Cabaret fest puts musicians in intimate settings
Life is a cabaret, old chum, or at least it’s going to be this week at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.
Soulpepper Theatre’s artistic director, Albert Schultz, is a great fan of the art form known as cabaret, in which a group of idiosyncratic musicians assemble to share some special songs in an intimate setting.
So he’s put together an amazing mini-festival in which 50 artists will perform cabaret-style in a series of shows that run from through Sunday.
There will be solo turns from the eclectic likes of Steven Page, Andrew Craig, Patricia O’Callaghan, Mel-anie Doane and Canada’s own hot songwriting duo, The Breithaupt Brothers.
Also on the agenda are a trio of Songbook performances, hosted by the erudite Robert Cushman, with the above artists and more joining to celebrate the work of Leonard Cohen, Duke Ellington and Kurt Weill.
Doane gives an insight into how it all came together.
“Albert was over at our house one night and he said, ‘I’d like to do a show like this, with you just being casual, playing the bass, piano and mandolin and singing songs you enjoy.’”
Before you know it, he’d signed her up for a pair of solo performances and it’s easy to see how everyone else came on board the same way.
“I consider Albert Schultz to be a particularly visionary character,” says Craig, “and it was an immediate yes when he asked me to participate in this event.”
Craig is spearheading the Ellington evening, which he calls both “enthralling and challenging” because of the wealth of material available.
He’s put together a fascinating group, consisting of Jackie Richardson, John Alcorn, Don Francks and Mary Margaret O’Hara.
O’Callaghan is appearing in two of the Songbook evenings, devoted to Weill and Cohen, a pair of her passions.
“Every time I revisit Weill’s music,” says O’Callaghan. “I find there’s always something new to discover. It’s an incredible mix of the political and the sexual, which is why it’s perfect to perform in this kind of intimate cabaret setting.”
