Sackville Festival of Early Music celebrates its 20th year with ‘all the feelings’
The Sackville Festival of Early Music kicked off Wednesday with a presentation at the Brunton Auditorium by the Eybler Quartet, who also open the festival concert series on Friday.
CHMA spoke with festival co-director Christina Haldane about this 20th year of the Sackville Festival of Early Music.
The SFEM is an “exciting and engaging musical experience that will entice ‘all the feelings’,” says Haldane, referencing the Eybler Quartet presentation on Wednesday, which explored the role of emotions in musical performance and composition.
“This is a special repertoire,” says Haldane, of the festival’s focus on music from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Haldane says the program will “provide an opportunity for you to learn more about this rich and diverse repertoire from the early European art music scene,” says Haldane, “and a chance to enjoy some exciting musicians who bring this music to life on stage.”
In addition to the concert series, SFEM continues its tradition of incorporating education in its mandate, perhaps fitting for a festival housed in a music school. “Creating opportunities for meaningful educational experiences for young learners is central to the Sackville Festival of Early Music and its activities,” says Haldane.
The members of the Eybler Quartet (Julia Wedman, Patrick Jordan, Margaret Gay, and Patricia Ahern) arrived in Sackville Tuesday night, and by 8:30 Wednesday morning “were straight into our schools in the region to lead some educational sessions with our youngest learners.”… Continue
Sackville Festival of Early Music brings ‘an exciting and engaging musical experience’ to town
On today’s show, the Sackville Festival of Early Music has kicked off with educational programming in schools and a presentation Wednesday by the Eybler Quartet, who open the festival concert series on Friday at the Brunton Auditorium. CHMA listens in and talks with festival co-director Christina Haldane about this 20th year of the Sackville Festival of Early Music.
Plus in briefs, Marshlight Theatre is hosting auditions for a new play by Sackville playwright Ron Kelly Spurles, and the municipality is playing it safe with additional street closures for this year’s Sackville Fall Fair fireworks.
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Future of Vogue uncertain due to possible bankruptcy, but group still ‘working behind the scenes’
The for sale sign is down at The Vogue Cinema in Sackville.
The 78-year old theatre has been officially off the market for a few weeks, but not because a deal has been closed with a buyer. A real estate agent who formerly represented owner Jeff Coates confirmed the building is off the market, and said they were not authorized to give more details about the situation.
Coates, who ran the cinema for 17 years and worked there for a decade before that, refused to comment on the current status of the beloved cinema and venue.
The listing and sale of the building could have hit complications from an outstanding debt that was registered against the property in 2022, and a bankruptcy filing last month against Coates’ numbered company (059145 NB Ltd.), which owns the property and operated the cinema.
A search on Service New Brunswick’s Land Registry Services shows a $65,057.56 debt registered against the property at 9 Bridge Street, originally owed to the Canada Revenue Agency by Coates’ numbered company. The debt was registered against the property in December 2022, but dates back to five years before that, in December 2017.
The bankruptcy filing comes from another source, the Community Business Development Corporation (CBDC) Westmorland Albert, which provides financial and technical services to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the region. The filing from the CBDC says Coates’ company owes the organization $76,251.19, and asks that the numbered company which owns the Vogue be deemed bankrupt due to unmet liabilities.… Continue
Merger sees Live Bait and Performers’ join forces to make ‘one big happy theatre family’
Live Bait Theatre’s annual New Works Festival kicks off this week with workshops, readings, and performances, running through to March 28.
But this year’s festival will be a swan song of sorts for the longstanding theatre company. Live Bait and Performers’ Theatre have announced a merger to create a new theatre company for the Tantramar region.
CHMA dropped by the Performers’ Theatre space on Fairfield Road to meet Ryan Slashinki, a local performing arts teacher who is taking on the role of managing director for the new theatre company during the transition.
Slashinsky is heading up a transition team which also includes Live Bait artistic director Ron Kelly Spurles who is continuing in that role for another year. The founding director of Performers’ Theatre, Steven Puddle, had previously stepped back from the helm of the community theatre group.
