Cree singer Rhonda Head stumbled into classical music, then made it her own

Singer Rhonda Head has travelled a long and winding road to get her voice heard.

Her classically trained vocals have received worldwide recognition after she received two bronze medals from the Global Music Awards, an online competition that specializes in classical and jazz artists and composers.

Head, who hails from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, near The Pas, earned the acclaim for two Cree language songs, Kisahkihitin I Love You, which was in the contemporary classical category, and 500 Years, which received honours among protest songs.

She began taking singing lessons in 1987, after she graduated from high school at the University of Winnipeg Collegiate and moved to Toronto to study fashion. She found, almost by chance, that singing suited her better.

The show must go on as Selkirk buys theatre

Many in Selkirk thought the credits had rolled for the Garry Theatre, but it appears there’s a sequel.

Landmark Cinemas decided to close it in May and on Wednesday, the City of Selkirk announced it had purchased the theatre for $350,000, plus closing costs.

“What we’ve heard so far is people are very excited and very happy that the city has been able to secure the property,” said Selkirk CAO Duane Nicol.

Nicol said the city will reach out to the community to determine how best to use the building. The city hopes it will become a centre for arts and culture, he said.

Traversant le Canada en 20 chansons

De La Rochelle à la Colombie-Britannique en passant par l’Acadie, le Québec, l’Ontario et les Prairies, voici le voyage que proposera la chorale québécoise En Supplément’Air dans la Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface à l’occasion du 150e anniversaire de la Confédération canadienne, le 11 juillet.

Le Chœur En Supplément’Air a été fondé en 2015 par Carole Bellavance, la directrice artistique de la chorale. “Cette année, le chœur compte 300 choristes de toute la province du Québec. Tous les étés, nous organisons une tournée avec une quarantaine d’entre eux. Nous sommes partis le 3 juillet pour un premier concert à Ottawa, puis nous nous rendrons à North Bay, Sault Sainte-Marie, Thunder Bay. Nous terminerons à Winnipeg le 11 juillet,” Bellavance a dit.

C’est la première fois que le chœur se déplace aussi loin à l’ouest du Canada. “Avec notre spectacle Le périple de la chanson francophone en Haute-Amérique, nous voulons faire valoir l’histoire de la chanson francophone au Canada à travers le temps. Nous avons choisi des chansons de partout pour mettre en valeur les régions. Le propos se prête bien à la grande aventure de la francophonie canadienne. J’ai profité du 150e anniversaire de la Confédération pour faire vivre aux choristes les chansons francophones canadiennes, et pas seulement québécoises.”

Harmonisé et orchestré par François Couture, le spectacle met la culture francophone au premier plan. “La culture francophone a été apportée de l’Europe. Pour illustrer cela, notre première chanson s’intitule Je pars à l’autre bout du monde. Au début du spectacle, on se sent vraiment à La Rochelle. Ensuite, on arrive dans les Maritimes avec des chansons qui reflètent l’histoire de l’Acadie, puis du Québec, et le développement de l’Ontario. Nous suivons le trajet de la chanson francophone, d’est en ouest.”

SiR’s production of An Iliad explores war, in Troy and beyond

The Trappist Monastery Ruins are enlisted as the stand-in for a bedraggled Trojan battleground in An Iliad, the second production of Shakespeare in the Ruins’ 2026 season.

Director Christopher Brauer calls the St. Norbert heritage site — dusty, rugged and incomplete, a reflection of a majestic past fallen into disrepair — the perfect setting for the production’s lone survivor, a road-weary poet played by SiR artistic director Rodrigo Beilfuss, to grapple with tours of duty he might prefer to forget.

“He is not just a person who experienced the war in Troy, but he seems to somehow have been put on earth to travel from battle to battle and from war to war,” says Brauer, who directed Beilfuss in the 2022 Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre production of The Three Musketeers.

The director calls that literary adaptation of a sweeping, romantic epic a romp, where the “heroes are heroes and the villains are villainous.”

Winnipeg musician brings love for the bus to new song with message to province

A new song released this week by John Samson Fellows comes with a clear call to action: “More buses, more routes, more accessible to everyone.”

The tune, titled 50/50 Funding, praises public transportation and calls on the provincial government to reinstate matching transit funding for Manitoba municipalities.

