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Beat The Heat

 By Natasha Mayinda

With the Dow Jones and the temperature steadily rising, our attention can now be channelled into how stay chic in the heat.

One of this summer’s biggest trends is the focus on global exotica with elements from Morocco to India dominating the runaway. Dozens of designers combine clashing cultural prints with incorporated earthy accessories and details to bring the look to 2009. Contemporary layering and silhouettes modernize the look. For inspiration, refer to the looks from Christian Dior and Matthew Williamson spring/summer 2009 collection. Live the life of a global trotter in frocks with digital tribal graphics: vivid colors and bold prints are one of the easiest ways to freshen your look. Paired with a tissue thin cashmere cardigan, these crayola colored dresses will transition easily from humid sidewalk to your fully air conditioned meeting room. Spice up your wardrobe with colorful silk kaftans, like a Tibi Cabrera dress. For breezier evenings, you can pair the kaftans with your favorite denim or your new harem pants. Whether you are in tropical paradise or your neighbor’s BBQ, make sure that you keep your look cosmopolitan by choosing neutral toned shoes and bags.

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Album: One Way / Detour / Artist: Bob Albanese Trio with Ira Sullivan  / Jazz

 Review by Michael Barbara

The CD One Way / Detour stayed in my rotation for a long time, and it seems like every time you listen to it, you discover something new.  The album features the winning combination of the Bob Albanese Trio, featuring Albanese on piano, Tom Kennedy on bass, and Willard Dyson on drums, with Ira Sullivan, on tenor / soprano saxophones and flute.

Those of us born and raised in New York experience an immediate, sympathetic bond with the oxymoronic cover art, which displays one way and detour signs pointing in opposite directions, but rest assured, there is no lack of direction or creativity in Albanese’s music, or in his performance, recorded over a two day session in 2008.

 CD Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Collective Soul

 

Take an eclectic trio of singer / songwriters, fridge magnet poetry and an assortment of instruments that includes, a broom on a bucket, acoustic and electric guitars, an egg beater, a fiddle and a pan flute, and you have a fun, album, Your Heart Is A Glorious Machine, which showcases the beautiful harmonies of, Ruth Ungar Merenda, Aoife O’Donovan and Kristin Andreassen, collectively known as Sometymes Why.

 

Flamenco Festival

For the majority of Americans and Canadians, the word Flamenco conjures up images of a pretty woman whirling around a dance floor to lively, passionate music that brings your blood to the boiling point, while stirring romantic feelings. The closest that many of us have ever got to a Flamenco performance is through watching someone in a movie or perhaps a performance presented more as a novelty than an art form in a restaurant. If however, you are traveling up the Pacific Northwest coastline between June 28^th and July 7^th, you may want to treat yourself by attending one of the performances at this year’s Vancouver International Flamenco Festival’s 20^th Anniversary Celebration. For more than two decades, the husband and wife team of Flamenco dancer Rosario Ancer and guitar virtuoso Victor Kolstee will be hosting the events. This year’s festival will include performances from their company Flamenco Rosario, local independent artists, Melanie Meyers and Nanako Aramaki, some nationally recognized Flamenco performers such as, Claire Marchand from Winnipeg and Maria Osende of Halifax and some genuine international icons, including Spain’s Isabel Bayón and Mexico’s  Sabas Santos (Mexico).

Last summer Rosario Ancer and her company presented Mis Hermanas – Thicker Than Water: My Sisters and I................

Laura Harris Brings Judy Holliday To Life

When I posed the question to Canadian actress Laura Harris as to whether or not she thought that she would have liked to have been friends with Academy Award winning actress Judy Holliday, who she portrays in the play that she wrote and stars in, Pitch Blond, it was only fitting that Harris replied, “I think that I would be friends with her, because she is very intelligent, we would discuss authors and theatre. I get the impression that she was very kind, and I think we would relate to one another greatly.” Unfortunately, Judy Holliday, a film star of the forties and fifties, died of cancer, when she was just forty-three years old, in 1965, long before Harris was born, but that has not stopped Harris from writing a brilliant play and turning in an outstanding performance that will leave Judy Holliday fans believing that they have taken a step back in time and that they are watching Holliday’s life unfold before them. On the eve of her performance in Vancouver, Canada Laura Harris took time to talk to Riveting Riffs Magazine about Pitch Blond, a production that is already attracting a lot of attention from theater festivals across North America.

