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This article was published 31/10/2017 (3184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gordon Lightfoot

“Carefree highway, let me slip away / slip away on you.” So goes the chorus to one of iconic Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot’s most recognizable songs.

Friday night (Nov. 3) Lightfoot, who turns 79 later this month, slips into town to take the stage at the Club Regent Events Centre for a sold-out stop at the tail end of his “The Legendary Gordon Lightfoot” tour. The troubadour has spent the better part of 2017 touring, beginning in March in Midland, Texas, and has played extensively throughout North America ever since.

Not bad for a guy who was reported dead back in 2010.

The last time Lightfoot was in town, he serenaded an adoring crowd of around 4,500 at Bell MTS Place (then the MTS Centre). This time, Lightfoot has opted for a smaller, more intimate stage to explore his biggest hits, his stories from the road, as well as some deeper cuts from his 20-album, decades-long career.

If you missed out on getting tickets to Lightfoot’s sold-out show, you can always console yourself with a cassette copy of Gord’s Gold or, if the tape deck is out of commission, Nicholas Jennings’ new biography Lightfoot. Released in late September, Jennings was provided with unprecedented access to the singer as well as many of Lightfoot’s friends, family members and fellow musicians.

The book offers a frank, revealing glimpse into Lightfoot’s childhood in Orillia, Ont., his decades spent touring and the toll it has taken on Gord’s health and relationships. It also features the stories of Lightfoot’s hundreds of songs that have earned him 15 Juno Awards and widespread critical and commercial acclaim.

Hits such as Early Morning Rain, Sundown and Carefree Highway all feature Lightfoot’s signature voice and his stories of loving, leaving and life on the road. Epics such as The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the Canadian Railroad Trilogy, meanwhile, have only served to cement Lightfoot’s legacy among this country’s best songwriters.

— Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson

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Let It Be: A Celebration of the Music of the Beatles

Maybe you’ve seen Sir Paul McCartney live, perhaps even Ringo Starr, but there aren’t many Winnipeggers who can claim to have seen all the members of the Fab Four in their heyday.

Let It Be, a revamped version of the Broadway/West End musical hit that was seen by more than two million people, features dead-ringer performers as John, Paul, George and Ringo, performing beloved favourites from the height of Beatlemania and the British Invasion.

The first half of the show features a cavalcade of the band’s biggest hits, including such early career chart-toppers as Hard Day’s Night, Day Tripper, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Twist and Shout and I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

The show’s second half imagines a world where the Liverpool quartet reunites a decade after their split and comes together to celebrate John Lennon’s 40th birthday, on Oct. 9, 1980. Studio songs never performed live — think Back in the U.S.S.R., Got To Get You Into My Life and Hey Jude, along with solo hits such as My Sweet Lord and Live and Let Die — give audiences a taste of what might have been.

Let It Be comes to the Burton Cummings Theatre tonight (Nov. 2) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $39.50 to $59.50 at Ticketmaster.

— Jill Wilson

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Crafted

Crafted, the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s juried show of artwork and crafts, has become the event that rings in the city’s holiday craft sale season in just its third year.

The two-day event, held in partnership with the Manitoba Craft Council, the Nunavut Arts and Craft Association and this year, the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, begins Friday, Nov. 3, at 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the WAG. It runs again on Saturday, Nov. 4, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The event, which packs in lovers of crafts and Christmas gift shoppers at the gallery’s main hall, includes items available for purchase from 50 Manitoba artists, as well as works from Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador.

The show also includes do-it-yourself workshops and live craft demonstrations. The gallery also will unveil its colourful display of handmade knitted tuques, mittens and socks that after the show will be donated to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Winnipeg. The gallery is also accepting knitted donations during the weekend.

Tickets are $5 a day, with children under 12 admitted free. The Crafted ticket also includes admission to the gallery’s exhibitions, including its Insurgence/Resurgence show that focuses on some of Canada’s top Indigenous artists.

— Alan Small

 

 

Casati

Local three-piece Casati may be more familiar to some as the Grace Hrabi Jazz Trio, but the lineup is where the similarities end.

