OBITUARY: Sayonara Westmount, an oasis of good movie seating

While you were sitting at home watching the Oscars on TV and they were doing that little montage featuring all the movie types whose work we will no longer be able to enjoy because they shuffled off this mortal coil sometime in the last year — complete with Celine Dion vocals —  Westmount Centre Cinemas […]

CELLO MELLOW: Stinson returns home for Muttart Hall show tonight

Hailed by The New York Times as a musician with “conviction and flair” and by The New Yorker as an “unusually adept contemporary-music specialist,” reknowned local Cellist Caroline Stinson returns to Edmonton in a performance with pianist Sarah Ho on Sunday, Feb. 27. The concert at Alberta College’s Muttart Hall, 10050 Macdonald Drive, will also […]

TOM MURRAY: Syl Johnson’s soul-stravaganza

I gave up years ago bothering to compile best of lists, at least partially because I can never remember what year an album came out in. I listen, I throw them on a pile, I forget about them. Maybe I check it out again later, maybe I don’t. The nice thing about being a freelancer […]

Out on a limb with radiohead: Local fans tweet their say

And on the fourth day there was The King of Limbs. Earlier that week, on Feb. 14, Radiohead announced on its website that the group’s new album was finished and would be released on Feb. 19. But last Friday morning, fans awoke to discover the album released a day earlier. The Internet, in particular Twitter, […]

Pampered at Pampa … but that was the upside

Pampa Brazilian Steakhouse 9929 – 109 Street 780.756.7030 Expectations were high for a trip to Pampa, Edmonton’s new Brazilian steakhouse. A week after its opening, it has received overwhelmingly positive buzz online. Unfortunately – particularly given the high sticker price – that buzz seems somewhat premature. Perhaps it was simply one of those occasions when […]

Roots and Blues Roundup II in full swing this weekend

Roots and Blues Roundup II in full swing this weekend

If you want to know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been.  So take heed, all your alt-country punks and neo-folkies – some originators are coming to show us how it’s done at the Winter Roots and Blues Roundup II. Running at venues around town until Monday, this five-day multi-media festival features […]

Metro’s next Edmonton Tonight keeps things eclectic

Painter Eric Visser, cellist Josephine van Lier, and CKUA music programmer Baba Singh will be among the guests of the next Edmonton Tonight, Friday, Feb. 25 at 10:30 p.m. at Metro Cinema. Host Tom Bernier will welcome Visser and van Lier, a creative couple who will chat about how the arts  played a major role […]

MUSIC: For Sister Gray, girl power’s just downright shrewd

It’s a good thing the three male members of Sister Gray aren’t starved for attention. Because when your band is fronted by two fetching fashionistas in their early 20s, you’re not going to get much of it. When the indie-rock quintet takes the stage, all eyes are on lead sisters Jenesse and Brittany Graling. “They’re […]

MUSIC: Portrait of the artist as a young mogul

“It’s going to be a crazy year,” promises Joe Gurba of his plans for 2011 for his not-quite-fledgling label Old Ugly Recording Co. That isn’t to say that it hasn’t already been exciting; his profile around Edmonton has been elevated through the last two months as he’s celebrated and promoted the release of his alter […]

THEATRE: A Smurftacular look at tragedy, loss, and the unanswerable questions

Tragedy strikes everybody from time to time and we all have our own ways of coping. In Trent Wilkie’s Gargamel, he takes a humorous slant on misfortune. Wilkie, a founding member of Edmonton’s Mostly Water comedy troupe, found inspiration in the calamity the was inflicted upon his inner circle. “My brother was in a nasty […]

REVIEW: The sun never sets on decent fish ‘n chips

BRITS FISH ‘N CHIPS, 11603 104 Ave NW Edmonton, AB T5K 2R1 780.452.7000 $$ For a country in which celebrity chefs seem as common as bad weather and football fans, England is the perennial whipping boy when it comes to haute cuisine. Long-standing aspersions: English food is bland, boiled, grey and stodgy. If it is […]

Seeker or seer? See or be seen? Two deep questions to ponder when Deepak Chopra speaks at the Shaw Conference Centre tonight. Is it a show, a lecture or something more? The good doctor is a master of sensible, if a bit cryptic advice, such as “Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not […]