By Stephen Pedersen, from the Halifax Chronicle Herald
How do Halifax’s jazz musicians do it? Opportunities are few. Occasions to rise above ordinary excellence even fewer. Yet 14 local players drawn together as the Upstream Jazz Orchestra came up Sunday night with one of the hottest jazz bands ever to hit the Dunn stage.
Big bands offer the most exciting possibilities in the business for firing up the blood. And British jazz composer, band leader and writer Graham Collier made more of those possibilities than any of us in the packed auditorium thought possible. Read More
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN | Concert Review | Halifax Chronicle Herald
A Love Upstream Nonet’s opening concert of the 20th anniversary concert weekend at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery Friday night blew our minds as it blasted our ears.
High energy and amplified instrumental fireworks attained hurricane strength in first whipping up small, localized, perfect storms of musical imagery and then fusing them together in explosive episodes of massive musical mayhem. Read More
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN | Concert Review | Halifax Chronicle Herald
Vonda de Ville in Temporal Follies is something of a tour de force. As a vehicle for the flam boyant virtuosity of soprano Janice Jackson it is rich in imaginative possibility, and Jackson makes a full-deal meal of it in the 40- minute opera that opened Wednesday in the Bus Stop Theatre and plays through Sunday at 8 p.m. every night.
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