It was written in support of the Next Stop campaign led by Climate Action Team Manitoba and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which aims to restore the long-standing cost-sharing agreement scrapped by the former Progressive Conservative government in 2016.

Getting on board with a transit-improvement campaign was an easy decision for Samson Fellows.

Manitoba makes Polaris long list

Four Manitoban artists — Begonia, Boy Golden, JayWood and Propagandhi — have a shot at becoming the first local musicians to win the prestigious Polaris Music Prize after earning a spot on the award’s official long list of 40 notable albums released last year.

With a 10 per cent chance at netting the $30,000 award, Manitoba is well-represented, trailing only Ontario (13 nominees) and Quebec (12). Of the 40 records that made the long list, 10 will be selected for the prize’s short list, which will be announced July 9.

The long list for the prize — presented annually to the Canadian album of the year, based solely on artistic merit — was announced Thursday in Toronto during the NXNE music festival.

In total, 202 albums were submitted for consideration by the 205-member national jury of critics and broadcasters.

Winnipegger earns Tony for leading role in Broadway production of Ragtime

Winnipeg’s Joshua Henry was on top of the musical theatre world Sunday at Radio City Music Hall, winning the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role for his performance in the Broadway revival of Ragtime.

Life at the speed of sound

I was only five years old when the Beatles broke up and yet their music has been the overarching soundtrack of my life.

Dry Cold Productions co-founder retires after 25 years of onstage merriment

A lifelong contributor to Winnipeg’s musical theatre world is taking a step back from his leadership role with Dry Cold Productions as the company marks its 25th anniversary.

In 2001, Reid Harrison, whose retirement from the role as co-artistic director was announced in December, was sitting at the Charterhouse restaurant with Donna Fletcher and Melanie Whyte commiserating over the city’s seeming reluctance to program work by American musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim.

“We were just sort of whining,” recalls Harrison, who’s also the general manager of the annual Agassiz Chamber Music Festival.

So the trio decided to do something about it.

Flora Luna: entre confidences musicales et rayonnement vers l’Est

Dans l’ordre, à la fin du mois de mars, Geneviève Freynet, connue sous le nom d’artiste de Flora Luna, avait annoncé sa signature avec Indica Records, un label indépendant basé à Montréal.

Fondé en 1997, Indica Records présente une variété de genres musicaux allant du rock/punk/alternative sur laquelle le label a été fondé, incluant le folk, mais aussi la pop, l’indie, la musique du monde et l’électro/rock.

Indica Records s’occupera spécifiquement du booking pour Flora Luna. Cela veut dire notamment la réservation et l’organisation des spectacles de l’artiste.

“L’idée, c’est qu’ils me réservent des spectacles et des tournées, surtout au Québec, et potentiellement en Europe, et un peu en Ontario aussi. Leur centre d’attention, c’est vraiment le Québec, alors oui, j’ai hâte,” précise Geneviève Freynet.

Manitoba Opera season features reimagined Scott Joplin work and Puccini classic

Manitoba Opera’s 54th season will feature a once-forgotten masterpiece and a returning classic.

The 2026-27 season opens with the local première of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha: A Musical Reimagining (Nov. 21, 25, 27) and closes with Madama Butterfly (April 17, 21, 23, 2027), both performed at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Treemonisha was published in 1911 by Scott Joplin, the celebrated African-American pianist and composer often referred to as the King of Ragtime. Set during the Reconstruction era in the United States, the three-act opera focuses on the story of its title character, a young freedwoman, and fuses Western classical music with blues, gospel and ragtime.

The work proved too groundbreaking for the Euro-centric opera establishment and was produced for the first time in 1970, more than 50 years after Joplin’s death. The composer was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his contributions to American music.

How Canadian box-office hit ‘Undertone’ got to the screen without public funding

TORONTO - Personal grief, a potentially haunted house and a sound-driven sense of dread helped turn “Undertone” into one of the year’s most unexpected horror hits.

But the biggest twist? The director says he made the film with no government money after his previous work was rejected by Canada’s public film funders.

The Toronto-shot film opened to $9.3 million at the North American box office over the weekend — a scary good debut for a movie made on a $500,000 budget.

For director Ian Tuason, his debut feature’s unlikely path to the big screen is also a quiet critique of how Canadian films get financed.

