened in
this one. The Giants were the better team most of the night, no question, yet
still required the last-gasp leadership skills of Eli Manning, named the game's
most valuable player.
The younger brother of Peyton Manning,
last year's Super Bowl MVP, threw a 13-yard touchdown pass with 39 seconds
remaining to Plaxico Burress, the same Burress whose mild forecast of a 23-17
victory had been greeted with great derision by, it turned out, people who
didn't have a clue.
The Giants owned a narrow lead, 10-7 early
in the fourth quarter, at which point the Patriots, all thoughts of dominance
long gone in this one, assembled their own dynamic long drive for what looked
like a winning score.
For three quarters, until the late-game
pyrotechnics, it was a game only the "under'' bettors could love.
Or those – and there were plenty – who
decided that the Giants, plus 12 points, were the place to risk one's money.
A bruising, crashing contest followed no
previously identified script, a defensive struggle on both sides with the
league's record-setting offensive team, the Patriots, with their golden-boy
quarterback, Tom Brady, growing increasingly frustrated by their constant
failure to break out of the mud the Giants kept them in.
Record television audiences had been
forecast for the opportunity to see the Patriots achieve sports immortality by
finishing a perfect season at 19-0.
Either that or the scrappy Giants would
pull off the upset that seemed so improbable a month ago when they were a wild-card
team taking the most difficult path to the Roman numerals.
A first half that lacked fireworks might
have chased away some of the thrill seekers, but anyone who stayed for the
finish was rewarded with a sensational sporting moment: The underdog persevering
and pulling off the kind of upset that will live on.
Part of the New York charge came from its
fierce front line, where defensive end Michael Strahan was lined up against
Brantford, Ont., native Nick Kaczur, New England's big right tackle.
More than a couple of times Strahan was in
Brady's grille at the moment of truth and drilled Brady to the turf on a
critical third-quarter sack. Kaczur had his hands full with New York's
defensive line, but he was far from the only Patriot outmanned; they were unsettled
almost all night.
The Patriots had another of those
bothersome needles inserted Saturday when Son of SpyGate struck, this time
allegations that they illegally videotaped the St. Louis Rams' final
walk-through the day before their first Super Bowl win, as 14-point underdogs,
six years ago.
They responded with angry denials, but
there was no sense, as there usually is, that someone poked the tiger in his
cage this time.
::MUSIC NEWS::
Beyond Celine And Avril, Some Real
Excitement
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com - Guy
Dixon
(February 06, 2008) Something wholly
unexpected and
heartening happened as the announcement came yesterday that Avril Lavigne,
Celine Dion and Feist were among the nominees for this year's Juno Awards.
The press conference contained the usual glitz, as Lavigne's insouciant hit Girlfriend
and Feist's catchy 1234 flashed across a big video screen along with
others up for single of the year. Lavigne and Feist were also nominated for
songwriter of the year, as the bass stomp of Feist's My Moon My Man and
other familiar riffs from the past year in Canadian music blared through the
speakers in a ballroom of Toronto's Royal York hotel.
In the build-up to this year's Juno Awards on April 6 in Calgary, the only
Canadian musician garnering more nominations than the five each that Feist,
Lavigne and Michael Bublé got was Celine Dion with six nominations, including
two in the category of album of the year for D'elles and Taking
Chances. Even rock guitarist Dallas Green of Alexisonfire joked that two
nods in the same category hardly seemed fair as he announced the nominee.
Alt-rock favourites Arcade Fire, rockers Finger Eleven and country rock band
Blue Rodeo also received three nominations each. And Anne Murray was nominated
in the pop-album-of-the-year category for Duets: Friends & Legends.
But beyond the hoopla of the morning, the wonderful thing that took place
afterward in a corner of the room was the words of many less-well-known
nominated musicians who came to the gathering. They are the artists who make up
the bulk of the nominees in the lesser-known categories, from best traditional
jazz album to best dance recording. For them, with record sales still in a
slump, a life in music is increasingly about bolstering local scenes, something
far more real and personal than flashing images on a big screen.
"As a jazz musician, all you can do is have faith in the audience and the
community. ... In any place you are, if you don't like the scene, you have to
make the scene happen. So the fact that there is a lot going on in Toronto is
because of the collective will of the musicians making something happen,"
said Matt Brubeck, a jazz cellist who lives near Toronto
and is the son of jazz great Dave Brubeck. Together with pianist David Braid,
the duo is up for best traditional jazz album.
