The Georgia Straight - All's Well- June 27, 2019

JUNE 27 - JULY 4 / 2019 | FREE Volume 53 | Number 2684

FIRED WHILE PREGNANT

Hairstylist wins $11,000 award

WATCHING THE CLOCK

Gallery screens famed work

MELISSA ALDANA

Frida Kahlo inspires saxophonist

All's Well

Goes to India STRINGS FOR PEACE

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At Bard on the Beach, Sarena Parmar stars in a bold South Asian spin on one of Shakespeare’s classic plays

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JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 3

CONTENTS

June 27 - July 4 / 2019

11

COVER

Sarena Parmar talks about her leading roles at Bard on the Beach and in theatre’s diversity drive.

By Janet Smih Cover photo by Emily Cooper

6

NEWS

A hairstylist has been awarded about $11,000 because she was fired soon after announcing her pregnancy.

By Carlito Pablo

10 THE BOTTLE

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The Aglianico grape in Italy is called “the Barolo of the south”, and its bold flavour suits summer barbecues.

By Kurtis Kolt

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17 MUSIC

With the Vancouver International Guitar Festival on the horizon, Robert Godin preaches sustainability.

By Alexander Varty

19 JAZZ FESTIVAL

Vancouver International Jazz Festival performer Melissa Aldana learned from more than master musicians when she decided to take up tenor sax.

By Alexander Varty

e Start Here 15 ARTS HOT TICKET 21 CONFESSIONS 9 HOROSCOPES 21 I SAW YOU 16 MOVIE REVIEWS 17 POP EYE 6 REAL ESTATE 23 SAVAGE LOVE

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BUY EARLY AND SAVE AT 4 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019

1 2 3 4 5

Golden egg vanishes from $2.8 million Dali sculpture downtown.

Woman sneaks photo of exposer’s genitals on SkyTrain.

Are the Canucks chasing free-agent D-man Tyler Myers?

Lethal virus prompts warning for dog owners to vaccinate.

Trustees vote to remove school’s Cecil Rhodes monument.

GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight

The Georgia Straight is published every Thursday by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. Copies are distributed free every week throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, New Westminster, and Richmond. International Standard Serial Number ISSN 0709-8995. Subscription rates in Canada $182.00/52 issues (includes GST), $92.00/26 issues (includes GST); United States $379.00/52 issues, $205.00/26 issues; foreign $715.00/52 issues, $365.00/26 issues. Contact 604-730-7087 if you wish to distribute free copies of the Georgia Straight at your place of business. Entire contents copyright © 2019 Vancouver Free Press, Best Of Vancouver, Bov And Golden Plates Are Trade-Marks Of Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. SUBMISSIONS The Straight accepts no responsibility for, and will not necessarily respond to, any submitted materials. All submissions should be addressed to contact@straight.com.

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ADULTS-ONLY AMUSEMENT — FRIDAY EVENINGS IN JULY.

Here’s what people are reading this week on Straight.com.

JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 5

NEWS

Petition aims to cap rent hikes after tenant leaves

H

by Carlito Pablo

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ousing activists are renewing the campaign to bring back vacancy control in B.C. Vacancy control is a policy that ties rent to the premises, not to the tenant. With this regulation, landlords cannot increase rents beyond what is allowed after an occupant moves out.

“It’s a simple fix that would protect affordability, fight poverty, and end renovictions!” states a petition prepared by the Real Rent Control B.C. campaign.

Signatures are being gathered for the petition in the joint campaign by the Vancouver Tenants Union (VTU) and Raise the Rates B.C., a coalition that is calling for higher welfare and disability benefits.

Sara Sagaii, a member of VTU’s steering committee, indicated that her group is ramping up its drive for vacancy control.

“The reason a lot of renovictions happen is because once a tenant is evicted, the rents can go up to any level,” Sagaii told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview Tuesday (June 25).

The campaign’s website recalls that B.C. had vacancy control from the early 1970s into the 1980s.

“Research suggests that rentcontrol measures can even lead to increased building maintenance because landlords under rent-controlled tenancies appreciate the stability of their tenant base and develop more positive relationships to their tenants,” according to the campaign.

Vacancy control was rejected by a provincial rental-housing task force formed by Premier John Horgan’s NDP government.

In its final report, released in December 2018, the task force recommended maintaining the current policy of tying rent to the tenant and not the housing unit.

The task force explained that landlords have indicated that vacancy control would “make it challenging for them to cover their costs, with some considering selling and, therefore, removing their property from

the rental stock”.

“Rental housing developers said that they would cease developing needed rental units if this change was brought in, as it would make their developments unaffordable to build,” according to the provincial body’s final report.

Vacancy control was brought in by the B.C. NDP government of former premier Dave Barrett.

Once a tenant is evicted, the rents can go up to any level – Sara Sagaii

A VTU policy paper notes that some form of vacancy control exists in Quebec, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island.

“Studies in Manitoba have shown that this has no negative effect on vacancy rate or construction,” according to the VTU. “Rent controls are frequently accused of having negative effects, however B.C.’s own experience with vacancy control from 1974 to 1984 showed no discernible impact on new rental construction, nor did it incentivize the neglect of buildings.”

LandlordBC, an organization representing rental-property owners, is opposed to vacancy control.

“What this means is that the landlord would unfairly lose the right upon tenant turnover to try to move rents to market in hopes of recovering over time a portion of the cost of improvements to their asset, to offset their steadily increasing operating costs and, perhaps most critically, try to recover some portion of the increased costs that are entirely outside their control,” the group stated in a letter to the City of Vancouver last year. g

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Job loss linked to pregnancy leads to $11,000 award

E

by Carlito Pablo

ven if there had been no discrimination, she would have been let go just the same.

Mackenzie Weihs was a new hairstylist, and she wasn’t very skilled yet. As a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal noted, the managers of the Great Clips salon had real concerns about her abilities. They said she wasn’t good enough, and so they terminated her during her probationary period.

But Weihs believed she was fired for another reason. And that’s because she was pregnant.

In a decision in favour of Weihs, tribunal member Grace Chen wrote that the stylist’s pregnancy “only has to be a factor in the adverse treatment”.

“Her pregnancy does not have to be the sole factor or the main factor,” according to Chen.

Chen ordered Weihs to be compensated about $11,000, including $9,000 for injury to her dignity, feelings, and self-respect.

Weihs was fired eight days after she announced her pregnancy.

Chen noted that salon manager Marlene Barker quipped after hearing Weihs’s announcement: “I hope Lizzie and the other girls aren’t pregnant.

Whatever you did, keep it with you.”

Lizzie is another stylist, and according to Chen, the comment suggests that Barker “thought negatively about accommodating a pregnancy”.

“Ms. Barker testified that Lizzie was an exceptional stylist,” Chen wrote. “I reasonably infer that Ms. Barker made her comment because she did not want Lizzie to go on leave if she became pregnant.”

While there were “genuine concerns” about Ms. Weihs’s abilities, Chen noted that it “was not until after the pregnancy announcement that Ms. Barker decided she did not want to invest further into improving Ms. Weihs’ skills”.

“Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is a form of sex discrimination,” the ruling noted.

In addition to Great Clips and Barker, salon owner Angela Rollins was also named as respondent in Weihs’s complaint.

According to Rollins, the $400 cost to send Weihs to the Great Clips styling academy would have been “significantly outweighed by the sales Ms. Weihs would have generated if she were a competent stylist”.

“However, I find it was not money that the Respondents did not want to invest,” Chen stated. “Rather, I find the Respondents did not want to invest any more time and energy into increasing Ms. Weihs’ skills after learning she was pregnant. Specifically, I find Ms. Barker decided she did not want to invest those efforts when she learned Ms. Weihs was pregnant because Ms. Weihs required too much help and her maternity leave would interrupt any progress.” g

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JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 7

National Geographic Live series returns (This story is sponsored by Vancouver Civic Theatres.)

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ollowing a successful launch last year, Vancouver Civic Theatres is bringing the wonder of the documentary back to the Orpheum theatre (601 Smithe Street) as part of the National Geographic Live speaker series. The 201920 season will see some of National Geographic’s most dynamic and entertaining explorers take the stage to share stories from behind the scenes of their intrepid adventures.

In three unmissable shows, audiences will go on a thrilling journey from the water’s edge to high above the trees and into the wild seas. A limited number of season tickets are still available for $99 and give patrons access to all three shows. But those who miss out need not despair since single tickets will be on sale from Friday (June 28).

Each show will be followed with question-and-answer sessions, giving attendees the chance to learn more in what are sure to be educational and fascinating talks.

In “Standing at the Water’s Edge”—the first of the National Geographic Live series taking place on October 8—photojournalist Cristina Mittermeier shares her experience investigating sustainable living in four Indigenous communities around the world. From the Kayapó people in the Amazon of Brazil to the Inuit of Greenland, Mittermeier found a common thread: an appreciation of the power of water to give life when it is respected and to destroy when it is misused.

During her explorations, she documented how the different groups learned to live in harmony with their water sources. In British Columbia, she found First Nations protecting their sacred headwaters, and in Hawaii, a new community of Indigenous peoples seeking to

Photojournalist Cristina Mittermeier investigated the relationship that Indigenous peoples in different parts of the world have with water, including in Kayapó, Brazil.

reclaim their connection to the sea.

In the end she learned the importance of “enoughness” and taking only what you need.

In the second of the series, “Birds of Paradise” (on February 4, 2020), Tim Laman and Ed Scholes take the audience deep into the New Guinea wilderness to meet—for the first time— all 39 species of the birds of paradise.

In this stunning presentation tied to their landmark book Birds of Paradise Revealed, the scientists share remarkable photographs and video to reveal the birds’ colourful plumage, secret lives, bizarre displays, and dazzling courtship antics.

Attendees join Laman and Scholes as they recount their wild adventures in the rain forest in search of some of nature’s most extraordinary wonders. And explore the fascinating scientific questions around how such extreme creatures and behaviours could have evolved.

On March 31 (2020), in the final

show of the series “Wild Seas, Secret Shores”, award-winning photographer Thomas Peschak, offers a world tour of marine biology, from humpback whales off the coast of Canada to South African great white sharks.

Peschak’s expansive career so far has covered a wide range of subjects and he has written and photographed seven books, in addition to being a multiple winner of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and World Press Photo Awards. His photos appeared in “Galapagos: Life in the Balance and Stewards of the Sea” in the June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. g A limited number of season passes for all three shows in the National Geographic Live 2019-20 season are still available and can be purchased for $99. Single tickets go on sale on Friday (June 28). For more information or to buy tickets, visit the Vancouver Civic Theatres website at vancouvercivictheatres.com/.

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8 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019

HOROSCOPE

J

by Rose Marcus

ust in time for the fireworks, Mars advances into Leo on Canada Day. Both Mercury and Mars are triggers for something that has been on brew since the start of the year. They fold the action of last January’s eclipses into Tuesday’s solar eclipse and the lunar eclipse of July 16.

