PrettyInScarlett

All of a sudden I am now covering Chamberfest for The Festival Goer as well. No complaints here! Another varied festival program with some very interesting sounding concerts. Cello grunge? Yes, the Samurai String Squad are performing a late night 'classical grunge set'. New artists, new music and free events too - including New York's Asphalt Orchestra. The programme can be viewed online ; further details about the Asphalt Orchestra's street performances in Byward Market will be posted onto Chamberfest's Facebook page . Check The Festival Goer for further updates.

The whirlwind that was Music and Beyond has now finished. My final tally was 24 events, pretty much all of them excellent. Perhaps the only disappointing show was Don Campbell's 'Beyond the Mozart Effect', which whilst having excellent musical performances, was rather more an illustrated history of Mozart than an evening about The Mozart Effect . Top marks to Igudesman and Joo for their hilarious 'A Little Nightmare Music' - I highly recommend their online videos! Of the more traditional style concerts, The Jupiter String Quartet were amazing, as was Stéphane Lemelin, who looked and sounded as if he was having a great time. The Music from Turkey concert with Tahir Aydoğdu on kanun was riveting and highly entertaining, as well as the 'tango' concert from Les Violons du Roy and Tango Boreal. From the closing gala, I also really enjoyed Marc Djokic's performance from Richard Mascall's Labyrinth . Reminded me of Nicolas Bolens ' Tempus Fugit . ...

A short break from Music and Beyond took M and I to The Elmdale Tavern for another gig by The PepTides (of Jazzfest fame ). Firstly, it was very refreshing for us Brits to find a 'pub' style bar venue, where one can buy a drink at the bar without getting funny looks. Big tick. We arrived earlier than the show start time, which turned out to be fortuitous, as the stage area had been rearranged to accommodate singers + band. Quite a few people were standing at the back by showtime. The whole place had been decked out in quirky vintage gear, from old radios lining the stage to bakelite-style telephones (the ones with a rotary dial - a real blast from the past). The PepTides The PepTides did not disappoint, earning raucous applause from the crowd. Having listened to FTHHHI (albeit only once - busy busy!) and now having seen them again, the structure of the songs and lyrics becomes clearer. You either 'hear' and boogie along without necessarily finding the deeper mean...

Ottawa chamber festival Music and Beyond starts today with a highly anticipated event featuring renowned Canadian actor Christopher Plummer. Sadly, I'm not going, as I only have  a 'standard' pass. Not to complain, though, as there are 72 concerts on offer between today and 17th July!  I am covering Music and Beyond as official 'reader-blogger' for the Ottawa Citizen. Their reader-blogger page, The Festival Goer , features blogs from JazzFest, BluesFest and Music and Beyond, with ChamberFest and Folk Festival still to come. My posts are under 'MusicBeyondBlogger'. As an aside, M and I plan to attend The PepTides ' next Ottawa show tomorrow (8th July) at the Elmdale House Tavern. 

First up, another plus from the diplomatic circuit. After last November's popular free concert at the National Gallery of Canada, the Embassy of Japan (this time in collaboration with the Embassy of Austria ) hosted an evening of Austrian and Japanese music for violin and piano on 30th June, once again at the National Gallery's Auditorium. This time, reservations were mandatory and the event seemed much better organised. From the programme details and introductory remarks, the two soloists (Mayumi Seiler, violin, and Kyoko Hashimoto, piano) are both Canadian residents and (if I remember rightly) German speakers. After the speeches, including a brief history lesson on the links between Austria, Japan and European-ism by His Excellency Ambassador Ishikawa, the concert commenced. The works, listed below, were each introduced by Mayumi Seiler, which was a nice touch: W.A. Mozart, Sonata for piano & violin in A major, KV.526 Toru Takemitsu, Distance de fée for violin & pi...

Rain-drenched early crowd Second day of JazzFest complete with full waterproofs and wellies. A few hardly souls, myself included, headed to Confederation Park to see, in theory, the Laila Biali Trio . Another new one for me, but the JazzFest profile promised pop-oriented jazz from the pianist-songwriter plus George Koller and Larnell Lewis on bass and drums respectively. Sadly, Biali was held up at Ottawa Airport by the adverse weather, so the impromptu Koller-Lewis duo performed a set for the bedraggled attendees - at this point there was not so much a crowd as people in a field! The show also included a demonstration on dismantling Koller's new bass, which was very interesting! By the time Elvis Costello & The Imposters took to the stage the downpour had abated and more people had arrived. As a taster of things to come, the set started with Pump It Up and went on to include gems such as Watching The Detectives, Red Shoes and Alison, as detailed below (from Elvis Costell...

First big music festival of the summer (and my first full summer in Ottawa) and a meditation on the steel city on the Don, Sheffield. The previous time I saw Robert Plant , in Sheffield way back in 2002, it was in a packed-out university venue. Not a shade on the crowd gathered in Confederation Park on 23rd June, though. According to a fellow attendee, this was maybe the biggest crowd ever at JazzFest?! Due credit to support act Bahamas - new to me but the band, with frontperson Afie Jurvanen, payed a good mix and received more than a polite response from the ever-growing audience, and not just for a few lines of Led Zeppelin.  Thunder and lightning added to the atmosphere as Robert Plant and the Band of Joy (including Grammy winner Patty Griffin) took the stage with a 'jazz time' take on Black Dog. The majority of the set comprised songs from recent albums Band of Joy and Raising Sand, with the combined vocals of Plant and Griffin and talents of the Band creating a captivati...