The same sentiment came from Brandi Disterheft, a young jazz bassist whose standout album Debut is also
nominated in the best traditional jazz category: "It's really exciting to
be nominated because I think jazz is thriving in Canada. And it's great to
expose people not only to dinner jazz, but to a really exciting funky jazz.
That's what I'm trying to go for."
Even if Canada's jazz hot spots don't have the same historical cachet as New
York, "there's a huge community equal to the greatest jazz areas in the
world. Toronto is right up there, and so is Vancouver, Montreal," she
said.
Toronto saxophonist and composer Richard Underhill, a founding member of the Shuffle Demons,
is up this year for instrumental album of the year for the jazzy Kensington
Suite. He says the live scenes represent the bread and butter. "As
music sales have plummeted, playing live is really one of the few ways a band
can survive and connect with the fans, because it's really tough to do it if
you're just selling records these days."
This can seem contrary to the Junos' heavy emphasis on a few banner categories,
such as album of the year and artist of the year, in which the nomination
criteria are based on record sales rather than critical voting. (Nominees for
album of the year, for instance, are determined by sales, and then the winner
is chosen by members of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.)
However, the bulk of categories are chosen by a jury of peers. But that's the
nature of the Junos, as they straddle the line between commercial and
grassroots music. What can get drowned out in all the attention paid to Dion's
six nominations or Lavigne's five is the energy and innovation in all of those
minor categories.
Take the R&B/hip-hop Toronto band God Made Me Funky, up for best R&B/soul recording of
the year for We Can All Be Free: "We tour the country constantly
and have a really great fan base, but to be recognized by the industry is
wonderful," said rapper PHATT al.
"Our live show, our music is not just urban in terms of R&B or hip
hop. We're R&B and hip hop and rock and funk. We're a whole bunch of things
put together. We call it nu funk. It's an amalgamation of music, so we'd like
to get an amalgamation of people to see our music."
Then there is veteran soul and gospel singer Billy Newton-Davis, up for best dance recording for the club
hit All U Ever Want. "This is a resurrection, a new career in the
dance world. ... My music is going out all around the world, but nobody really
knows about it [here]," he said.
In short, the message from the musicians yesterday was not about records and
sales, but connecting more closely with audiences. As Gil Moore, drummer for the classic Canadian rocker
band Triumph, which will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at
this year's Juno Awards, it's all about playing live. It's the main advice he
gives any musician.
"I get this question a lot from young musicians. And it's just so simple:
Keep playing for people. It's a simple, simple concept."
Universal Music Canada To Release Juno Awards 2008
Compilation Album
Source: Universal Music Canada
(February 5, 2008) (Toronto, ON) – Universal Music
Canada (UMC), the country's leading music company, is set to
release JUNO Awards 2008, a compilation album featuring some of the most celebrated
Canadian artists of the year, on February 26, 2008. The project is a joint
venture between Canada's four major labels (EMI Music Canada, SonyBMG Music
Canada Inc., UMC and Warner Music Canada) along with the Canadian Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). Since it's inception in 2003, each JUNO
Awards CD has achieved GOLD status, selling more than 50,000 copies.
The JUNO Awards 2008 compilation album is a not for profit
venture with all proceeds going towards MusiCan, CARAS' national music
education charity. MusiCan's mission is to ensure that every child in Canada
has access to a comprehensive music program through their schools. MusiCan
includes Band Aid musical instrument grants, the MusiCan Teacher of the Year
Award, Scholarships and other music education initiatives. Since the Program's
establishment in 1997, over 2.3 million has been donated impacting more than 120,000
students, their schools and communities, from coast to coast.
Track Listing in alphabetical order:
|
Bedouin Soundclash |
"Walls Fall Down" |
|
Belly feat. Ginuwine |
"Pressure" |
|
Jully Black |
"Seven Day Fool" |
|
Blue Rodeo |
"This Town" |
|
Paul Brandt |
"Didn't Even See The Dust" |
|
Michael Bublé |
"Everything" |
|
Dragonette |
"I Get Around" |
|
Faber Drive |
"Tongue Tied" |
|
Feist |
"My Moon My Man" |
|
Finger Eleven |