Eclipses are catalysts for non-negotiable change, for significant endings and beginnings, for deaths and births of note. Next Tuesday delivers the “Great South American Eclipse”, the only total solar eclipse of 2019. Starting in the Pacific Ocean, the eclipse path will cross from the eastern to western coasts (Chile to Uruguay). The major power outage in the same region just a few weeks ago is a demonstration of how an eclipse can produce even before its calendar date.

A

ARIES

March 20–April 20

Tuesday’s solar eclipse seeds a significant new personal-life trajectory, one that expands upon the past or that makes a major departure from it.

Emotions serve as your best information source and counsel. You can go from feeling insecure to confident in the blink of an eye.

B

TAURUS

April 20–May 21

What works best for you?

What makes you happy? Setting you up for a breakthrough, the stars help you to see, seek, and find with new eyes. While there is still the past to contend with, Tuesday’s eclipse sets the future on its course. A friend or sibling may be an instrumental catalyst.

C

GEMINI

May 21–June 21

You are richer than you think or know, if not on paper then in other (perhaps more meaningful) ways.

Tuesday’s buried-treasure eclipse suggests you have more going for you than is fully recognized. Be it an ending or a beginning, view what surfaces now as a valuable resource and/or what is meant to be. What gains traction now is your best opportunity.

D

CANCER

E

LEO

June 21–July 22

Tuesday’s solar eclipse will be a potent catalyst if you are born on the day or near it. This is no ordinary passage of time. You now face an ending that has been long in the works and a beginning that is hard-won. Starting Wednesday, Venus in Cancer loans you a better feel for how to play it next.

July 22–August 23

Thursday could spark something unexpected and/or set wheels in faster motion. It could be a preview of Tuesday’s solar-eclipse action. This eclipse taps what’s been on brew. Mercury is freshly into Leo; Mars enters your sign on Monday. A key someone could make an entrance or exit or grab you by the heart.

F

August 23–September 23

LIBRA

September 23–October 23

Tuesday’s solar eclipse places you at a transition threshold of significance. Long in the works, you are working your way to a finish line or goal post. You’ll reach a completion point in as little as two weeks, and another in one or two months; yet one more extends over one or two years.

H

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VIRGO

Thinking about making a significant, perhaps even radical, change? Tuesday’s total eclipse supports that agenda. Whether subtle or obvious, watch for Mercury and Mars in Leo to help you to see with greater clarity. Put courage into action and think outside of the box. Thursday through next Wednesday, opportunity and synchronicity are at peak.

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JUNE 27 TO JULY 3 2019

SCORPIO

October 23–November 22

The past is is a springboard, catalyst, or portal regarding your future. Tuesday’s solar eclipse takes you/ it to the next level up. The eclipse also features a reconnection with a family member or someone from your past (karmic, ancestral, actual), family news, relocation, a trip, or a revisit.

I

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November 22–December 21

Now through next week could provide a fresh start. Go back and revise something already completed. Tuesday’s solar eclipse can revive an emotional journey, a health or financial issue. A family member or lover can need more from you. Perhaps you need more from them too.

December 21–January 20

The past, a key someone, a repeat, revisit, or revision are features of the solar-eclipse mix. Thursday/Friday, the getting is good. What is meant to be will take on a life of its own. What is meant to end or complete will do so now or soon. Another eclipse and Mercury retrograde are on the way!

January 20–February 18

Through next week, you can be in greater need of healing or positive reinforcement. Borrow if you need to.

The eclipse can be auspicious for giving it a second chance or for ditching something that isn’t working in favour of something that offers better potential, i.e., a better job or health regimen.

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You are at the start of so much more to come. Saying goodbye, remembering and reviewing the past; looking ahead and feeling your way along. It’s an emotional journey, for sure. Nothing is small or insignificant regarding this passage of time or the interfacing of past, present, and future.

Tuesday’s solar eclipse tugs on the heart, perhaps unexpectedly so. g

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DRINK

Aglianico is Puglia’s crown prince

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s discussed in last week’s column, I was very recently in Puglia, Italy, joining an international group of sommeliers, retailers, and media to judge wines at a competition called Radici del Sud to determine the best varietal wines in southern Italy.

Although the opportunity to meet colleagues from around the world and work toward a common goal is enjoyable, I find the biggest value in exercises like these is the chance to dive deep into the nuances of grape varieties that are less common in my day-to-day wine experiences.

One of these varieties encountered, Aglianico—a red grape with solid footing in the regions of Campania and Basilicata, along with smatterings in Puglia—is the crown prince of the region.

Jeremy Parzen, of the popular Italian food and wine blog Dobianchi.com, describes the pronunciation best as “ah-L’YEE’AH-nee-koh”.

Its mighty structure and f lavour profile and many top-tier bottlings have seen it casually dubbed “the Barolo of the south” (whereas cheeky locals have been known to refer to Barolo as “the Aglianico of the north”).

It’s a late ripener that can make for rather tannic wine, bursting with red, purple, and/or black fruit, often with notes of fresh leather,

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Aglianico is a red grape grown in Italy’s southern regions, including Puglia.

some meaty character, plus a few dried fruits and f lowers. Although big and bold, it carries acidity well, and when served with a hint of a chill, it can hit the spot with summertime barbecuing (and, of course, rainy Vancouver nights).

To get a handle on the basics of Aglianico, there are good examples around town that come in at fair prices. Fattoria La Rivolta Aglianico del Taburno 2015 (Campania, $35 to $40, Liberty Wine Merchants and various private stores) ticks all the boxes, while Tormaresca Trentangeli Castel del Monte 2016 (Puglia, $21.99, B.C. Liquor Stores) is a steal that tops things off with

a cheery splash each of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

When we want to get serious about Aglianico, however, there are two spots where we generally head: Aglianico del Vulture in Basilicata and Taurasi in Campania.

Basilisco “Teodosio” Aglianico del Vulture 2015 (Basilicata, $21.99, or $19.99 through June 29, B.C. Liquor Stores) is a fine example of the pedigree of these wines coming from volcanic soils of the area.

They are bright and powerful, with black and purple berry fruit, cloves, and earthy undertones.

Although wines from here can lay down a good handful of years, they’re also good to go right now, particularly with a quick decant before serving.

Villa Matilde Taurasi Tenute di Altavilla 2010 (Campania, $62.99, B.C. Liquor Stores) illustrates why collectors like to put away bottles of the stuff for years, as they evolve into a wine that’s quite graceful while still offering a little oomph.

Before being released from the winery, Aglianico from Taurasi must be aged a minimum of three years, with at least one of those years spent in barrel. Here, fresh-carved roast beef, anise, and violets are wellsteeped in sticky black fruit.

Picking up a bottle of various editions can make for a fun dinner party and exploration of the grape’s diversity. g

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arts

Parmar helps recast a classic at Bard

by Janet Smith

A

ctor-playwright Sarena Parmar is at the forefront of a quiet revolution on Canadian stages, one that’s fundamentally changing what we picture when we think of “the classics”.

Born in Prince George and raised in Kelowna, the Punjabi-Canadian star has featured in works by everyone from William Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw. And now she makes her Bard on the Beach debut, tackling the lead role in an All’s Well That Ends Well set in 1946 India.

“I love doing Shakespeare, I love Chekhov, and I’ve gotten to know Shaw very well,” she tells the Straight by phone before rehearsals at Vanier Park. “The ideas are so big, and I love ideas, and I love the poetry and rhetoric of all the classics. And the characters just seem larger than life. So I think it’s such a treat to be able to step into those shoes and figure out how they feel.”

Still, Parmar allows that breaking into the traditional theatre world hasn’t always been easy for someone with a South Asian background. “I had a passion for this kind of work and I just kept my head down and did the work,” she explains. “It’s been very difficult; you know, when I came up 10 years ago there was only a handful of artists in the generation above me that I could turn to for advice. It was not a path that was clearly laid out.”

Trained at the National Theatre School, Parmar has starred in a Brampton-set, South Asian–themed Much Ado About Nothing for Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, and she’s appeared in festivals from Stratford to Shaw. As a playwright, her spin on a Russian masterwork, The Orchard (After Chekhov), reimagined the story as taking place on the kind of PunjabiCanadian–run fruit farm she grew up on in the Okanagan; it debuted at the Shaw Festival, then came to the Arts Club Theatre this season.

At Bard on the Beach, Parmar is part of another bold, South Asian spin on tradition. She plays Helena in an All’s Well That Ends Well set on the eve of India’s independence from Britain. Travelling from the Delhi area to the Punjab (instead of the original’s France to Italy), the new production reimagines Helena and Bertram’s fraught love story as an interracial

The new production weaves in South Asian dance choreographed

by Poonam Sandhu and music composed by Ruby Singh. Carmen Alatorre and her team of costume makers have developed new dyeing and design techniques to create historical Indian fashions, Parmar says.

“And the sets have a beautiful backdrop. They’ve really captured the hotness of India,” she says of the designs

by Pam Johnson. “All the sets have this sunbleached-out colouring to them.”

Sarena Parmar stars in an All’s Well That Ends Well set in 1946 India, on the eve of independence from Britain. Photo by Emily Cooper

one between an Indian woman and a British aristocrat-officer.

The new rendition by codirectors Johnna Wright and Rohit Chokhani (who helms the annual festival Diwali in B.C.) holds big challenges, not least because of its loaded historical setting, when British colonial rule was about to fall. “It was a really complicated and charged political time, which we found in the prerehearsal process, meeting with the designers and the cast and the cultural consultant,” Parmar explains. “We all have been sharing books and trying to understand the climate.”

In the original All’s Well, Helena is a lowborn ward of a French-Spanish countess, and she wants to marry Bertram, the Duke of Rousillon. In Bard on the Beach’s new version, just like the old one, he rejects her because of her lower social standing. But here, after the viceroy forces Bertram to wed Helena, he immediately runs away to fight as a soldier in northern India.

Helena follows him there and tricks him into accepting their marriage.

In this rendition, Helena has lived with a British family since the death of her father. Parmar explains that her character finds herself in a precarious

She awakens as a woman, and this coincides with the awakening of India.

– Sarena Parmar

social position, more privileged than the Indian servants in the household, but not as privileged as the British.

“The more we go through the rehearsal process, it’s less about her cultural identity and more about realizing it’s about her access to class,” Parmar says. “She’s awakening as a woman, and this coincides with the awakening of India.”

LIKE THE TAMING of the Shrew, which gets a radical new treatment as part of Bard’s 30th-anniversary season, All’s Well is considered one

of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”. It’s inescapable: Bertram treats Helena badly, but she still pursues him. Yet, centuries later, we are sometimes attracted to people who are bad for us, Parmar points out. “Helena is so smart, has so much agency, and she’s pursuing this love that is clearly not reciprocated,” she says. “So how do we navigate that?”

