Music

The argument started over a game of kickball on the school playground. Two popular kids, Nick and Laura, were declared captains and took turns choosing players. When the teams were complete, the [...]

I’ve known about the National Music Centre for a long time. I helped dig pianos out of the mud there after the flood of 2013. Their old building hosted a collection of odd but memorable musical [...]

There must be a rule that you’re not supposed to ask executives at a commercial country music awards show to think about the oil companies in their stock portfolios. Corb Lund broke that rule. [...]

They enter the room in ones and twos, choosing spots around the semicircle of music stands while the pianist repositions her instrument for a better view of the action to come. This could be any [...]

When Nils Edenloff was a high school student in Fort McMurray, there was a minor scandal one summer involving a gaggle of teens who decided to ride their bicycles to Edmonton. It was received [...]

The winter of 1970. In “Room at the Top,” a coffee house about seven storeys up in the frigid night sky of Edmonton, a couple of folksingers are tuning up their guitars while their drummer is [...]

At first the music sparkles with energy, the orchestra generating dazzling colours and frenetic movement. The solo pianist inscribes razor-sharp chords, echoed by fluttering gestures in the high [...]

In the summer of 1970, a 12-coach train painted with day-glo hippie flowers carried Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Band, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Buddy Guy and other folk-rock  and blues icons [...]

She sits on an office chair—the kind that swivels around in all directions—and suggests starting the session with a piece by Joni Mitchell. An audience of 10 wheelchair-bound, brain-injured [...]

A dozen years ago, over a few beers, Robert Kroetsch and I were talking about the Crowsnest Pass. “Ach!” he said, “I’ve got to stay away from that place!  There are just too many stories there!” [...]