Slashinsky says the time was right for the merger. In recent years both companies were populated by the same people, says Slashinski, which meant “we were finding that we were burning out people that wanted to work in the theater.” While Live Bait is a professional company with a 35-year history, the productions coming from Performers’ had grown to become “of similar quality,” says Slashinski. “Over the past 15 years, Performers’ has kind of grown up… So the time was right, to just get together and make one big happy theatre family for the people of Tantramar.”… Continue
Andrew Ennals goes back to his spooky Sackville roots with Shivers: Supernatural Tales of Tantramar
This week, Live Bait Theatre debuts a new play written and directed by Sackville’s Andrew Ennals. Shivers: Three Supernatural Tales from Tantramar is playing at the Performers Theatre Studio on Fairfield Road from Thursday to Saturday, and at the CCUBIC theatre in Amherst on Wednesday.
Ennals dropped by CHMA studios to talk about the production:
When Ennals was young, he can recall being captivated by the “wonderfully spooky” look of Sackville during Halloween. “That setting of the Tantramar marsh, the Fundy fog rolling in, and just all these big spooky Victorian houses downtown,” says Ennals. “When I was a kid growing up here, and especially at Halloween, that was such a picture perfect version of what that that night felt like.”
And now the grown-up Ennals is bringing some of that spookiness to the stage, with a play he wrote featuring three stories designed to send shivers up spines.
“They’re ghost stories and they’re creative stories at the same time,” says Ennals. One of the tales is based on his own experience in the old Middle Sackville school house in the late 90s. Another features the ‘phantom fiddler of Frosty Hollow’ because with a name like Frosty Hollow, “you’re already starting from an advantage, as a writer”. And the third tells of the marsh witch, bringing in parts of the legend from Amherst and Tantramar regions.
Ennals has a background with Live Bait Theatre, having taken on roles during his high school days.… Continue
Struts brings three days of art workshops and events to Sackville with No Ceiling: It’s About Time
This week Struts Gallery is embarking on a three-day art fiesta involving 14 different artists presenting work in various disciplines, all touching on the idea of time. No Ceiling: It’s About Time kicks off this Thursday with a workshop from Struts’ latest artist-in-residence, Jordan Hill.
Program director Simone Schmidt dropped by CHMA to talk about No Ceiling: It’s About Time:
“We wanted to do a program that imparts skills and gets dialogue started,” says Schmidt. “A lot of the time, artists can be kind of sequestered, showing their work in isolation… not even be able to interact with the public at all. So we wanted to really get people talking and together again.”
“And the theme of time… the thing is time just grips us all. So it’s quite relatable, and it’s quite inescapable,” says Schmidt.
No Ceiling: It’s About Time is offering four workshops, which Schmidt says are free, designed for beginners, and open to all. Jordan Hill is teaching about projection mapping (projecting images onto 3D shapes), Lee Jones and Great Grip are hosting an introduction to e-textiles where participants can create their own ‘light up’ bookmark; Janet Hammock is leading a sound walk to teach about the practice of ‘deep listening’; and artist Nadia Moss hosts a queer life drawing workshop.
Dorchester’s Freya Milliken gets some recognition with Music New Brunswick nomination
Dorchester-born musician Freya Milliken has been nominated for a Music New Brunswick award in the Song of the Year category, for her song, “Wholeheartedly”.
CHMA called her up to find out how the recognition feels, and get an update on her career:
Milliken grew up in Dorchester, and has fond memories of finding her passion for music with help from teachers like Karen Olscamp, Heather Milner and Tanya Dunlop at Dorchester Consolidated and Tantramar Regional High.
After high school Milliken set off for Wolfville, Nova Scotia to study music at Acadia University. She graduated in May, and is choosing to keep calling Wolfville home, with her band nearby and a job she loves.
Milliken wrote “Wholeheartedly” a couple of years ago. “At the time, I was thinking about intimacy and how relationships in our society are often portrayed as being quite shallow,” says Milliken. She wanted a song to carry the idea of “wanting a real connection, as opposed to just something that just touches the surface.” And so a song was born.