This version of the play sticks fairly closely to the original script, but it has added interludes that explain the Indian historical context, Parmar says. The directors have also added bits of Hindi and Punjabi to the text—changes that have required Parmar to learn languages that weren’t passed down to her by her parents, who came to Canada in the 1960s.

Parmar says the learning curve has been steep. “Many of the sounds are so different; just to get my mouth to make these sounds was hard,” she adds with a laugh.

“People just assume you must have some facility speaking Hindi.

But when I was young, it was a different time when multiculturalism wasn’t a thing,” she adds. “There was a desire for us to assimilate.”

FROM ITS SETTING to a creative team that’s more than half South Asian, Bard’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well is part of a nationwide theatre conversation about diversity.

And Parmar is happy to witness the shift that’s happened over her career—although she admits it’s not always come at the speed she’d like.

“I think that’s the funny thing with change: it can never be fast enough to match how we are seeing our world,” she observes. “I’ve worked for a lot of big organizations—Stratford, Shaw, Bard, and the Arts Club—so they are embracing these ideas, on-stage, backstage. And audiences are too.

“That’s a long process because it can be intimidating and it’s about building a trust,” she adds of those audiences. “That can take many seasons for the community to make them feel welcome.”

By sticking it out, tackling roles like Helena, and even creating newstyle classics for her peers, she hopes she’s making the classical stage a little more open to South Asian actors who follow in her footsteps.

“With The Orchard, I loved Chekhov, so I put my story into it,” she says. “And now a whole whack of [South Asian] actors have had the chance to do Chekhov. And I think the opportunity to do this work and accessing this work makes you better at this work. If someone’s not saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to give you a shot at this role,’ then there is no way you can level up your experience to keep up with your peers.” g Bard on the Beach presents All’s Well That Ends Well at the Douglas Campbell Theatre in Vanier Park from Sunday (June 30) to August 11.

Guitar virtuoso ventures to North India

S

by Alexander Varty

haron Isbin’s new collaboration with sarod master Amjad Ali Khan, Strings for Peace, finds her a few thousand kilometres outside her comfort zone—and yet absolutely at home.

For the New York–based classical guitarist, the undertaking is foreign because it’s her first serious venture into the world of North Indian music. The project came together so quickly that she had very little time to learn a new and complex musical language—although, as she reveals in a telephone interview from her home, it’s also the result of a 10-year gestation.

Isbin and the Khan family—Amjad Ali’s sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash are also virtuoso sarodists—met a decade ago, at a New York concert, and it was obvious that there was an immediate musical and social rapport. “Every time they came to New York I would go to one of their performances,” she recalls. “And then, about six years ago, Amjad Ali Khan really became serious about crafting music that I could perform with him, ’cause he was fascinated by the idea of sarod with Sharon Isbin will premiere Strings for Peace with guitar. So they found somebody who could Amjad Ali Khan & Sons. Photo by J. Henry Fair notate the music for me. It took that person a couple of years, and then I heard from them November—that they had finally completed very recently—it would have been about last the project, and that they were sending me

actual ragas that he had composed for me that were set for sarod and guitar.

“I f lipped over it,” Isbin adds. “I just thought it was absolutely beautiful music— and they said, ‘Good, because we have already booked a tour for you in India, for February.’ ” She laughs; like those of most great classical performers, her calendar is usually finalized months or even years in advance.

But she found a way to arrange some time off, only to encounter a new challenge once she arrived on the subcontinent, three days before the first concert.

“Of course, what I discovered was that the tempos were all faster than the demo that they’d done, and then the next rehearsal they were faster yet,” she explains. “So I kept changing my fingerings, and then by the first performance, things were even faster. So it was a real process of flexibility and finding ways to quickly meet the challenge, and that made it very exciting.”

By all accounts, the Indian shows were received rapturously. And as soon as she got on-stage, Isbin realized that this new musical world also connected deeply with some of the first music she had performed and

recorded as a professional: the foundational compositions of the classical-guitar repertoire, most of which hail from Spain.

“That just hit me like a lightning bolt,” she notes. “I opened the concert with a work by Isaac Albéniz called Asturias, and it struck me how much similarity there is between the ornaments and melismatic ideas in the slower sections of Indian music and those in Spanish music or Sephardic music. And when you realize that the roots of f lamenco really did come from India, you’ll see that there is a symbiosis of culture and countries and music that is extraordinary.”

This, she continues, speaks to the core impetus behind Strings for Peace, which will receive its premiere in Vancouver, as part of the annual Indian Summer Festival.

“There’s really only one world,” Isbin says.

“Human beings are really one. We all have little variations here and there, but we’re one species, and being able to work together and communicate and share our passions and interests is a very beautiful thing.” g Amjad Ali Khan & Sons with Sharon Isbin play the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on July 12, as part of the Indian Summer Festival.

JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 11

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Len Cariou pairs twin loves in Broadway and the Bard

B

by Katherine Dornian

efore he was Commissioner Henry Reagan on Blue Bloods—even before he was working with Stephen Sondheim on Broadway—Len Cariou was a mainstay of Shakespearean comedies on Stratford and Winnipeg stages.

“I asked John Hirsch, my artistic director in Winnipeg, ‘When am I going to do a drama?’ ” Cariou says over coffee with the Georgia Straight.

“He said, ‘When you learn how to play comedy.’ ” The Winnipeg-born Cariou would make his name with dramas later, but it was this early immersion in Shakespeare, over 50 years ago, that gave him the idea for his touring one-man musical show, Broadway and the Bard.

“Life got in the way,” he admits.

“Then, when I got doing the television show Blue Bloods, after about four or five years of that, I thought, ‘I’m missing singing.’ ” Broadway and the Bard combines well-known soliloquies from Shakespeare’s plays with show-tune standards that connect to them thematically, or comment on them in some way. He won’t say which ones the audience will see, though. He insists it should stay a surprise.

“It’s kind of like a musical memoir of my career,” he hints.

For Cariou, the rhythm of Shakespeare’s poetry is musical, and goes hand in hand with Broadway. He has deep roots in both worlds. For decades, he switched between his repertoire of roles at Stratford—Prospero, Henry

V, and Petruchio, among others—and musicals like Applause and A Little Night Music on the Great White Way. A real turning point for him, he recalls, was when he took on the role of King Lear at age 35. “You do that, you grow up,” he says. “Once you grow that Lear muscle—once the thing is in your voice and in your body—Sweeney Todd is easy.”

Cariou won a Tony Award in 1979 for originating the title role in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The role is considered by many actors to be one of the most difficult in musical theatre.

Now Broadway and the Bard has allowed him revisit the joy of performing. Even after a break from theatre to focus on Blue Bloods (which will enter its 10th season this fall), Cariou still feels right at home on-stage.

“It’s what I do,” he says simply.

The 79-year-old actor performs solo, with just his musical director Mark Janas accompanying him. Cariou also got to include repertoire by old friends like Leonard Bernstein and Cole Porter.

With this touring show, Cariou gets to curate his own personal world of theatre—while proving that, even with his commitment to Blue Bloods, he won’t be leaving the stage anytime soon. “The business is such that people are not coming forth to you—you’ve gotta go to them,” he says, laughing. “Then everybody goes, ‘Oh shit, he’s still alive!’ ” g Broadway and the Bard plays at the Orpheum Annex from Thursday to Sunday (June 27 to 30).

Estonia’s Ari Matti has found comedy gold here

W

by Guy MacPherson

VSO in the Summer

JUN 23 @ ORPHEUM THEATRE

JUN 30 @ DEER LAKE | FREE

SHOWCASE

THE VSO AT DEER LAKE

JUN 24 @ BARD ON THE BEACH STAGE

JUL 3 @ CHAN CENTRE, UBC

FROM VENICE TO VIENNA

CHAN CENTRE

JUN 25 @ ORPHEUM THEATRE

THORGY THOR and the

JUL 4,5,6 @ ORPHEUM THEATRE VSO Digital Concert Hall presented by TELUS

JUN 27 @ ORPHEUM THEATRE BMO presents

JUL 7 @ SUNSET BEACH | FREE

VSO SCHOOL OF MUSIC

THE VSO AT BARD:

THORCHESTRA

BERNADETTE PETERS

VSO INSTITUTE at the STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

with the VSO

VSO AT SUNSET BEACH

JUN 29 @ DEER LAKE Brian Jessel BMW presents

JUL 12, 13 @ ORPHEUM THEATRE VSO Digital Concert Hall presented by TELUS

QUEEN LATIFAH

with the VSO

Brian Jessel

12 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019

BUGS BUNNY AT THE SYMPHONY II

.ca/summer

hen Ari Matti first arrived in Vancouver from halfway around the world, he lugged his bag straight to the late-night open mike at Yuk Yuk’s and hit the stage at 12:52 a.m., the 31st of 32 comics on the show.

He knew no one and no one knew him.

Back home in Estonia (where he goes by Ari Matti Mustonen), he had developed a name for himself in the blossoming comedy scene, selling out theatres across the country. He didn’t care that he was now playing to eight people; he came to Vancouver to further develop his comedic chops. Despite his success in Estonia, the 27-year-old was a relative newcomer to the genre.

Growing up on Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, who made it look easy, Matti, in his late teens, decided to give it a go. Not knowing that comedians spend years developing an act, he put on a show. How hard could it be?

At just 18 or 19—it’s all a fog to him now—he sold tickets and filled a venue. There’s nothing like a room full of silent people to tell you you’ve got some work to do.

“I was drenched in sweat,” Matti says, sitting outdoors at a downtown café. “I bombed for an hour. I still didn’t understand structure; I didn’t know that Louis C.K. was not just talking; I thought Dave just had some ideas. I didn’t know what a closer was, a premise. The crowd wasn’t laughing. See, that’s the problem with Estonians. They’re such nice people that they don’t leave.”

But bombing didn’t dissuade him.

Taking off for Australia, he entered what he calls “comedy college”. He took a workshop in Melbourne, where he lived for just under a year. He watched comedy specials every night, devoured podcasts, talked to established comics, and, most importantly, hit every open mike available. His mentality was “This gig is going to make me one percent better,” he says.

“Eight gigs a week is automatically better than two gigs a week.”

He quotes from his “textbooks”

during our conversation: autobiographies and memoirs by the likes of Kevin Hart and Sebastian Maniscalco.

A one-week trip to Thailand turned into four months. “The scene was erupting and entertainers were so needed,” he says. “A headliner saw me for literally 10 minutes and said, ‘I’m going on tour for two months. You’re going to open.’ ” After that stint, he headed back to Europe, thinking his life was over. But he stuck with it. The talents he picked up abroad helped him stand out back home. “Estonian people hadn’t seen… the style I brought from western comedy, the physicality, the confidence.”

He started a podcast with a fellow comic that took off and soon comedy fans were showing up to his shows in shirts emblazoned with jokes from the podcast or his act.

He turned down a TV offer because he didn’t want to be a big fish in a small pond: “I made the decision that I can’t get stuck here.”