Eddie Vedder turns solo vulnerability into a powerful plea in Netflix’s ‘Matter of Time’

The first time Eddie Vedder toured without Pearl Jam, he made some glaring mistakes onstage and felt discouraged. A few shows later, he ran into Bruce Springsteen, who told him that performing solo is terrifying but that vulnerability can be a force to harness.

Vedder described Springsteen’s advice as a North Star that stuck with him. Nearly two decades later, he leaned into it when he took the stage for two sold-out solo shows in October 2023 at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.

“I remember kind of swimming through it and almost having a psychedelic experience,” he said. “I was so emotional, but I had to keep it together just to play properly.”

The emotional performances were part of a fundraiser to find a cure for epidermolysis bullosa, a rare and debilitating genetic skin disorder. A new Netflix documentary “ Matter of Time ” weaves the performances with personal stories of those on the front lines with EB.

Belated Lunar New Year party a feast of Korean culture

For the last month, Andrea Kitano has been spending her weekends hosting hanbok fashion shows at shopping centres across Winnipeg.

‘Anti-social’ dancer fell in love with metal, ‘community’ at WECC

Dammecia Hall is an artist, and for her that means spending a lot of time by herself.

“I’m extremely anti-social,” says the dancer, choreographer and educator. “But as soon as you put me in a social environment, I come alive.”

One of the social environments Hall finds herself in these days is the West End Cultural Centre, the non-profit performance venue inside a former church at the corner of Ellice Avenue and Sherbrook Street.

While attending an event at the WECC, a friend of a friend encouraged Hall to volunteer at the venue. The 43-year-old Wolseley resident applied soon after, and has been volunteering at the WECC for more than a year.

New Music Festival explores theme of technology amid global rise of AI

This year’s New Music Festival runs Jan. 21-29 and includes six events.

Teen quartet We’re Only Here for the Snacks to release debut album on limited-edition Winnipeg-inspired vinyl

The teenage instrumental indie-rock quartet will launch its debut album, Missed Our Stop, Sunday at the West End Cultural Centre.

Music Go Round gears up for Canadian grand opening

Keith Dixon has fond memories of learning to play his sister’s guitar in 2005. Three years later, he acquired an axe of his own — a Gibson Les Paul with a cherry sunburst finish.

Ten noteworthy concerts on classical calendar

Welcome to your brand new arts season! Winnipeg is well known for punching above its weight in world-class performances, and this year proves no exception.

Here is a list of 10 concerts that have caught my eye from now until the snow flies, listed (mostly) in chronological order:

1) The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra launches its next chapter under new concertmaster Karl Stobbe. A pair of back-to-back concerts, Volodin Plays Tchaikovsky, led by Daniel Raiskin, features internationally acclaimed pianist Alexei Volodin performing two different works by the Russian composer on Saturday, Sept 27, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 28, 2 p.m. For more details, see wso.ca.

2) If you still need more (and who wouldn’t?), the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg also showcases the virtuoso in a solo recital at the Desautels Concert Hall on Thursday, Sept. 25, at 7:30 p.m. Visit wmcwpg.ca.

New documentary revisits Lilith Fair, gives it the overdue kudos it deserves

In the opening moments of Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, a new documentary about the pioneering all-women touring festival co-founded by Canadian icon Sarah McLachlan in the late 1990s, there’s a series of TikTok videos fronted by gen Z women expressing wonder and astonishment that something like that ever even existed.

“There was an all-female music festival from 1997 to 1999 — and I am shook to my core,” one woman says.

Ally Pankiw, the film’s director, is not surprised younger generations have never heard of Lilith Fair.

“It was not celebrated for how massive it was,” says the Canadian film/TV writer and director (Feel Good, Shrill). “It was so commercially successful. It changed so many artists’ trajectories and careers. It raised so much money for charity.

Winnipeg independent music magazine Stylus set to fold

The future of Stylus Magazine, Winnipeg’s flagship indie music publication, is in jeopardy.

Increasing restrictions could silence culture critics

It’s getting harder to see where reviews and other forms of cultural criticism fit in the current media ecosystem. Arts writing positions are being axed at outlets all over North America — but a landscape of all influencers and no critics means all promotion and no journalism.

bbno$, the Beaches warn approaching TikTok Canada closure will hurt homegrown artists

Several Canadian artists are worried about losing social media support that can make or break their careers as TikTok prepares to comply with a federal order to shut down its operations in Canada.