Sorrow is not foreign to the world of the band's drummer and chief composer, Ravish Momin, but at heart the music is of hope and reconciliation.

The title of dancer-choreographer Lee Su-Feh's hourlong solo is an inspired one. What could better describe an art form that uses the neck and the shoulders and the small of the back as much as the feet and the arms and the legs?

When he’s not recording the sounds of passing locomotives, the Calgary-based singer and multi-instrumentalist writes weirdly wonderful songs about death and revenge.

Almost every Internet reference to saxophonist Hadley Caliman compares him to ’60s innovator John Coltrane, but it’s easy to hear that his roots go back quite a bit further. Back, in fact, to the chief architect of bebop, Charlie “Bird” Parker. Although Caliman’s comeback CD, Gratitude, updates the context considerably, the two obviously share a similar command of their instrument, and a similar ability to produce an unfettered flow of melodic ideas.

I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too (MapleMusic)

Joseph Boyden continues to please by crafting fresh variations on narrative fiction. His approach is based on old-fashioned storytelling, but its feel is resolutely up-to-date.

Dozens of kvetching choirs are springing up all over the world, with the latest one in Vancouver. But this one is being driven by an unlikely source: Vancouver New Music.

Singer Winston Rodney was reminded there’s a serious undertone to the good-time vibes in his music after he visited the impoverished African village where he grew up.

Fans will swarm Open studios this Saturday when the London-based dubstep band performs as part of the New Forms Festival showcase to endorse their latest album, London Zoo.

The acclaimed Vancouver septet joins forces (and albums) with Secret Mommy when they perform at Open Studios on Friday as part of Cross Pollinations at this year’s New Forms Festival.

This year's 10-day festival has been split into five streams, ranging from a semisecret colloquium on Vancouver’s urban future (Artcamp08) to several very public concert presentations.

The prolific storyteller is coming home to the city where the attractions include great food, great scenery, a queer-positive culture, and, most of all, a supportive network of friends.

The prolific storyteller is coming home to the city where the attractions include great food, great scenery, a queer-positive culture, and, most of all, a supportive network of friends.

The prolific storyteller is coming home to the city where the attractions include great food, great scenery, a queer-positive culture, and, most of all, a supportive network of friends.

Standouts Simone Osborne and Mark Takeshi McGregor are just two of 10 must-see new talents we're putting in the spotlight as part of the annual Fall Arts Preview.

You might call the coming months the season of the geniuses, with young virtuosos and grown-up prodigies set to make their mark in theatres and concert halls.

While some veteran rockers have difficulty remembering what they did yesterday, Escovedo brings a diarist’s clarity to his tales of long ago.

The East Vancouver girl group's sombre debut CD explores the immigrant experience, gender politics, family, friendship, and sisterhood. Singer and pianist Marta Jaciubek-McKeever shares the story behind their music.

The Calgary-based sextet’s singer, songwriter, and keyboardist Jamie Fooks explains how she started writing their debut album without first knowing how to play and sing at the same time.

For singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis, who now performs and records under her middle name alone, there’s nothing worse than a hypocrite.

It’s tempting to look for political intent in Constantinople’s choice of singer, but the group’s founder, Kiya Tabassian, says there isn’t any. Yes, he and his fellow instrumentalists were born in Iran, their vocalist of choice is Jewish, and religious tensions in the Middle East are at an all-time high. But, as Tabassian explains, the Quebec-based early-music ensemble is working with Françoise Atlan for musical reasons rather than to make any particular socio-political point.

On the line from Buenos Aires, Adrián Iaies confesses that our chat is his first-ever interview in English. But the Argentine pianist, whose trio makes its Vancouver debut at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Friday (August 8), is warm and witty despite the language barrier, and his vigorous and imaginative modern jazz needs little translation.

Crooked Still bills itself as “an alternative bluegrass band”, but according to singer-guitarist Aoife O’Donovan, that’s not quite the whole story.

To the untrained eye, the swan-bone fragment recovered during an archaeological dig at a 10th-century German castle might have been nothing more than kitchen refuse from the days when lords and ladies dined on roast cygnet. Someone noticed, however, that this bone had been modified, and someone else deduced that it had been used as a flute, and in time this news reached a craftsman in Boston, Massachusetts, who undertook to reproduce the ancient instrument.

Crosscultural fusion doesn’t get any better than what was heard at Sunday (July 20) morning’s Full Strings Ahead workshop: to the delight of a delirious Stage 6 audience, three ace bands came together to prove that bluegrass and Chinese music are secretly cousins under the skin.