Enter Vancouver. The past year he’s been honing his craft at every comedy room in the city and surrounding area, gaining confidence in English every step of the way. “People know comedy here. They don’t give you free laughs,” he says.

His year is coming to an end, however. Come July 4, he’ll be on a plane home. But first, he’s headlining a farewell show at the Rio the night before. He calls it Imported Goods, and it features some of the friends he’s made during his stay, all with an immigrant connection: Ola Dada, with a Nigerian background; Dino Archie from the U.S.; Andrea Jin, a Chinese-Canadian; and Andrew Packer from… Toronto? “He’s not that much of an immigrant but he’s an outsider,” Matti says. “And I have to show my respects for the Raptors.”

His flight leaves at 7 a.m., so he’ll end his stay here by bringing the same travel bag to the gig that he hauled into Yuk Yuk’s last July. g Ari Matti’s Imported Goods plays the Rio Theatre on Wednesday (July 3).

JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 13

ARTS

Countdown to epic artwork The Clock

N

by Janet Smith

orth Van’s Polygon Gallery is busy installing a cinema, custom-built to the specifications of the man who created one of this decade’s most buzzed-about international artworks.

All summer long, audiences of about 80 or 90 people will be able to lounge on comfy modular sofas—sometimes in the middle of the night—to watch ever-looping screenings of The Clock.

“Luckily, IKEA started selling this certain set of couches again,” curator Reid Shier says with a laugh over the phone on a break from installation.

For The Clock, which won the Gold Lion Award at the Venice Biennale in 2011, American artist Christian Marclay painstakingly edited together thousands of film and TV clips from the last 70 years—all of them referring to an exact time, whether through images of wristwatches, radio alarms, or clock towers, or through verbal references. Most brilliantly, the 24-hour montage is

From Christian Marclay’s famous The Clock, one film clip from thousands in a montage showing time ticking by, screening at the Polygon Gallery all summer.

synchronized with the 24-hour clock of real time.

That’s what makes it so important to show the work, which has been screened everywhere from the Tate Modern to the Museum of Modern Art, in a custom-theatre setting with

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high audio and visual quality, says Shier. “It is about cinema. It is of cinema. And it takes you into cinema in a radically new way,” explains the curator, who’d been working to bring the piece here for years before the former Presentation House Gallery’s move

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into its new waterfront landmark in 2017. “So it needs to reflect those conditions. It needs to be very absorptive, so it can be a place that people spend a lot of time.

“This is not a piece you spend a couple minutes watching,” he stresses. “People get caught up in it.”

On its most basic level, The Clock operates as a timepiece. It also reflects our shared daily rhythms as humans: in the morning hours, you see people waking up and drinking coffee; later, there might be a noonhour shootout, or a car chase, or a dinner party. On another level, it is a love letter to cinema; classics like High Noon, M, and The Stranger are juxtaposed with Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, and countless more. And then there are the more transcendent meanings about time and mortality; the Guardian called it “a meditation on the mystery of time” and a “dreamlike kaleidoscope”.

Shier attempts to put words to the effect it had on him when he first witnessed it at the biennale. “It was one of those times where you see something so extraordinary you know you’re only going to see it once in a lifetime,” he says. “Your expectations are upended, and that’s one thing that’s extraordinary—how it develops its own rhythm.

“He carries you through and across clip to clip in a way that really is quite gentle, but that sucks you in in a way that’s very unexpected—and a lot of that has to do with sound,” he adds. “That’s what’s so radical about it: how it’s so hard to leave! You want to know what comes next. There’s no beginning and no end. There’s no point at which it culminates, except for maybe at midnight, when there’s sort of a crescendo.…There’s this sense of awe in watching it.”

The rhythms Shier talks about may stem partly from Marclay’s proficiency as a contemporary composer. Some of the American-born, Swiss-raised, London-based artist’s most pioneering work used turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages. He’s collaborated and performed with everyone from John Zorn to Sonic Youth. For the past 35 years, the 64-year-old talent has played with fusing fine-art and audio cultures; one well-known 2000 work, the video Guitar Drag, features an amplified Fender Stratocaster being dragged behind a pickup truck along Texan dirt roads.

In the Polygon’s former life as Presentation House Gallery, it showed Marclay’s seven-minute Telephones, a pre–YouTube supercut of people in films making phone calls. That piece was a direct precursor to The Clock, which ranks as Marclay’s most epic work—a feat that took three years and a team of assistants to create.

And by screening it (in a presentation organized by the National Gallery of Canada), the Polygon has scored a summer coup.

“There’s a real privilege to show something like this, not least because this is why we built the gallery, but also to continue the legacy of what we started up the hill [at Presentation House Gallery],” Shier says.

So how does one tackle something so monumental? You will probably have to line up; Shier says if the cinema is busy, you will be offered a timed ticket so you can wander the gallery’s other shows while you wait.

His team hosts tours of The Clock every Saturday at 2 p.m. And don’t miss the special overnight screenings, held so visitors can see what happens in the wee hours, on July 5 and 26, August 16, and September 6 and 13.

“Very different stuff happens then,” Shier stresses. “It’s very rewarding to find it at different times of day.” g

FUNDERS

The Polygon Gallery presents The Clock from July 5 to September 15.

14 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019

Rock of Ages cast ready to don big hair and tight pants

H

by Janet Smith

air metal of the ’80s gave us many things: guyliner, poodle ’dos, and pink spandex pants, whether we really needed them or not. But it also gave us that unique, balls-in-a-C-clamp screech epitomized by Bret Michaels, David Coverdale, and Dee Snider.

And while their falsetto howls may seem funny today, local stage star Victor Hunter, who’s appearing in Renegade Arts Co.’s new production of Rock of Ages, is here to tell you they’re no joke to perform.

He’s sung lead roles in everything from Theatre Under the Stars’ Shrek: The Musical to Align Entertainment’s Legally Blonde, and this show—packed with high-notereaching hits like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”—requires a new level of vocal endurance.

“Because it’s a jukebox musical, we’re singing stuff not created for musical theatre, so it’s not a sustainable-for-eight-shows-a-week mentality,” he says, sharing a call with costar Synthia Yusuf. She plays small-town groupie Sherrie, the love interest of his Drew, an aspiring rocker who works at an L.A. club called the Bourbon Room while waiting for his big break.

“It is so at the higher range of what a man can sing. It’s wild,” Hunter stresses. “And you don’t want a musical-theatre sound. You want to sound like someone who’s been drinking whisky all day.”

Hunter had to find not only the vocal chops to do that, but also a new physicality—thanks largely to his costume. “I wanted to know ‘How do rock stars move on-stage with that confidence and that tight of pants?’ ” he says. “So I watched as many videos and as many bands as I could.”

Research came a little more directly for Yusuf; her parents proved invaluable sources of inspiration. “My parents were teens in the ’80s and that’s how I was able to find out the trends,” says the actor, whom you’ve seen in Chainsaw Artists Collective’s Heathers: The Musical and the Arts Club’s Beauty and the Beast. “There are photos of my mom with the full perm and crazy makeup. They’re so excited about the show.”

Like Hunter, she studied old music videos for songs she’d have to sing, the most batshit-crazy among them being the clip for Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart”—an earnest breakup song that comes complete with motorcycles, bulldozers, a Rindy Ross sax solo, and things that go boom. “Toward the end, there are flamethrowers and explosions happening—it makes absolutely no sense,” Yusuf says, laughing, and then she observes with the composure of an ancient-history scholar: “Music videos were quite new and it’s so interesting what they were doing with them artistically.”

Rock of Ages first appeared on Hollywood Boulevard in 2005 and debuted on Broadway four years later. To mark the 10th anniversary of that production, Renegade, a six-year-old company devoted to rock musicals from Tommy to Rent, is bringing it back in all its hairsprayed, debauched glory.

The best thing about this show, Hunter says, is it refuses to take itself seriously. “It’s tongue-in-cheek,” he says.

“It’s willing to break the fourth wall.”

“It’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had in rehearsal,” Yusuf says. “The show is really funny and full of heart.”

And then there is the hair. For his part, Hunter will be sporting a shaggy bleach-blond wig. The long-tressed Yusuf is one of the few cast members able to utilize their own locks, but she won’t be going quite as far as her mom once did. “My hair will be my own, but with lots of teasing and lots of spray,” she says. “I’m not going to do a perm.” g Renegade Arts Co. presents Rock of Ages from Thursday (June 27) to July 6 at the Metro Theatre.

ONGOING MATILDA THE MUSICAL The Arts Club Theatre Company presents an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel. To Jul 14, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. From $39.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW The 2007 spaghetti-western version of Shakespeare’s work is the inspiration behind this Wild West love story. To Sep 21, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26.

MOM’S THE WORD: NEST 1/2 EMPTY The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a new generation of laughs from the creative team behind the Mom’s the Word series. To Jul 20, Granville Island Stage. From $29.

JERUSALEM A staging of the character drama by Jez Butterworth. To Jun 30, 8 pm, Jericho Arts Centre. $22-28.

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE Young Will Shakespeare has writer’s block. To Sep 18, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26.

QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL Nearly 100 artists gather to dissemble, push, and transgress.

To Jun 28, Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre.

CAG PERFORMANCES New dance compositions by Katie Cassady, Stephanie Cyr, Livona Ellis, and Christoph Von Riedemann. Jun 2528, 7-8 pm, Contemporary Art Gallery. Free.

TENDER ENGINE: MARDON + MITSUHASHI Dance performance and media art installation.

Jun 25-28, 8-10 pm, VIVO Media Arts Centre. $10.

MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC aIN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: REFLECTING ON NORTHWEST COAST ART to summer 2020 aSHAKEUP: PRESERVING WHAT WE VALUE to Sep 1 aSHADOWS, STRINGS AND OTHER THINGS: THE ENCHANTING THEATRE OF PUPPETS to Oct 14 MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER aWILD THINGS: THE POWER OF NATURE IN OUR LIVES to Sep 30 aHAIDA NOW: A VISUAL FEAST OF INNOVATION AND TRADITION to Dec 1 aTHERE IS TRUTH HERE to Dec 31 VANCOUVER ART GALLERY aMOVING STILL: PERFORMATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY IN INDIA to Sep 2 aVIEWS OF THE COLLECTION: THE STREET to Nov 17 aALBERTO GIACOMETTI: A LINE THROUGH TIME to Sep 29

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26 ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL New staging of Shakespeare’s work set in India during the waning days of British occupation. Jun 26–Aug 11, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27 ROCK OF AGES The songs of Journey, Bon Jovi, and Whitesnake underscore a tale of big dreams in Hollywood. Jun 27-Jul 6, Metro Theatre. $24-55.

BROADWAY & THE BARD Theatre and screen veteran Len Cariou returns to the stage for a union of American musical comedy and Shakespeare. Jun 27-30, 8 pm, The Annex. $55-80.

HELLO & GOODBYE A Room Somewhere presents Athol Fugard’s family drama. Jun 27–Jul 6, 8-9:30 pm, Studio 1398. $15-22.

