Author: Jeff Jones

Canadian singer-songwriter, Serena Ryder has always been compelled to write songs. It’s not just for her love of music either, she has learned that music is a type of medicine. The idea that music can heal you inside and out, or be the reason to keep going, is what Ryder focuses her creativity on and through.   “It’s that spark that you can’t explain,” Ryder says. “It’s so alive and it’s such a blessing to experience it.” She performs at the Flato Markham Theatre on Oct 12. As a teenager, Ryder started writing songs almost as soon as she...

Whether it’s the Von Trapps from The Sound of Music or The Partridge Family, our culture has obsessed over musical families for as long as we’ve loved music. Not just in fiction either, The Jacksons, Johnny Cash and June Carter, even Mozart and his sister touring royal palaces are all capitalizing on the special connection found in family. Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida have each traveled the world playing music on their own, long before they fell in love and got married. Now, as well as raising three sons, they perform together as Moon vs Sun. Moon vs. Sun...

If dance is an oft under appreciated art form, then it is certainly helpful, as a dance company, to be known for being exceptionally inventive and creating overwhelming spectacles of physical beauty. In its 38 years of existence MOMIX, a company of dancer-illusionists that tour the world, has done just this. Under the direction of company founder Moses Pendleton, MOMIX brings its latest piece, Opus Cactus, to the Flato Markham Theatre on Oct. 11. “I never know exactly what I’m doing, but I do have faith that something will get done,” laughs Pendleton. His understatement might be charming but...

To understand how Cowboy Junkies, arguably Canada’s first alt-country band, emerged from Toronto’s bar scene in the late 1980s and went on to become a global touring act that has worked for more than three decades, one must remember the city neighbourhood of Queen Street West, where the band was born, was not the fashion and shopping mecca, dotted alternately with boutiques and name-brand stores, that it is today. In 1985, the neighbourhood was a magnet for art and artists. Low rents, many spaces to perform (with cheap beer to boot) and a seemingly endless parade of young people...