Milliken says the Music New Brunswick nomination is “a pretty big step” in her career. “It’s my first award nomination ever, so that feels pretty good,” says Milliken. And regardless of whether or not she takes home the award on October 19, she’s hoping the nomination itself could lead to more exposure and connections that might see her expand her reach as a musician.… Continue
Struts partners with nomadic gallery SAVAC, to bring ‘Clearings in the Fog’ to Sackville
This Friday evening, Struts Gallery is hosting a free screening of films from six different artists from around the world, thanks to the South Asian Visual Arts Centre, or SAVAC.
SAVAC is a longstanding artist-run-centre that specializes in partnering with local centres all over the world to showcase culturally diverse artists. As a nomadic gallery, SAVAC brings its exhibitions on tour, and cultivates partnerships along the way.
CHMA sat down with SAVAC staffer Abedar Kamgari this week outside the sunny yellow walls of Struts Gallery on Lorne Street, to find out more:
This is Kamgari’s second visit to Sackville, having previously brought her own art practice to town as a Struts artist-in-residence in 2022. “Some folks in the community might remember helping me make beads,” says Kamgari. “It was a lovely time.”
The Friday evening screening is called MONITOR 15: Clearings in the Fog, part of a series featuring experimental film and video. “Experimental Film is it’s a hard thing to define,” says Kamgari. “It’s a way for the filmmakers to respond to the environments around them, to go and explore.”
The films featured in MONITOR are more open-ended and exploratory than narrative films, says Kamgari. “It almost feels like this little bubble between the world of commercial film and the world of abstract and conceptual art. It kind of moves between those worlds.”
The six films in ‘Clearings in the Fog’ are created by artists with “connections to India, Indonesia, Egypt, Palestine, Iran, and of course, Canada,” says Kamgari.… Continue
Performers’ is back with quirky and fun Stanton’s Garage
Sackville’s community theatre company is at it again. The Performers’ Theatre Company is just about ready to open its latest production, Stanton’s Garage, this Friday evening at the Performers’ Space on Fairfield Road in Sackville. Written by Joan Ackerman and directed by Sackville’s Chris Farella, Stanton’s Garage is part reflection on life, and part comedy of errors.
“It has this sort of personal, introspective, reflective side to it,” says actor Ben Hébert, “and then it has this more sort of goofy, silly side, which Performers’ [Theatre Company] is really known for.”
The play is set in the quintessential rural garage, says Hébert, complete with a quirky cast of characters. “When people see this garage, we want them to be like, ‘Oh, I’ve been in this garage. I’ve talked to these people before.’”
Actor Faith Higgins says the set design has recreated the atmosphere of a small town garage, made easier with the cooperation and generosity of a local garage owner. “We were able to pull a bunch of junk that he just had lying around for like 10, 20 years in order to make our set look just identical to his,” says Higgins, complete with decades of grease and oil residue.
This is Higgins second production with Performers’, having served as assistant stage manager for Hound of the Baskervilles.… Continue
The Sweetest Little Thing is back in person at the Owens Art Gallery for Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is coming up next week, which in Sackville means it’s time for another edition of The Sweetest Little Thing, a fundraising event led by Struts Gallery and the Owens Art Gallery. The event has been happening since 1999, and features an art auction with donated works from artists from Sackville and beyond.
For the past two years, the Sweetest Little Thing has been virtual, but this year the event returns to an in-person gathering at the Owens Art Gallery, and a physical exhibition of the works up for auction at the gallery.
Hear Owens director-curator Emily Falvey talking about The Sweetest Little Thing on Tantramar Report:
Falvey says that in addition to being an important fundraiser for the Owens and Struts, The Sweetest Little Thing is also a community event, and, “a time to celebrate the artists who have contributed to our programming.”
For the past two years, the event was a virtual variety show, which Falvey says was what was needed at the time. “I know that there were a lot of people in particular, in 2021, who really appreciated that because we weren’t able to be together,” says Falvey. “We’ve worked really hard to keep that sense of community connection alive during the pandemic.… Continue