ARTS LISTINGS WEDNESDAY, JULY 3 ARI MATTI: IMPORTED GOODS Estonian comedian headlines a comedy showcase hosted by Andrew Packer. Jul 3, 9-11:30 pm, Rio Theatre. $18/25.

Arts HOT TICKET

her first love, hip-hop. See what she can do and bow down to the Queen when she joins the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in a program that will span those three genres and more, all in a gorgeous outdoor setting.

THURSDAY, JULY 4

FRIDAY, JUNE 28 THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY An evening of theatrics, dance, comedy, acrobatics, and music. Jun 28, 7 pm, The Metro. $35.

SOPHIE BUDDLE Canadian comedian performs two nights of standup. Jun 28, 29, 8 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club. $20.

MODUS OPERANDI SHOW Contemporary dance. Jun 28-29, 8 pm; Jun 29, 3 pm, Scotiabank Dance Centre. Adult $20/child and senior $12.

GLITTER IS FOREVER Closing party of the Queer Arts Festival marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Jun 28, 9 pm, Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. $20.

SATURDAY, JUNE 29 COMING TOGETHER IN RESPECT AND PEACE! Launches for new books by Ariadne Sawyer and Diego Bastianutti. Jun 29, 2 pm, Vancouver Public Library.. Free.

BURLESQUE LONG FORM Performances by local burlesque artists and a guest from Seattle. Jun 29, 8 pm, Rio Theatre. $20/25.

THE COMIC STRIP Standup comedy by Darcy Boon Collins, Ola Dada, and headliner Levi McCachen. Jun 29, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $18.

THE GATEWAY SHOW Comedians perform straight then smoke weed and tell jokes high.

Jun 29, 10 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $10-20.

DANCING ON THE EDGE FESTIVAL Annual festival of contemporary dance features productions from Canada, Brazil, and Korea.

Jul 4-13, Firehall Arts Centre. $22-28.

INDIAN SUMMER FESTIVAL 2019 Ninth annual South Asian arts festival features futurists, novelists, comedians, musicians, and storytellers. Jul 4-14, various Metro Vancouver venues. Free, by donation, and ticketed.

FLAMENCO, TANGO & WINE Dancers from Flamenco Rosario and Argentine Tango Lab perform. Jul 4, 6:30-9:30 pm, Vancouver Playhouse. $25/35.

ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

QUEEN LATIFAH WITH THE VSO (June 29 at Deer Lake Park)

In the 1980s, before Eve, Missy Elliott, and Lil’ Kim, Queen Latifah was helping to pave the way for female rappers. By the 1990s, she was blazing new trails in film, first appearing in Spike Lee’s seminal Jungle Fever, and going on to star in hits like Chicago.

The woman has never lost her vocal powers, recording albums ranging from jazz and pop to

FLAMENCO, TANGO & WINE (July 4 at the Vancouver

Playhouse) Flamenco Rosario headlines the troupes on hand to help Latincouver, the people behind Latin American Week, fete Spain and Argentina. Pair the passionate dance with the perfect partner: wine, care of the countries that are being celebrated—and that are just as famous for their vintages. g

SUNDAY, JUNE 30 SYMPHONY IN THE PARK VSO performs its annual outdoor concert. Jun 30, Deer Lake Park Festival Lawn. Free.

CHEONDOONG 15TH ANNIVERSARY KOREAN DRUMMING PERFORMANCE: THE REIGN Korean traditional and contemporary drumming, hip-hop, and dancing. Jun 30, 7 pm, Vancouver Playhouse. $30.

JNT COMEDY SHOW Come enjoy comedy at a higher level! Jun 30, 8 pm, Cannabis Culture Headquarters. $10.

MONDAY, JULY 1 KITSILANO SHOWBOAT CELEBRATES CANADA DAY Performers include Vancouver Puppet Theatre, Luc Emmanuel, Hunter J and the Jets, and Sambacouver. Jul 1, Kitsilano Showboat. Free (donations welcome).

CANADA DAY AT CANADA PLACE Great food, fireworks and family fun. Jul 1, 11 am– 11 pm, Canada Place. Free.

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JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15

MOVIES

Fellini meets Lynch on a long Journey REVIEWS

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

Starring Wei Tang. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable

d A BATTERED PROTAGONIST with an uncertain past returns to his hometown in China’s remote southwest and finds a place of mouldy, rain-soaked alleys, shuttered mines, misremembered dreams, and trains that noisily bisect the darkness. The man narrates his strangely elliptical journey with a combination of hard-boiled film-noir resignation and poetry courtesy of Bi Gan, the

movie’s brash young writer-director.

That describes Bi’s previous feature, Kaili Blues, as well as his new one, which has nothing to do with Eugene O’Neill’s famous play. Viewers looking for literary, cinematic, or even sci-fi clues as to meanings behind the main characters’ beautifully opaque actions will be left scratching their heads.

As main man Luo Hongwu (Jue Huang) explains, “The difference between film and memory is that film is always false.” Maybe. But there’s little to indicate that what’s rattling around inside Luo, or in the brainbox of Wan Qiwen (glamorous Wei Tang)—a mysterious, green-dressed woman from his past—is any more reliable.

Luo is looking for Wan, and also searching for what happened to his mother, who disappeared when he was young. Then there’s a childhood pal called Wildcat, seemingly murdered when both men knew Wan. Are these people and events more deeply connected than they seem to be, or might they be tangentially related fragments of thought? There are no cellphones or other cultural clues to nail down time periods, and the same dialogue— spare, oblique, and something to do between lighting cigarettes—keeps showing up in multiple mouths.

The entire second (and livelier) half of the two-hour-plus saga is presented as one unbroken take. The director also did this in Kaili, albeit with a much smaller budget and no marquee stars, and without the talent of French cinematographer David Chizallet.

The latter deployed a remarkable array of drones and handheld cams to create the somnambular images that give this Journey a David-Lynchmeets-Fellini feeling. One can safely argue that a movie this gorgeous certainly wouldn’t suffer from having a stronger story line. But the trip is well worth taking—if you’re not too hung up on destinations.

by Ken Eisner

GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND

A documentary by Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni. Rated PG

d THIS BRISK NEW doc on Canada’s singer laureate doesn’t really get you any closer to Gordon Lightfoot than his songs will take you. But the 80-year-old performer has put himself and whatever meaning he has into his work, and that really is enough.

This isn’t to say that the 90-minute

overview is without revelations.

Growing up in a paisley-tinged California, I always associated Lightfoot with the boreal North, and songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” cemented his backroads cred as a plaid-wearing lumberjack whose timber happened to be music.

But Orillia, Ontario’s favourite son started as a church-choir soloist, played drums in cover bands, sang in a barbershop quartet, and briefly fronted a big band before finding his way into the 1960s folk boom.

In 1958, he moved to Los Angeles to study jazz composition and instead fell under the spell of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and other activist folkies, thus altering assumptions about his folkie roots. Upon returning to Canada, he found a country niche on CBC TV (resulting in a wealth of visual material here) and eventually became part of a singer-songwriter movement that included performers like Ian & Sylvia, Murray McLauchlan, Anne Murray (all interviewed here), Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young (not aboard).

Joining the Greenwich Village strumming scene, Lightfoot fell in with Judy Collins and Peter, Paul and Mary, who popularized “Early Morning Rain” and other originals, and formed a lifelong mutual-admiration society with upstart Bob Dylan, with whom he later toured.

More testimony to his national-icon status comes from the likes of Randy Bachman, Geddy Lee, Sarah McLachlan, and Alec Baldwin. (Wait. What?)

His musical accompanists have remained loyal, but none of Lightfoot’s wives or children address the camera. Our subject, now gaunt and still keeping cigarette in hand, offers an unusually forthright mea culpa regarding his personal relationships.

He’s particularly embarrassed by the sexist lyrics to early hit “For Lovin’ Me”, which he stopped performing decades ago. “I hate that fuckin’ song,” he explains. Gordon Lightfoot generally lets his songs do the talking—and the shutting up.

by Ken Eisner

BUDDY

A documentary by Heddy Honigmann. In Dutch, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable

d RECENT STUDIES suggest that dogs have changed, evolutionarily, in the more than 20,000 years that they’ve been shacking up with human beings.

Certainly, we have changed too, at least in our expectations of what these canid critters can do for us.

The new Dutch documentary Buddy narrows its research to just six special tail-waggers, each of which expands our conception of man, woman, and child’s best friend. Veteran docmaker Heddy Honigmann is stingy with context, only gradually acquainting us with our subjects— service animals that act as extra limbs for their physically limited masters.

Of the barking heads seen here, the most striking animal is Kaiko, an off-white labradoodle who helps her paraplegic human shop, dress, retrieve pages from the printer, and—most startlingly—open the fridge door and grab items on command. The most enigmatic is Mister, a big brown creature of similar demeanour (none of the breeds are discussed) who tends to the emotional needs of an Afghanistan War veteran with bad injuries and even worse PTSD. To see Mister shift into extraalert status as soon as the man’s wife leaves his side is to witness empathy in its most rigorous application.

Honigmann could have included some clues as to how these fine animals are selected and trained. We don’t get much background on the people, either, unless they divulge it.

The liveliest human is Edith van der Meulen, a spry woman in her late 80s who lost her eyesight to a German bomb in the Second World War. In a nifty twist, she has had professional portraits made of all her guide dogs since the 1950s, even though she cannot see them herself.

The film has plenty of idiosyncratic asides, but there’s a certain sameness to the presentation that makes you wish the Peruvian-born director, well known for ferreting out telling ironies, had dug deeper or perhaps gone broader in her overview of these symbiotic relationships. One side benefit to Buddy is that it gives you a dog’s-eye view of suburbs, parks, and byways of Amsterdam that tourists rarely visit.

by Ken Eisner

ANNA VIFF‘18

Starring Sasha Luss. Rated 14A

d AH, THE ’90s. A time when the French gave us shiny, shallow cinéma du look, and films like La Femme Nikita somehow passed as odes to female empowerment—stiletto heels, fishnet stockings, and all.

Watch Luc Besson’s film today and it’s a little depressing to see Anne Parillaud’s feisty, foul-mouthed punk get turned into a spy-assassin who knows how to choose the right shade of lipstick and order from the wine menu.

Much like Nikita, Besson’s new Anna looks Euro-slick, but feels like a creepy showcase for the director’s own fetishes. Those include: emotionally remote older men hooking up with hot young women, women who need to be broken like horses, women with guns, and long legs and garters. In this #MeToo moment (when Besson himself is facing accusations), Anna feels straight out of another era.

It doesn’t help that the hardscrabble title character is never as interesting as

see page 18

16 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019

MUSIC

Pop Eye

AS MARRIAGES GO, it’s been both

unlikely and perfect, with the only strange thing being it took so long for two disparate-on-the-surface bedfellows to come together.