Kris Klaasen makes no bones about the fact that when he joined the Vancouver Folk Music Festival board in 2005, the venerable organization was in trouble.

Some musicians are said to have sold their soul at a lonely crossroads in order to play the blues. Markus James had a gentler initiation: he was on his way to nursery school in Washington, DC, when he first encountered the music that’s become one of his two great loves.

Abigail Washburn didn’t set out to become a musician, but one thing led to another—and that’s led to a brilliant, if unconventional, career for the banjo player and singer.

Lau is one of the most exciting new bands in the Scottish traditional-music scene, and that’s been confirmed by BBC Radio 2’s annual Folk Awards, which recently named the Edinburgh trio 2008’s best group.

The rising B.C star is one of several young artists who are broadening the appeal of the annual Vancouver Folk Music festival at Jericho Beach Park.

As a solo artist, Broken Social Scene’s singer-songwriter is hard to categorize. On Here’s to Being Here, there are touches of Fleetwood Mac–influenced pop rock, Rolling Stones–style grit, Dylan-esque balladeering, and Bob Marley–brand reggae.

If there’s one thing that gets Aimee Mann riled up, it’s unwanted attention from the perpetually cheerful. In fact, if you run into her at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and tell her to turn that frown upside down, she’ll probably be tempted to knock your block off. Mann might be based in Hollywood, but she’s more interested in the Golden Gloves tournament than the Golden Globes.

This new novel by the Chinese dissident author is a big book, an important book, but in the end not a very good book, because its message is obscured by far too many pages of less-than-scintillating dialogue.

The Mandé Variations (World Circuit/Nonesuch)

Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng has mastered the Japanese martial art of aikido, and that’s undoubtedly reflected in the sure-footedness and patience he brings to The Gift of Rain.

The Ontario writer and musician says storytelling runs through all her work, no matter what form it comes in, but that it’s very rare that a song or a spoken-word piece is born from a single source.

The setting is a fourth-floor walkup just off Main Street’s hipster strip, and outside sirens are blaring; there are no resonant gongs here, no chiming bonangs or mellow slenthems. Yet the feeling inside is convivial, as three gamelan-trained musicians share clove-spiked cigarettes and talk of their plans to bring the ancient gods of Java to the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre on Wednesday and Thursday (July 9 and 10).

Vancouver’s own Zapato Negro rewarded the early birds who flocked to David Lam Park on June 28 with a sizzling presentation of Afro-Cuban jazz. The quintet, led by bassist Allan Johnston, began with a lengthy version of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” that gave the classic a bright Latin face-lift.

Madness, Betrayal and the Lash

Twenty years ago, if you’d told Michael Occhipinti that the best record of his career would feature the rustic sounds of the Sicilian tarantella he would have thought you were crazy. Of course, he knew what it sounded like: growing up in a musical family with Sicilian roots, it was the soundtrack to weddings and parties throughout his childhood.

It’s suppertime in Amsterdam when I reach Dutch keyboardist and bandleader Cor Fuhler, but he willingly breaks off his meal, over my protests, to chat with Canada. Still, food is on both of our minds: Fuhler’s for obvious reasons, and mine because his Corkestra CD evokes in me an extraordinary synesthetic response. Sure, I can hear and enjoy the music, I tell him, but I can also taste it, and its flavour is both sweet and sour.

Easygoing Americana, or mythic journey? Remarkably, Ray Bonneville’s new Goin’ by Feel, a career highlight for the veteran songwriter, manages to be both.

According to Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence, Rachel Iwaasa’s upcoming Cosmophony concert was meant to be—even if, at first, the Vancouver pianist only wanted to play George Crumb’s zodiac-inspired Makrokosmos II in an unusual setting.

Herbie Hancock was in an expansive mood at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival’s opening-night gala—at the Orpheum on June 20—and he had every right to be. Just two days before, he’d been named musician of the year by the New York City–based Jazz Journalists Association, while his guitarist, Benin-born Lionel Loueke, was dubbed best up-and-comer.

Following the Curve of Time

Turning heartbreak into art is standard operating procedure for songwriters. But when it comes to specifics, a lot of lyricists just don’t want to discuss it. “It’s all there in the music,” they’ll say, or, more bluntly, “That’s none of your business.”

History generally accepts that Nirvana's Nevermind, issued in 1991, signalled the end of the hair-metal era. But a good case could be made that the beginning of the end came in 1988, when three Canadian siblings and their bass-playing friend walked into a Toronto church to cut one of the most unlikely platinum-selling discs of all time.

Transitions (Cellar Live)

New Rules for Noise (Spool)

You Can See the Ocean From Here (Pagetown)