Lorelei

 

 

 

 

 

Theatre Review

 

 

Album: Creolepatra / Artist: Nikkole/ Urban and R&B

 Reviewed by Milena Brown

Singer/Songwriter/Producer Nikkole exemplifies the definition of the independent woman, but it is her role as an independent artist coupled with her passion and drive that has garnered attention from the Grammy’s, a feat that most musicians strive for.  Nikkole sets herself apart from the majority of artists by assuming responsibility for her own music, and creating songs that she believes in.  Throughout her third album Creolepatra, it is evident that Nikkole has been influenced by soul music, particularly through past collaborations with The Emotions of “Best Of My Love,” fame. Nikkole’s Creole ancestry joined with the Cleopatra themed alter ego to create a mix of easy listening R&B with a sensuous undertone.

The album’s lead song “Exotic,” and the song “Are You Satisfied?” .......................

5 Hot Tips For Building Your Fan Base

By Ariel Hyatt

Building Your Fan Base = Building Your E-mail List

For the past several years, I've allowed bands to wimp out on one of the most critical and important things that they need to do be doing to further their careers. I am not allowing you to wimp out anymore.

One rule people:
The Size Of Your E-mail List = The Size Of Your Income

So, how big is yours?

Myth: I don't have any shows to promote. Therefore, I'm not going to do a newsletter.

 

"Bucky" Pizzarelli and Benny Green

"Bucky" Pizzarelli and Benny Green / Vancouver, Canada / June 18 - 19th / Jazz

When you put two world class performers and legends on the stage together, expectations can often run so high that the actual concert feels like a bit of a letdown, but on June 19^th, at the Cellar Restaurant / Jazz Club on Vancouver’s west side, guitar virtuoso “Bucky” Pizzarelli and master pianist Benny Green, exceeded even their staunchest fans’ expectations, as they completed the second night of a two gig run in this west coast city.

During our soon to be published interview with “Bucky” Pizzarelli, which finished, just minutes before he took to the stage, he was not willing to reveal much of what the audience would hear later in the evening, other than to say, that, “You will hear two musicians having a conversation.”  True to his word, the first song in the opening set began slowly and quietly, like two people engaging in small talk, as they were getting to know one another, before the music increased in tempo, as they played John Coltrane’s “Robbin’s Nest.” The audience broke into spontaneous applause at the mid-point in the song, demonstrating their appreciation for the playing of both men, and a smile broke across Pizzarelli’s face as he accompanied Green’s elegant caressing of the piano keys.

  Interviews Coming Soon

The Rideouts

One More Girl

Marion Meadows

Alexander Barnett

 Gig of the Month

 

 

Sarah Slean

 

 CD of the Week

 

 

 Alice Russell

 

From Iceland To England - Hafdis Huld

“You can spend so much time and energy trying to be cool, if that is what you want, but the fact is I like having a banjo solo. I like telling stories about things that I find funny. I like the color pink and chocolate, and I just decided when I started doing a solo project that nobody needed to be embarrassed by my uncoolness. I just want to be me. Actually, people think that I became cooler after I stopped worrying about it, so I think I made the right decision,” says Icelandic pop singer / songwriter Hafdis Huld, from her home in London, England, where she lives, when she is not at home in Iceland.

In October of 2006, Hafdis Huld released her debut solo album, Dirty Paper Cup and as she spoke to Riveting Riffs Magazine, the mixing for her new album, which has a working title Synchronized Swimmers, was being completed.

 “Right after Christmas I went into the studio which was in a converted old barn, in Scarborough (England), in the freezing cold, and it was the middle of the winter. There were lots of good musicians and we stayed there for a week, as we recorded sixteen songs. It worked very well for us. We set up in different corners for the live takes and it sounded lovely,” says Huld talking about the recording session for the new album.

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