And what an insanely powerful union country-rap has proven to be, as evidenced by the fact that, for the last two-and-a-half months of this year, Lil Nas X’s hip-hop–hayseed hybrid “Old Town Road” has set up 10-week camp in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Top 100. That former Nashville punch line Billy Ray Cyrus has been along for the ride only sweetens the deal.

You want to see the most awesome thing since Cleavon Little whipped it out on the streets of Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles? Cue up the big-budget video for “Old Town Road”, where the 20-year-old rapper born Montero Hill is first seen riding hell-bent for leather in the dusty Old West. After dodging a load of buckshot, Nas ends up plunging down a rabbit hole that leads to a lawn in inner-city America.

Transition to a man and his horse lazily traversing the streets of a ’hood where everyone gawks incredulously.

Who needs a barbecue when you’ve got Nas, with a molasses-slow flow, rapping “My life is a movie/Bull ridin’ and boobies/Cowboy hat from Gucci.”

Country-rap’s big problem before Lil Nas X? It was almost always white folks, often looking straight-out-ofthe-trailer, making the attempt to bridge the two genres.

The marriage made some sort of cartoonish sense when Bubba Sparxxx was presiding over things. More difficult to imagine was Drake pulling on a pair of assless chaps and a 10-gallon hat, Tyler, the Creator leading the Borax mule team through Death Valley, or Rico Nasty pulling a Colt .45 on Gary Cooper in Hadleyville at high noon.

The genius of Lil Nas X is that he flipped the script, while looking fly as fuck in a black cowboy hat.

Figuring maybe the rap and country

Robert Godin makes guitarists happy

crowds were ready for something a little different, he delivered a song that straddled worlds with more in common than the rednecks of Tennessee and the city of Compton might once have thought.

As shaped by giants like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings, country started out as music for the poor, prospectless, and disenfranchised people of rural America. As invented by the likes of Grandmaster Flash and reshaped by legends like Public Enemy, N.W.A, and Kendrick Lamar, rap gave an important voice to the poor, often prospectless, and disenfranchised people of urban America.

Anyone who’ll argue that the two don’t go together like Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg has obviously never heard the Gourds giving “Gin and Juice” the bluegrass treatment. They’ve never imagined how much fun CupcakKe might have with Wheeler Walker Jr.’s “Redneck Shit”, and its lines “Shoved a dildo up my asshole just to see if it could fit/Buy a bunch of nudie magazines— the ones that show the clit.”

And they’ve never heard the Wrangler-loving Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”, a song so perfect that it’s gone from an obscurity played over Red Dead Redemption 2 to the jam Halsey busts urban-cowgirl moves to on Instagram.

The ultimate appeal of the song?

Like the best hip-hop, it somehow seems totally real—something that’s been lacking in country since Hank Williams III went dark. And historically lacking in the white-trash countryrap of Colt Ford, Big Smo, Upchurch, and Moonshine Bandits.

Lil Nas X is a case of cultural appropriation going the other way for a change. There’s a new sheriff in town. No matter how opposed to mixed marriages you might be, you’re going to have to get used to it.

by Mike Usinger

W

by Alexander Varty

ere Robert Godin a philosopher, he’d most likely be a disciple of Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century Brit who famously coined the maxim “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong.”

The founder and CEO of Canada’s largest guitar company has certainly made thousands of musicians happy, mostly with very good guitars that sell for even better prices. (Parent company Godin Guitars has a number of entry-level sublines, including Seagull, Art & Lutherie, and Norman.) He’s brought hundreds of jobs to economically depressed areas, notably eastern Quebec and New Hampshire. By using locally sourced trees such as birch, silverleaf maple, and Canadian cherry, he’s kept his carbon footprint low while relieving pressure on stocks of the endangered tropical hardwoods favoured by other guitar makers.

“Why use rosewood?” he says in a telephone interview from Montreal.

“I use wood that grows around here, that’s got some chance to regrow, you know.”

But primarily, he says, he’s interested in “making instruments that musicians need”. Instruments, in particular, that open up new sonic possibilities, or that bring ancient designs such as the Spanish guitar into the modern, amplified world.

Godin, who began working with guitars in the 1960s as a much-indemand repairman in Montreal, opened his first factory in 1972, going into business with a former manufacturer of wooden window frames.

His first instruments were tough, affordable steel-string acoustics meant to offer a quality alternative to the inferior Japanese-made instruments

Robert Godin opened his first guitar factory in 1972, and he continues to produce innovative and musician-pleasing instruments. Photo by Katherine Calder-Becker

then in vogue, but he soon identified a different and somewhat higher-end market niche: Latin music.

“Latin music started to get known in the ’60s and really came on strong in the ’90s, but there were no instruments to play it on—not guitars, anyway,” he notes. “Then I created the Multiac.”

A thin-bodied, spruce-topped nylon-string guitar, the Multiac is equipped with a high-end pickup system, allowing Latin players to share stages with loud percussionists and powerful brass sections.

Not surprisingly, the model has also been adopted by an array of rock and jazz performers. Godin’s also adapted Multiac technology to steel-string and 12-string instruments, and he’s especially proud of his electric oud, which solves an assortment of problems that have long bedevilled players of that Middle Eastern lute.

The innovations continue, as Godin will explain during his keynote address at this weekend’s Vancouver International Guitar Festival, which brings together dozens of luthiers both innovative and traditional, along with an avid crowd of players

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“We have a nice team of researchers, and we’re always in development,” he says. “I can’t say more now, other than we’re inventing machines to test the wood, to verify each piece.

And this is something. Why do we say this acoustic guitar is a thousand dollars, and the next one is three thousand? Nobody can answer,” the master luthier continues. “They all say, ‘Well, it’s nice wood,’ but what means nice wood? Nothing. But now, with McGill University in Montreal, we’ve invented testing machines, and we’re going to come out with a new certification [program] where you’re going to be able to read the resonance on a sheet of paper attached to the guitar.”

In other words, Godin’s builders will be able to tailor individual instruments to a particular sonic profile, while ensuring greater consistency across the entire production line—and that’s going to make even more guitarists very, very happy. g The Vancouver International Guitar Festival runs at the Creekside Community Recreation Centre on Saturday and Sunday (June 29 and 30). For a full festival schedule, visit www.vancouverguitarfestival.com/.

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JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 17

from page 16

the wild animal that was Parillaud’s Nikita. Played by bottle-blond model Sasha Luss, Anna is down-and-out and selling matryoshkas in a Moscow street market when she’s recruited by a fashion scout. Soon she’s strutting the runways of Paris, while secretly putting bullets in Russian enemies and stealing state secrets on USB sticks (even though the movie’s set in the early 1990s, when zip discs were the height of computer-nerd fashion).

Let’s stop here and acknowledge there is nothing wrong with stylish emptiness in an action movie, as Atomic Blonde proved, nor is there a problem with ass-kicking female spies.

You just need to have a sense of selfawareness about the over-the-top stuff you’re doing, a character with enough ferocity to offer more than eye candy, and a genuine taste for retro kitsch.

Not only does Anna not feel like it’s set in the early 1990s, it refuses to have any fun with the era. Luss attacks her role with robotic drive.

Her voracious liaisons with KGB recruiter Alex Tchenkov (Luke Evans) and CIA agent Lenny Miller (Cillian Murphy) lack chemistry, and, as usual, Besson’s sex scenes are soulless wham-bams, often in closets (another fetish, presumably).

Besson does show his chops at action scenes here: one blood-spattered

restaurant takedown has Anna turning kitchen utensils into weapons against an army of bulky Russian bodyguards.

But the most interesting moments in the movie involve Anna taking strict direction from Helen Mirren, as KGB supervisor Olga.

The Brit acting veteran creates one of film’s great dragon ladies—a Soviet-era holdover with oversized brown glasses, Khrushchev-issue suits to match, Margaret Thatcher hair, and a cigarette lighter shaped like a hand grenade. She is, of course, sexless, old—and in control of her own destiny.

by Janet Smith

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18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JUNE 27 – JULY 4 / 2019

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JAZZ FEST Aldana paints with her saxophone

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For her album Visions, Melissa Aldana (left) drew inspiration from the work of the great Mexican painter Frida Kahlo; Darius Jones (right) will be spending a month in Vancouver, writing a piece that combines a string trio with a jazz rhythm section.

d IN HER DEFT use of light and shade, colour and line, serenity and abandon, Melissa Aldana is a painter. Except that she isn’t; she plays the tenor saxophone. But once, before settling on music as her medium, she thought about a career in the visual arts, spending hours with a brush in hand, meticulously researching how her idols made marks on canvas.

It was, she says, the same method she used to learn her horn: by copying the great masters. Still, her days of imitation are long gone. Since moving to New York City in 2009, she’s gone on to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, and to release five albums as a leader. She’s also developed an incisive yet melodic sound that’s all her own, and now she’s using that sound to pay homage to a special source of inspiration: the great Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

“When I was a kid, I used to love painting in oils, you know,” the 30-year-old musician says, in a telephone interview from her home. “So what I did was ‘transcribe’ her paintings—and then later on I tried to translate that into music, with the suite of pieces that I wrote last year.”

Visions, the resulting album, isn’t a faithful translation of Kahlo’s art; Aldana doesn’t try to capture the gestures of the great portraitist’s brushwork, for instance. “It’s mostly my interpretation of the feelings that the paintings give me,” she says. “A lot of the music I wrote has a lot of different levels and a lot of different sections, and I’m trying to tell a story.

And this is what I feel from Frida’s paintings. For example, in that painting The Love Embrace of the Universe you have Frida Kahlo hugging Diego Rivera, who has a third eye, and you can see the universe and you can see Mother Earth. So I’m just trying to translate all of that into music and think more about narrative when I’m writing, instead of specific scales or structures.”

Aldana adds that on another track from Visions, “La Madrina”, she goes deeper into storytelling, and melds elements of Kahlo’s life with incidents from her own. “When she was a kid, she had an accident, and she sees the light, and this ghost at the end of the light which offered her eternity or to live, you know, and told her everything that would happen in her life. So this tune mostly talks about the life choices that we make, that we have to confront, and that go on throughout our life. I’m thinking about specific moments in my life that have marked or changed the way that I am—and this is what I feel that Frida does with her art. That is the inspiration I get from her.”

One thing is different for the saxophonist, however: while Kahlo had to battle sexism all of her life, Aldana says that the arts, in the 21st century, are now far more hospitable to women.

“I’m sure Frida was going through way more struggles,” she notes. “I mean, these days it’s easier to be a female. There’s a lot of acknowledgment; there’s a lot of consciousness

about equality. So, if anything, I would have to say that there’s a lot of open doors for us.”

That’s good for Aldana—and for jazz, too.

Melissa Aldana plays Performance Works on June 30, as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

GENRE-DEFYING JONES FEELS THE LOVE IN VANCOUVER d DARIUS JONES is only booked for one gig at this year’s TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, but if you’re paying attention, you might see a lot of him around town.

