Shadows and Light

For those of us who listen to CBC radio on a regular basis, the mention of Stuart McLean and his wonderful Vinyl Cafe program will bring a warm feeling of familiarity and pleasure.

The Vinyl Cafe’s Stuart McLean

Stuart’s stories of a Canadian family, comprising Dave (owner of the record store from which the program derives its name), his wife Morley and their two children, Stephanie and Sam, along with their various pets, neighbours and friends have kept us entertained and amused since the mid 90’s when the Vinyl Cafe came into existence. For this reason we were thrilled to be given the opportunity to photograph the show at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, Halifax when the Vinyl Cafe live show toured the Maritimes recently.

Stuart features Canadian musicians as guests when he travels the country and this time he was joined on the tour by great blues singer Matt Andersen and our old friend the lovely and talented Meaghan Smith. There are photographs of them featured on the gallery as well as of Vinyl Cafe musical director, John Sheard on piano and bassist Dennis Pendrith.

High Definition Youtube show of the performance (viewable in fullscreen) for high speed internet viewers:(or read on for more about the performance)

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICzCDDmaOc

The audience was delighted to hear a new story featuring Dave and Morley, as well as a anecdotes from Stuart’s youth – it turns out that he and I were neighbours when we were young in Montreal and we both loved to lie in bed late at night, listening to the hockey games on our old tube radios! The tremendous cross-generational popularity of this wonderful show is demonstrated by the diversity in age of the members of the sold-out audiences – on the night we attended they ranged from 7 year old Seth and 9 year old Quinn (both featured in the photographs) to a 95 year old lady who by her great age beat a 90 year-old to claim one of the prizes that were being given out.

View the photo gallery of this Vinyl Cafe show here. The story which is featured, with kind permission, over the gallery as well as on the Youtube movie is a story of Dave and Morley entitled “The Jock Strap” and is written and narrated by Stuart McLean.

Thank you so much, Stuart, Jess and everyone else who made us feel so welcome.

Ellie

From the first time we saw Gypsophilia at a Deep Roots performance a couple of years ago, we couldn’t wait to see them again. Seeing them on a cool March night in the intimate ambiance of the Evergreen seemed to bring hot summer nights that much closer. Their music, originally inspired by the legendary French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, combines hot jazz and European gypsy music, with elements of tango, klezmer, funk and classical. The group’s joyous exhuberance was contagious and feet and hands in the audience were tapping spontaneously through the performance.

Gypsophilia’s Gina Burgess at the performance

The opening act was jazz stylist keyboard player, Erin Costelo, whom we had not had the pleasure to see before. View the photo gallery of this performance here The track featured over the gallery is a preview from their upcoming recording to be released in May of this year and is entitled “Agricola and Sarah”.

Thanks for a great evening. It was well worth the wait.

Ellie

We attend a lot of performances in the course of a year, photographing musicians of all genres. This evening with Danny Michel stands out in particular for the broad smile of delight I had on my face during the whole evening.

I knew from Danny Michel’s excellent reputation that preceded him and from listening to his show “Under the Covers” on CBC radio that we were in for a great evening’s entertainment. As a performer Danny has a wonderfully engaging stage presence as he performs his set. His sparing, but creative use of technology enables him to create music loops to accompany himself on the fly, such was his confidence with his material and improvisational skills. Danny performed many songs from his latest and excellent CD entitled “Feather, Fur and Fin” including the title track which is featured on his slideshow. View the photo gallery of this performance here.

High Definition Movie (featuring the track “I’m a Love You Anyway”) below:
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wekPutJ_I7Y

As part of an introduction to one of his songs, Danny used the expression “One of those special moments in life”. For us at the Evergreen that night, Danny truly gave us one of those special moments in life. If you get a chance to see him perform, do not miss it. Thank you, Danny.

Ellie