Plumes debut Western Canadian tour:

May 24 – Ritornello Festival, Saskatoon SK
May 25 – Ritornello Festival, Saskatoon SK
May 28 – The CYRK, Winnipeg, MB
May 29 – The Artful Dodger, Regina, SK
June 1 – The Streaming Café, Kelowna, BC
June 2 – The Armstrong Inn, Armstrong, BC
June 3 – Duncan Garage Showroom, Duncan, BC
June 5 – Lucky Bar, Victoria, BC
June 6 – Raw Canvas, Vancouver, BC
June 8 – Wunderbar, Edmonton, AB

Armed with plenty of indie rock credentials, one ivy-league classical music education, and the literary prowess of their vaguely Björk-like lead vocalist, Plumes announced their arrival on the Canadian indie scene last year with an album that NYC’s Deli Magazine called “a Baroque masterpiece.”

Now, they’re premiering their sound live for the first time in Western Canada. And the tour kicks off with a classical music engagement at the Ritornello Chamber Music Festival in Saskatoon – a gig that will see them combine the more heavily classical numbers from their set list with Bartok, Luciano Berio, and Arvo Pärt.

The ensemble marries indie pop and vocal chamber music with the clever lyricism of ex-Flotilla vocalist Veronica Charnley to create epic, cinematic and sometimes dreamy compositions that often have an art song-like quality to them.

“The closest thing this country has to Woodie Guthrie” – The Georgia Straight

Fourteen years ago at the age of 45, David Francey began an astonishing journey from life-long manual labourer to three-time Juno-winning folk troubadour – renowned for writing with heart-wrenching honesty about the struggles of the poor and working class.

His new album, So Say We All, is a collection of 14 songs that reflect Francey’s own journey through a period of struggle.

“The lesson learned,” he says, “was to celebrate every day spent on this side of the soil and to keep marching no matter what comes our way.” And that spirit of perseverance bursts from each track of the collection.

This Great Compromise releases May 28

Saturday June 1st - The Company House, Halifax (matinee 4pm start)
Sunday June 2nd - West Dublin Hall w/ Ian Foster (7pm start)

Ten years ago, Ashley Condon wept through an entire David Francey concert, realizing she had discovered the kind of simple honest, folk music she herself wanted to make.

A decade later, she was an award-winning East Coast singer-songwriter and an ECMA nominee, praised for her powerful voice and astonishing emotional range as a writer and singer – and Francey’s manager was on the phone offering to sign her to Francey’s record label.

It was as if the universe was finally paying Condon back for everything it had put her through early in life.
The only child of a fishing family from rural Prince Edward Island, Condon had lost both her parents by the time she was 22. Her father died when she was six. Her mother raised her as a single parent and fought to hold onto the family home and business, taking over her deceased husband’s fishing fleet and ultimately becoming one of the first female fishing captains in Eastern PEI. But then she too passed away from cancer while Condon was in her second year of drama studies at the University of Toronto. Upon completing her degree, Condon spent three years studying psychotherapy to help heal from the loss.

Not surprisingly, Condon’s music is marked by an astonishing degree of maturity and nuance – the kind almost never heard in emerging artists.

Eliana Cuevas launches Espejo

May 15th at the Lula Lounge
Doors at 7pm
Show at 8pm
Tickets $15
A la carte menu available.
To reserve a table for dinner, call 416.588.0307

Musically stretched by a series of challenging recent collaborations and emotionally transformed by motherhood, Eliana Cuevas makes an explosive return to the stage next month with Espejo (pr: ess-PAY-ho), a sophisticated and deeply personal oeuvre that showcases her vastly expanded range as a composer and performer.

Cuevas’ pure, versatile and dexterous vocals are now deeper and more nuanced than ever before and marked on several tracks by a profound sense of vulnerability. The arrangements – featuring a total of 20 top Toronto musicians – are far and away her most adventurous to date. And her repertoire has diversified to include tracks such as “El Tucusito,” a piece sung entirely in complex, wordless vocalizations of the type Cuevas sings in Darren Sigesmund’s Juno-nominated jazz ensemble.

The 2009 birth of Cuevas’ daughter, Leila, and her sometimes-wearying efforts to reunite her far-flung family members in the wake of the birth, vastly deepened the well of life experience the she drew on in writing the new material.
The album’s expanded musical depth comes courtesy of ingenious producer Jeremy Ledbetter, the musical director for legendary Calypsonian David Rudder and the leader of the internationally-touring Latin-Caribbean jazz outfit Canefire.

Trained in classical and jazz, and exceptionally well-studied in Latin and Caribbean styles, Ledbetter expanded Cuevas’ synthesis of South American sounds on Espejo. He also played a key role in encouraging Cuevas to push her creative boundaries on the album, resulting in an eclectic and captivating musical journey.