The Coastal Jazz and Blues Society and the Western Front artist-run centre are teaming up to turn his one-night stand into a monthlong stay, with the plan being that he’s going to write a piece that combines a string trio with a jazz rhythm section and his own genre-defying alto saxophone, and then present it here next year.

It should be a chance to stretch for everyone involved, not least Jones himself.

“I haven’t written a piece, or composed a piece for strings, specifically in this manner, ever,” the 41-year-old musician confesses, in a telephone interview from his New York home.

“Now, I’ve done gigs with string players, and I’ve written melodies for them or something like that, but not with the full intention that they’re going to be a component inside an ensemble that I’m making. I’m thinking about what they can do and what it can’t do, how they’re going to interact with my horn, all that stuff— and I have not done that before.”

Jones is also reading up on the technical side of violin, viola, and cello: how the instruments are made, different techniques that can be used to produce unconventional sounds, and even the way bowed instruments are used in different cultures around the world.

“I’m going to try to do some research on African fiddle musicians and American country fiddle players,” he says. “And I’m going to try to check out some more Indigenous kinds of fiddle-playing, because I know that the First Nations element is so prevalent inside of Canadian society. I want to try and tap into that—and that’s also kind of up my alley. I’m always trying to pull from the past, and trying to pull from Indigenous types of culture as well—but also trying to get a modern element in there.”

Jones will have good partners in the band he’s building here. The bass player and drummer are still to be determined, but he knows who he’ll be working with in the string section: Jesse and Joshua Zubot, virtuoso brothers who both double on viola and violin and have an encyclopedic knowledge of fiddle styles, and cellist Peggy Lee, an equally eclectic and accomplished player. Lee, along with her drummer husband, Dylan van der Schyff, and pianist Angelica Sanchez will also join Jones for his Ironworks concert this week.

The saxophonist is enthused about

being able to introduce the Vancouver musicians—and Vancouver audiences—to Sanchez. “If you have the chance to check her out, you should,” he says. “She’s one of our premier female… No, I don’t like to say that.

She’s just a great pianist. She’s an amazing pianist.”

If possible, he’s even more enthused about getting an in-depth look at the Lower Mainland “Ever since I first came to Vancouver, I have had just the greatest response from the audience,” he explains. “The feeling, the love… It’s one of the best places to perform, because the way the artist is treated is just superb. So I’m hoping to take that even further and create a relationship with the Western Front that we can grow.”

Darius Jones, Angelica Sanchez, Peggy Lee, and Dylan van der Schyff play the Ironworks on Thursday (June 27), as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

TRIPLE DOUBLE ACHIEVES AN INFINITELY VARIABLE SOUND d WHAT, EXACTLY, is Tomas Fujiwara’s new band, Triple Double?

Is it a big, sprawling sextet? Two power trios? Three intimate duets?

Or simply half a dozen extraordinary individuals coming together in service of a single musical goal?

The correct answer, of course, is “all of the above”.

As the Washington-state-raised drummer explains, on the line from his home in Brooklyn, he wasn’t thinking about the almost fractal possibilities of the band when he first called guitarists Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook, trumpeter Ralph Alessi and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, and his fellow percussionist Gerald Cleaver.

“Originally, this was more about the sound and musical personality of the six musicians,” he says. “In other words, I thought about the musicians first, and less about a specific instrumentation that I tried to fit the musicians into—but as I realized the unique instrumentation of the ensemble, with the doubling of the instruments, I certainly tried to use that to get interesting-sounding combinations, compositional strategies, and effects.

“Once I knew what the band was and who was going to be in it,” he continues, “I was thinking of two trios, two mirrored trios. The idea of mirroring was a concept that was at the forefront of my mind. But as we started working on the music and performing, I guess I started thinking of it more and more as three duos—and what I like about the doubling of the instruments is that there’s also a certain kind of connection and kinship for anyone who plays your exact instrument.”

It’s not that Fujiwara and Cleaver, Halvorson and Seabrook, and Alessi and Bynum are clones of one another. Far from it: the musicians employ such diverse approaches that Triple Double uses a severely restricted sonic palette—no bass, woodwinds, keyboards, or bowed strings—to achieve an infinitely see next page

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Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double is a pair of mirrored trios. Photo by Nicki Chavoya

from previous page

variable sound. At times, the effect is almost as lush and complicated as the natural world, with the drums providing a basic landscape, the guitars providing contrasting harmonic or topographical information, and the brass blowing like the wind.

Fujiwara doesn’t disagree, and he doesn’t entirely agree, either.

“I love that,” he says. “It kind of proves what I say a lot of times, which is that I certainly have influences that I’m thinking about and am inspired by when I write, and as little of that as I can give is a good thing. And it has nothing to do with keeping secrets or anything like that; it has to do with exactly what just happened, where you gave me an impression that I had never even thought about. But, to me, it just completely makes sense. I can almost see my own music in a new way, and yet you are allowed to have this very personal experience with it.

“If, before listening, I had said, ‘Well, the horns are the birds and the drums are the whales, and it’s inspired by this novel,’ then you’re kind of looking for those things,” he adds. “And that’s very much going to affect your experience of it.”

So, for now, we won’t say much more about Fujiwara’s band—except to note that if you’d like to hear some state-of-the-art East Coast creative music, don’t forget to add Triple Double to your jazz festival menu. g Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double plays the Ironworks at midnight on Saturday (June 29), as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Fujiwara, Bynum, and Halvorson will join French pianist Benoît Delbecq in Illegal Crowns, which plays a free afternoon show at Performance Works on Friday (June 28), and the drummer will also give a free 3 p.m. workshop at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre on Saturday (June 29).

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CONCERTS JUST ANNOUNCED LA CHINGA Vancouver riff-rockers, with guests Eleanor Rising and Harlot & the Tramp.

Jul 6, 8 pm, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $10.

LOVESTRUCK Russell Earl Marsland’s tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, with guest Raven Blackwell (tribute to Bonnie Raitt). Sep 7, 8 pm, Hard Rock Casino Vancouver. $39.50.

ASHE Pop singer-songwriter from the States, with guest Charlie Burg. Oct 5, 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club. $15.

PUP Punk quartet from Toronto, with guest Charly Bliss. Oct 8-9, Vogue Theatre. $24.99.

COSMO SHELDRAKE Singer, songwriter, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from London, with guest Altopalo. Oct 8, 9 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix on sale Jun 28, 10 am, $15.

THOM YORKE Leader of Radiohead performs tunes from latest solo album Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Oct 21, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre.

JORDAN RAKEI Australian soul-jazz singersongwriter. Oct 25, Biltmore Cabaret. $19.99.

NOAH GUNDERSEN Indie-folk singer-songwriter from Seattle. Nov 15, 9 pm, Hollywood Theatre. Tix on sale Jun 28, 10 am, $20.

HAWKSLEY WORKMAN Canadian singersongwriter known for blending cabaret pop and glam rock. Nov 17, Imperial Vancouver. $30.

CAUTIOUS CLAY Soul-pop singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, New York. Nov 25, 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $22.50.

THIEVERY CORPORATION American electronic-music act featuring Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Nov 26-27, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Jun 28, 10 am, $65.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26 TD VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL Headliners include Roots and Herbie Hancock, and free outdoor shows feature such artists as A Tribe Called Red’s DJ Shub, King Ayisoba, and Mats Gustafsson. To Jul 1, various Vancouver venues.

JEFF LYNNE’S ELO Frontman of Electric Light Orchestra performs the band’s hits, with guest Dhani Harrison. Jun 26, 8 pm, Rogers Arena.

ANTONIO SÁNCHEZ & MIGRATION Grammy-winning drummer and composer. Jun 26, 8-10:30 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts. $42/40.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27

A DAY IN VANCOUVER Red Bull presents performances by ANKLEGOD, DJ D.DEE, Khotin, Prado, Sabota, Teen Daze, and Yu Su. Jun 28, 3-10 pm, PNE Gardens. $5.

ELECTRIC HALO Local rock quartet, with guests Tribal X, SX70, and Caustic SodaPop. Jun 28, 28, 7 pm, Bourbon. $10/13.

NYLEZ K Canadian R&B/hip-hop singersongwriter, with guests Girard, Fara, and Sola.

Jun 28, 7 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $15.

LUCA BENEDETTI TRIO NYC–based guitarist leads his jazz-fusion trio. Jun 28, 7:30 pm, West Vancouver Memorial Library. Free.

THE ROOTS Grammy-winning band performs as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Jun 28, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. From $79.

HOWARD JONES British synth-pop legend, with guests All Hail the Silence. Jun 28, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $39.50/$204.50 (VIP).

My Dream Deal Corp. o/a Masonry Village

is looking for Plasterers. Greater Vancouver, BC. Wage - $ 25.50 per/hour.Permanent, Full time job Skills requirements: Good English, Experience 2-3 years. Education: High school Main duties: Prepare and clean surfaces; Create a plaster mix; Apply, level and smooth coats of plaster; Apply coats of stucco for covering exterior surfaces of buildings to form weatherproof surfaces;Create decorative textures in finish, finish corners and angles;Spray acoustic materials or texture finish over walls and ceilings; Mould and install ornamental plaster panels, cornices and trim if required.

Company’s business address: # 4005 52 St, Lloydminster, SK, S9V 2B5 Please apply by e-mail: masonryvillage@gmail.com

Rapid West Coast Constructors LTD, o/a Rapid Constructors

is looking for Carpenters, Greater Vancouver, BC. Permanent, Full time Wage - $ 26.50 CAD per/hour. Main duties: Read and interpret blueprints and drawings, perform calculations and prepare layouts; Measure, cut, shape, assemble, and join lumber and wood materials;Create concrete formworks; Build foundations, walls and other wooden construction structures; Inspect, repair and replace damaged framework; Supervise helpers and apprentices.

In order to succeed in this role, you will need: 3-4 years of experience in the trade;Completion of secondary school;Good English.

Company’s business address: 8-1780 McLean Avenue, Port Coquitlam, BC, V3C 4K9. Please apply by e-mail: rapidconstructors@gmail.com

SUNDAY, JUNE 30 JACOB COLLIER Grammy-winning Londoner combines elements of jazz, funk, folk, classical, Brazilian music, gospel, and soul. Jun 30, 9 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $42.

SATURDAY, JUNE 29 VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL GUITAR FESTIVAL Live music and some of the world’s finest handmade stringed instruments. Jun 29-30, Creekside Community Centre.

TERMINAL STATION Local blues-rockers featuring guitarist Scott Smith. Jun 29, 1 pm, Civic Plaza. Free.

MONDAY, JULY 1 SURREY CANADA DAY Canada Day celebration features performances by Our Lady Peace and Bif Naked. Jul 1, 10 am–11 pm, Bill Reid Millennium Amphitheatre. Free.

The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.

TUESDAY, JULY 2

SATURDAY, JULY 6

PENTATONIX A cappella group from Arlington, Texas, with guest Rachel Platten. Jul 2, Rogers Arena. $29.50-129.50.

