By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett I will never forget the time pop icon Cyndi Lauper opened for Cher at Montreal’s Bell Centre back in 2002: Cyndi stole the show midway through her opening set when she walked centre stage draped in a Rainbow flag to sing True Colors with only Kat Dyson on […]
Tag: Richard Burnett
The Edwards Twins: Divas Las Vegas!
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Bette Midler thinks he’s divine, Cher thinks he’s strong enough and Barbra Streisand invited him to be her paparazzi decoy double on tour. That’s how fabulous a master female impersonator Eddie Edwards is. “I had no idea I could make a living doing this!” Edwards, half of the […]
Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars: The road home
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett For years Rueben Koroma lived in refugee camps to escape the civil war that ravaged his home nation of Sierra Leone – ranked third-lowest country on the Human Development Index and eighth-lowest on the Human Poverty Index – from 1991 to 2002. Koroma fled north to […]
Bonnie Raitt got famous in nick of time, stayed famous for rest of time
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Bonnie Raitt remembers seeing her father, the late great Broadway star John Raitt, perform in Pyjama Party on the Great White Way when she was all of five years old. “The thing I’ve taken from him was to make every night opening night,” Bonnie Raitt, now 64, says. […]
Try Jah Love with reggae ambassadors Third World
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Old-school roots reggae may be going the way of vinyl and CDs, displaced by new-school dancehall. But for international audiences raised on Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff and Toots & The Maytals, there are few performers out there still carrying the roots-reggae torch. But one of reggae’s […]
Steve Earle on the soul of America (with the encouragement of Canada)
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett The last time I saw Steve Earle he thanked Canada for making him a rock’n’roll star. Once hailed as the saviour of country music back in the mid-’80s, Copperhead Road in 1988 morphed Earle into a bona fide rock star. “From the beginning I realized I wasn’t going to have […]
Nuits d’Afrique: Angélique Kidjo conquers the world with love
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up @bugsburnett Some years ago I asked Angélique Kidjo – one of the world’s great singers – if she could sing her devastating cover of the traditional Tanzanian song Malaika at her Montreal concert. And she did. Malaika, first recorded by Kenyan musician Fadhili William back in the 1950s, tells […]
Top 10 Crazy Moments at Montreal jazz fest
By Richard Burnett What happens behind the scenes when the stars arrive, or arrive late, or don’t show up at all? Patience and quick thinking are job requirements for Festival International de Jazz de Montréal organizers dealing with divas, massive egos, cancellations, no-shows and the inevitable musician being held up at Canada Customs. I spoke […]
L’ Opéra de Montréal unveils star-studded 2013-2014 season
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up! @bugsburnett Internationally-acclaimed sopranos Measha Brueggergosman and Galina Shesterneva, Italian baritone Paolo Gavanelli and conductor Paul Nadler are just some of the stars cast in productions of L’ Opéra de Montréal’s 2013-2014 season. The upcoming season will open on Sept 21 with a four-night run of the Opéra de Montréal […]
Pop phenom Mika on new album and tour, his idol Freddie Mercury and the showbiz closet
By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up! @bugsburnett British pop star Mika came out as a gay man in an interview with Instinct magazine last autumn. “If you ask me am I gay, I say yeah. Are these [new] songs about my relationship with a man? I say yeah. And it’s only through my music that […]