What’s up: Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, By Divine Right, poetry tour, improv fest, send + receive festival

Sarah McLachlan

• Canada Life Centre, 300 Portage
• Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
• Tickets $52-$238 at Ticketmaster

 

Paula Cole & Sophie B. Hawkins

• Club Regent Event Centre, 1425 Regent Ave. W
• Wednesday, 7 p.m.
• Tickets $46-$71 at Ticketmaster

Lilith Fair, the pioneering all-women music festival co-founded by Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan that took place in the late ’90s, is having a major cultural moment right now thanks to Ally Pankiw’s documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery — and, as it happens, two Lilith Fair alums/’90s icons will be performing in Winnipeg next week on the same night at different venues. (Wah wah.)

McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy 30th Anniversary Tour is finally coming to Canada Life Centre on Wednesday after being postponed for nearly a year owing to laryngitis and subsequent vocal rest. She’s commemorating her landmark album of the same name with a 17-date Canadian make-up tour that began this week in Victoria, but she also just released her first new album in nine years, Better Broken, in September. The Better Broken tour begins in the U.S. in November.

American singer/songwriter Paula Cole, whose 1996 hits Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? and I Don’t Want to Wait (which later was used as the theme song for the teen drama Dawson’s Creek) made her a household name and a Lilith Fair headliner, is currently on tour with Sophie B. Hawkins (Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover) that swings by Club Regent Event Centre, also on Wednesday.

Tough choice. Tickets to both shows are available at Ticketmaster.

— Jen Zoratti

 

By Divine Right

• Public Domain, 633 Portage Ave.
• Saturday, 1:30 p.m.
• Tickets $19 at reallovewpg.com

By Divine Right swings into Winnipeg this week for a Saturday matinee, with the indie legends kicking off their 2025 western Canadian tour on Portage Avenue.

Though the group has featured nearly 30 members — including Leslie Feist and Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene and Brian Borcherdt of Holy F*ck — By Divine Right, founded in Toronto in 1990, has for the last decade operated as a three-piece, with founder Jose Miguel Contreras, bassist Alysha Haugen and drummer Geordie Dynes leading the charge throughout the 2010s. That was the lineup for the group’s most recent album, 2022’s Otto Motto. Now, Contreras and Haugen are joined by Colin White, who will handle percussion duties on the band’s upcoming full-length, set to be recorded next week at Winnipeg’s No Fun Club.

Joining the band for the first stop on tour is the one-man-band formerly known as Shotgun Jimmie. This year, songwriter Jimmie Kilpatrick dropped the weapon and picked up the pace, releasing the solo record Jimmie (“I could drink a case of you, and I’d still be on my phone,” he muses on standout track Ginger Shots) in April and an experimental instrumental album, Friendship Traces, in June with the Constantines’ Steven Lambke.

— Ben Waldman

 

Winnipeg Poetry Tours

• Various locations, Winnipeg
• Saturday and Sunday, 3 p.m., Monday 12:30 p.m.
• Free

A trio of local poets are celebrating 50 years of Kingston, Ont.’s Brick Books publishing’s compelling Canadian poetry with a series of events in three different Winnipeg neighbourhoods that will highlight how the city has contributed to the poetic imagination of writers.

Things kick off Saturday at 3 p.m. in East Kildonan with Winnipeg poet laureate Jennifer Still leading a tour from Girdwood Park (45 Girdwood Crescent) to her childhood home, detailing how the neighbourhood shaped her writing. Participants will work together on a sidewalk chalk poem.

Things go south Sunday as poet (and Speaking Crow) host Angeline Schellenberg will guide guests through a reading of bird and water poems at the St. Vital Park duck pond starting at 3 p.m.

On Monday, author Maurice Mierau will meet attendees at the northwest corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street at 12:30 p.m.; he’ll read poems and talk about his research process at each of the iconic intersection’s four corners.

All three poets have published with Brick Books — Mierau’s collection Ending With Music was released in 2002, Schellenberg’s Tell Them It Was Mozart came out in 2016 and Still’s Girlwood was published in 2011.

— Ben Sigurdson

 

Winnipeg Improv Festival

• Gas Station Arts Centre, 445 River Ave.
• Now until Saturday, 7 p.m.
• Tickets $20 at winnipegimprov.com

Lovers of improv comedy are in for a treat as the 24^th edition of the festival makes a return, featuring a host of acts from the United States along with homegrown heroes hailing from Edmonton, Toronto and Winnipeg.

Taking place from today until Saturday, tonight’s “fast and funny” Hall of Wonders debuts the festival’s new short-form ensemble, directed by festival producer and director Caity Curtis and Club Soda’s Jesse Bergen.

Friday sees the festival paying homage to Halloween with performers creating off-the-cuff theatre based on YA author Colin Deane’s scary stories, followed by the zombie-themed romp Turned featuring Winnipeg-based Club Soda Improv.

Saturday begins with Mouth Wide Shut, a physical comedy improv set by the U.S.-bases Unexpected Productions before the festival’s ensemble showcases a new improv format to wrap up this year’s event.

All shows start at 7 p.m. at the Gas Station Arts Centre. Check the festival’s Instagram page for updates.

— AV Kitching

 

 

send + receive festival

• Various locations
• Saturday to Wednesday
• Visit sendandreceive.org for tickets and a full schedule

Music and art collide during Winnipeg’s annual send + receive festival of sound.

The 27th edition of the experimental music festival kicks off Saturday with five days of concerts, art installations, free workshops and a long-form radio commission. The lineup features more than a dozen musicians and sound artists from Manitoba and around the world.

The fun starts at the Black Lodge (304-100 Arthur St.) with performances by breath-based Berlin duo Beam Splitter, Hamilton mulidisciplinary artist Nathan Ivanco and Winnipeg electronic musician Thomas Toews.

Other highlights include Tiotia:ke (Montreal) artist Hassaan Ashraf performing a set from her 2016 iPhone SE at the West End Cultural Centre (586 Ellice Ave.) on Sunday; a visual and sound performance, titled Hyperfemme Galactica, from local DJ Mahlet Cuff at the WECC on Monday; and a weekly radio broadcast from BINT mbareh, a sound researcher focused on water in Palestine, running until Nov. 11 at Poolside Gallery (100 Arthur St.) and being broadcast on 101.5 UMFM and 95.9 CKUW.

Individual tickets and festival passes available.

— Eva Wasney