Hrabi, along with bandmates Jesse Popeski and Quintin Bart, began experimenting with more folk-influenced sounds while still performing under their old moniker, and eventually decided it would be best to rebrand and continue to expand their musical horizons.

“The music was gradually changing under my name,” Hrabi says. “We would do some jazz standards in our set and some original stuff, but as we got further and further away from the jazz, it didn’t make sense to do it under my name anymore. At the time, my name was pretty associated with jazz specifically, so we couldn’t keep performing under that name if we don’t keep doing jazz.”

The origins of the name Casati reflects the band’s desire to be open-minded, sonically speaking — they were inspired by the patron saint of infinite variety, the Marchesa Luisa Casati.

“(She) was a really fascinating person and the part of her life that we were inspired by is that she was never really stuck or pigeonholed in any genre. She was a patron of the arts and supported artists of all different disciplines and genres. Whether they were popular or not, she would pursue her artistic aesthetic without concern for the popularity of something,” Bart explains.

Casati released their record, There Will Be Days, in April, and strive to convey a strong sense of honesty in their lyrics (which are mostly written by Hrabi) as well as in their musical composition.

“There are a lot of people who are really into a lot of computers and effects and processing and that’s not really our thing. Honesty in the music is just three people playing our instruments, we’re not covering up or masking it in any way,” Popeski says. “And the album…it was mostly live off the floor, it’s pretty much just us playing acoustically.”

Casati plays with Morden-based indie quintet Lakes and Pines at Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club tonight (Nov. 2). Tickets are $10 at the door and music starts at 9 p.m.

— Erin Lebar

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WSO: Angels & Demons Autumn Festival

In a “me too” age of Harvey Weinsteins and (now) Kevin Spaceys where even U.S. politicians make — and sometimes break — their own rules, Kurt Weill’s darkly prophetic The Seven Deadly Sins might have been a cautionary tale for today’s fluidly moralistic times.

Winnipeg soprano Sarah Jo Kirsch tackles the bitingly satirical, one-act “ballet chanté” (”sung ballet”) as the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra wraps up its Angels and Demons Autumn Festival on Friday, Nov. 3, and Saturday, Nov. 4, at 8 p.m. at the Centennial Concert Hall. The pair of concerts are led by German-born maestro Alexander Mickelthwate and features Liszt’s fire-and-brimstone Dante Symphony, inspired by the medieval poet’s long night’s journey into hell.

“It was the last work conceived by (librettist) Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill before the mass exodus of Jewish intellectuals from Germany,” says the acclaimed soloist during a press video of the 35-minute, cabaret-infused musical, composed in 1933 and being sung in English translation. “This is his last work that is purely German… and is a brilliant period piece from the 1930s.”

Set in Louisiana at the height of the Depression, the theatrical work is structured as nine scenes, including seven titled after biblical sins: Sloth; Pride; Wrath; Gluttony; Lust; Greed; and Envy. After Kirsch’s pragmatic character, Anna 1, is sent off to a series of U.S. cities to make enough money to build “a small home near the Mississippi” by selling herself in various ways, she fights her own deadly sin — self-righteousness and fallibility — by inventing a twin sister and alter ego of dubious morality, Anna 2.

“I’m really excited to have Sarah Jo Kirsch performing the Weill with us,” Mickelthwate says. “ I feel she has the perfect personality and voice, with this almost conversational but dramatic way of working with the text. It’s a role that’s tailored to her.”

Joining Kirsch onstage as Anna’s family members will be a quasi-Greek chorus featuring Peter John Buchan, tenor; Kris Kornelsen, baritone; Scott Reimer, tenor; and Derek Morphy, bass. The Canadian Mennonite University Women’s Chorus, led by Janet Brenneman, will round out the cast.

“The chaos of Anna’s seven-year journey is salaciously gritty, in your face, and real,” the singer says. “It’s a juicy work full of tangy twang, and so much drama to sink your teeth into!”

For tickets or further information, see: wso.ca

— Holly Harris