PAUL McCARTNEY Former Beatle performs on his Freshen Up Tour. Jul 6, 8 pm, BC Place Stadium.

THURSDAY, JULY 4

KHATSAHLANO STREET PARTY More than 50 Vancouver bands and artists perform on multiple stages at the 10-block street fair. Jul 6, 11 am–9 pm, West 4th Avenue. Free.

COVENANT FESTIVAL V Three-day deathand black-metal festival features performances by Dead Congregation, Antediluvian, and Sortilegia. Jul 4-6, 6-11:30 pm, WISE Hall.

FRIDAY, JULY 5 FVDED IN THE PARK Two-day music festival featuring headliners Khalid and Zedd. Jul 5-6, Holland Park. $189.99/299.99.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 24, 2019 WHERE: Park Royal

Self-love Lately I’m trying to love myself more. I’ve been doing things like sleeping, yoga, eating lots of vegetables, taking medication, no alcohol, and volunteering when I can ... (con’t @straight.com)

That time of year again

Driving with my Lab puppy Sophie sitting in the passenger seat.

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Volunteering I started volunteering with a City owned non-profit last year.

I’m professionally employed full time, so I wanted a position in the background. Unfortunately, none... (con’t @straight.com)

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A cyclist had crashed on the bike path near Science World. You arrived to save the day. I was in the grey button up shirt, one of the 3 guys who had called it in.

You told me about all the big needles you use. Please! My heart has stopped and it needs resuscitation. Can you help?

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 19, 2019 WHERE: Golden Ears Park East Canyon Trail Parking Lot

You saw a woman walking along Pender toward Commercial on Saturday night. She was walking very slowly and very intentionally, sans shoes, as a diy-footphysio attempt. She wore a green sweatshirt below a mess of curly brown hair and she looked up at you as you rode your bike past her, south on Commercial. You smiled at her, and later that evening she thought to herself that it would be nice if you posted an 'I Saw You' because there was something warm and curious about you that she liked.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 15, 2019 WHERE: False Creek Science World

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 23, 2019 WHERE: Pulp Fiction Books Main St I was there picking in an order Sunday the 23rd. Afterwards as I was browsing you came out to talk to the owner and when I looked over you caught my eye. I've seen you working there many times and certainly noticed you but this time there was just a certain beauty I had never noticed before. My mistake obviously.

I wouldn't attempt to really chat you up while you are at work but I'd love to outside of work if you're game

I saw you looking at the map with your cute, overly friendly dog. I was going to introduce myself but then someone pulled up and you greeted her "Nice to meet you". First date?

If it doesn't work out, shoot me a message :)

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 18, 2019 WHERE: Bus 16 Going Downtown

Hi, you were wearing a white impressively ironed shirt on bus 16 this morning. I was standing next to you. Blue top, purple nail polish and a yellow jade bracelet. I awkwardly removed my white sweater because it was too warm on the bus. I think you smiled at me. I wish I had said something.

You got off at Drake St around 8:45 this morning. I’d love to grab a coffee sometime.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 16, 2019 WHERE: Bandidas

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What happened Sunday afternoon was kinda weird / super cool. Want to talk about it? I do!

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Tu m'as demandé de danser à la fin de la nuit mais j'étais distrait. J'aurais dû accepter l'offre d'un homme aussi beau, gentil et multilingue. Are you Abel to forgive me?

s

Last Friday night a friend and I were sitting at the bar when you came up beside us to order a drink with a big smile.

You: very tall, longish brown hair with a beard, white T-shirt, waiting for your date.

Me: long blonde hair, nude colour lace body suit, drinking wine. If the date didn't work out I would love to see that smile again.

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CALABASHFUL

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 22, 2019 WHERE: Commercial Dr and Pender St

r

We had a nice chat about my shopping, driving and the approaching summer. You blonde, blue eyed and skateboard, me - brown hair and too many bags. I felt like my bus came too soon and so did the end of our conversation.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 16, 2019 WHERE: Calabash

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 21, 2019 WHERE: Guilt and Company

You were wearing a jacket that said BTA Academy on it and have curly hair. We were both in the shuttle bus from YVR to the airport late that night (around midnight) You looked like someone who goes skiing or climbing a lot.

I was picking up a group of people from the airport. Had I not, I definitely would have just asked you out. In any case, would be nice to meet up sometime!

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 22, 2019 WHERE: YVR Park'N Fly Shuttle Bus

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MUSIC LISTINGSare a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

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Lesson in anger management

FRIDAY, JUNE 28

Careers

DIDO Pop singer-songwriter from London, England. Jun 29, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre. Tix $40.50-75.

So I’m very, very faired skinned with nearly white hair. I’m like that all year, but the moment summer rolls around random people suddenly feel the need to come up to me and make comments about my appearance. I just don’t get it.. Tell me is that not a bit rude?! I find it very uncomfortable... (con’t @straight.com)

GREG BROWN Folk musician and poet with deep roots in gospel and literary traditions.

Jun 27, 8-10:30 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts. $38/36.

JAMILA WOODS Chicago-based singersongwriter and poet. Jun 27, 9 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $20.

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SAVAGE LOVE

Bondage is the great gay-tribe unifier

by Dan Savage

b I’M A SINGLE gay guy in my late 30s.

I’m quite introverted and a bit shy, yet I have a big sexual drive and a rich libido.

I’ve always found the gay scene overwhelming, and my several attempts at online dating were not very successful.

I feel my quiet ways tend to put people off and I hardly ever get the chance to show my more playful or crazy sides, as it takes me a bit to feel comfortable to show those. Whenever I was able to, my partners were usually pleasantly surprised and we could enjoy plenty of fun, but I can count these occasions on the fingers of one hand. I feel most guys just stop at my gentle disposition and assume I must be a bit boring, if not a prude altogether. Turns out I actually have quite a few kinks—bondage being one of them—but so far I have hardly been able to explore them with a partner. Often those drawn to me haven’t really been of the sexually adventurous kind. By my looks, I don’t really fit into any of the “tribes” that a lot of gay men identify with. Part of me doesn’t care, but at the same time I find myself on the outside looking in when searching for a nice guy for a date or more. Would you have any kind of advice to crack this shell of mine open?

- Always Looked Over, Never Embraced Next time you find yourself on the outside looking in, ALONE, take a moment to look around. Because that small scrum of guys who fit neatly into whatever gay tribe happens to be dominating the bar/pool/whatever—the guys on the inside looking at themselves or looking at their phones or looking at themselves on their

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phones—are usually surrounded by a much larger group of guys who don’t fit neatly into that particular tribe or any other obvious tribe. And if the guys looking longingly at the easyand-obvious tribe would look around, they’d see a whole lot of guys like them: guys who might be feeling a little awkward or out of place, guys who are attractive in perhaps less conventional or immediately apparent ways, guys with hidden depths, et cetera. In other words, ALONE, guys like you.

And speaking of guys like you, did you know you have a motherfucking superpower that makes you a member of all gay tribes and your own unique tribe?

“Bondage is the great unifier among kinksters,” said Joshua Boyd, a gay bondage “enthusiast”, as they say, in his mid-30s who lives and ties in the Seattle area. “Bondage guys are from all walks of life, and they range from twinks to muscle guys to bears, cubs, jocks, and average Joes.”

So just as you’ll find gay guys in every race, ethnic group, economic class, faith community, et cetera, bondage guys can be found in every gay tribe, and bondage guys make up their own unique tribe.

“ALONE should put any search for a long-term relationship on hold and look for more casual kinky fun,” said Boyd. “Recon (recon.com) has always been a good place for me to start conversations with fun guys—I even met my husband there. The bottom line is there are others who share his interests, and they are waiting to connect with him.”

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person isn’t going to assume you’re a prude (they met you at a bondage class) and that person will definitely be sexually adventurous (you met them at a bondage class). And unlike gay bars or clubs, a person’s skills are just as important as their looks at gay bondage parties and events.

“After you start making connections and building your circle, find local fetish/kink events that are happening around you—you may need to reach out to the pansexual community—and see if one of your new friends from the munch or the class or Recon is willing to go with you to check it out,” said Yoshi. “And as you start exploring more of your kink side, consider the possibility of separating kink and sex at first. Let people know that you are interested in bondage but haven’t tried much and you want to practise.

Having an exploratory or practice session is much different than having a bondage-sex session, and people may be more willing to facilitate that exploration. And from my experience, if you’re able to get up the courage to go out to a kink play party (with a friend for support), the likelihood of finding someone who’s willing to assist in new or first-time experiences increases.”

So, ALONE, that thing you’ve been holding back until you get to know someone? Your interest in bondage?

Lead with that. Get involved in the kink scene, work on your skill set, be friendly and open—be the nice guy— and you’ll meet lots of men you have something in common with. Trust me, your tribe is out there.

You can follow Joshua Boyd on

On the Lovecast, this show is soooo gay: savagelovecast.com. Email: mail@ savagelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage. ITMFA.org.

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Gay men are men, YWA, and let’s not kid ourselves: yes, the average gay guy has more sex partners than the average straight guy. But straight men would do everything gay men do if straight men could, but straight men can’t because women won’t. It’s not that straight guys are any less interested in sex than gay guys are or that sex is any less of a “big deal” for straight men.

And you know what? Women are just as horny and just as interested in sex as men—gay, straight, or bi—and that includes sex with multiple partners. But women have to weigh every choice they make and every truth they tell against the very real threat of sexual violence at the hands of straight men and the lesser threat of being slut-shamed by straight men and other women. (Shout-out to the asexual gay, straight, and bi men and women out there who aren’t interested in sex with anyone—I don’t mean to erase you, but I’m talking averages here, the centres of various bell curves, not deviations.) g

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But you’re shy! You’re introverted!

Connecting is hard! Boyd describes himself the same way—shy, introverted, difficulty connecting—and not only is he married, ALONE, he doesn’t lack for casual play partners and he’s got play pics all over the Internet to prove it.

Tyger Yoshi also describes himself as shy and introverted—and I recently watched shy, introverted Yoshi do a bondage demo at Trade, a gay leather bar in Denver, where he suspended a guy from the ceiling.

“When I first started exploring my interest in bondage, I was lucky enough to be in a city where opportunities were plentiful, even for a shy, introverted person like me,” said Yoshi, who’s also in his mid-30s.

“There were people who wanted to mentor me, but I struggled taking that first step of accepting help.”

The kind of help Yoshi is referring to—the kind of help he eventually accepted—can most easily be found at munches, i.e., casual meet-ups where kinky people, both queer and straight, socialize and connect with other likeminded kinksters. (Munches ≠ play parties.) Spend five seconds on Google, ALONE, and you’ll also find kinky educational organizations that offer classes for people who want to hone their bondage skills while learning about consent, safety, and other best practices. And whether you’re a bondage top (you want to tie) or a bondage bottom (you want to be tied) or a switch (tie and be tied), you’ll make friends in bondage classes. And if you wind up clicking with someone, that

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