Music

Apartment613’s support local holiday gift guide continues with a roundup of our favourite local record stores.

Two hours of fresh local music. Updated weekly by apt613.ca music writers.

The Celtic Rathskallions is a folk music duo composed of Arthur McGregor and Wendy Moore, who have been performing for adults and children alike for over 20 years. The Rathskallions have a special focus on working within schools and communities and have earned kudos for their concerts, workshops, and collaborations.

Jazzfest presented this series of live stream concerts for listeners at home, with a very small audience allowed to attend in person at Arts Court Theatre.

Ottawa-based composer Kelly-Marie Murphy has been awarded the 2020 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. Her composition Coffee Will be Served in the Living Room, written in 2018, is a 10-minute piece for eight cellos.

Two hours of fresh local music. Updated weekly by apt613.ca music writers.

Art curator, event producer, and consultant Rachel Weldon co-founded and runs Debaser, the community arts programming organization that is based on unceded Algonquin territory in Ottawa/Hull. Their activity in the Ottawa arts community for over 10 years, wealth of experience, and vast community arts network was an obvious fit for the DARC organizational residency program.

Ottawa’s CityFolk music festival have announced the lineup for the virtual version of the festival they are staging in lieu of their annual outdoor event, due to the ongoing pandemic.

Since the lockdown, the staff has added impressive technology that allows groups to live stream or record events, in lieu of in-person performances.

Two hours of fresh local music. Updated weekly by apt613.ca music writers.

A special televised show will feature performances by the Downchild Blues Band (with special guests Dan Aykroyd, Paul Shaffer, David Wilcox, Kenny Neal, Gene Taylor, and Erja Lyytinen), Colin James, Big Sugar, Sass Jordan, Matt Andersen, MonkeyJunk, and Dawn Tyler Watson.

Someone who has been to most—if not all—of these shows is Ottawa music photographer/maverick Ming Wu, whose blog photogmusic.com has published at least 150 concert reviews at Pressed alone.

This recent virtual collab features Ottawa’s Yolande Laroche (Pony Girl, Orchidae, mal/aimé) on the clarinet, as well as Hilda Cowie of the NAC Orchestra on double bass.

With necessary safety precautions in place like social distancing on stage, matching black face masks, and extra plexiglass shields for the brass and woodwind players, the NACO delivered a phenomenal concert with content incredibly relevant to the times in the first of this series.

Two hours of fresh local music. Updated weekly by apt613.ca music writers.