Arts, Culture and Entertainment in Montreal
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up Canada’s largest classical music festival, the Festival de Lanaudière in Joliette, isn’t just about classical music. The internationally-famed music festival will also present jazz and gospel music during their 38th annual edition, as well as a much-anticipated blockbuster concert by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. With Grammy-winning Maestro Kent Nagano at […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett L’Opéra de Montréal winds down its 35th season with Silent Night, the 2012 Pulitzer-winning two-act opera by renowned American composer Kevin Puts and prolific American librettist Mark Campbell. Based on the 2005 film Joyeux Noël by director Christian Carion, the work depicts the historic and miraculous truce between French, German, and Scottish soldiers on Christmas […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Some 6,000 of the faithful attended the March 17 concert by Texas boogie trio ZZ Top at the Bell Centre . But everybody was drinking and yakking so much – even during the songs – that the place felt more like a Mississippi juke joint. […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett It is great fun to chat with Maestro Boris Brott of the McGill Chamber Orchestra because he is a great storyteller – and has mischievous eyes. The internationally-acclaimed and charismatic conductor has wowed audiences worldwide, from Carnegie Hall to Covent Garden, and will conduct the MCO and Atelier lyrique de […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Proudly out 22-year-old British pop star Sam Smith headlined the Bell Centre last night for one of Montreal’s most buzzed-about concerts. Smith was originally supposed to make his local debut at the tiny Le Belmont nightclub on The Main back in March 2014, but that show was cancelled […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen the “Queen of Reggae” Marcia Griffiths perform live over the past 25 years, in Jamaica and abroad. During that time I’ve also interviewed her a few times, but this last year heard for the first time a story from […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett There is an ancient Greek theatre on the southern slope of the Acropolis in Athens called the Herodes Atticus Theatre, built by the Greek aristocrat Herodes Atticus in 161 AD. Some 1,800 years later, another Greek, the musician Yiannis Hrysomallis – better known by his stage name Yanni […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Heart’s longtime love affair with Canada – and Montreal in particular – dates back almost 40 years, to the night in 1976 when they were fired from Lucifer’s nightclub in Calgary, back when Heart was just another bar band . “I made some disparaging remark about the club […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Montreal homeboy Corey Hart bid adieu to 12,000 of the faithful in a heartfelt four-hour concert at the Bell Centre on June 3, a much-anticipated show that Hart billed in interviews as his last-ever. It was a fine way to cap a stellar 30-year music career that saw […]
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett The first time Heart played in Montreal, they were hired at the very last minute to open for Rod Stewart at the Montreal Forum in 1976. Heart were playing at Lucifer’s nightclub in Calgary at the time and rode the train to Montreal because that’s all they could […]