Adelaide & John : Parlour's New Menu

Last night, Parlour, the entertainment district's vintage bar/lounge, held an invite-only soft opening to test out their new food menu. Their decently sized menu features far more than your average bar snacks, and everything is delicious to boot!

vintage sofas and chandeliers

For ease of ordering, the menu is divided into three sections: snacks, boards, and flatbreads; and we were just hungry enough to sample some of each:

For starters we had a grilled zucchini crostini with mascarpone: a perfect balance of savoury, salty, and just a little sweet.

Along side it came a cheesy artichoke dip with fresh bread and focaccia (all made in house!) and crudites. I secretly love the so-bad-its-good cheesy artichoke dips you get at low-end chain restaurants, but you can't go wrong with this fresh, higher quality version made all in house.

I always forget to take pictures before we start eating...

Next we shared a charcuterie board and a cheese board. (Not yet on the menu, but coming soon will be a mixed board with both meats and cheeses) The charcuterie features a spicy keilbasa, truffle salami, cured ham, picked vegetables, and grainy mustard. The cheeses could be a little more varied with two similar hard cheeses (a parmesan and an aged gouda from Thunder Bay), only one soft cheese, and all three coming from cow's milk. They were all very good, I was just expecting a little more variety. The cheeses came with cooked pears, more pickled veggies, grapes, and an out-of-this-world truffle honey, so I couldn't possibly be disappointed. Both boards feature that same soft bread I couldn't get enough of.

Finally (after a break we filled with a nice house pinot grigio), we came to the flatbread course. We went with the grilled vegetable and goat cheese which was, unsurprisingly, very tasty. The flatbreads are a good size, enough for one to eat alone, or two to share with other dishes.

Although in a district that I think of more for dancing and cocktail drinking than for its culinary offerings, Parlour's new menu rivals any of the traditional tapas spots. I fully anticipate this cozy lounge to become the new hot spot for a light, pre-dancing dinner, or a fabulous late-night snack.

For more information on Parlour, visit their website.
The menu is still not available online, but it's all coming very soon!

Queen & Gladstone: The Annual

The second floor of the Gladstone hotel is currently home to The Annual, a contemporary art exhibit featuring works by a number of artists united by a common theme. This year's topic: Shifting Ground. 
As is almost always the case with contemporary art, the pieces in this multi-media exhibit explore their theme literally, metaphorically, and, occasionally, quite elusively.  

My favourite piece was an interactive installation by Marc De Pape titled Neighborhood Watch. I put on the headphones and sat on the sun-soaked balcony overlooking Queen St. W. The chair's legs are cut to different lengths so that, as you sit, you can tilt yourself in all directions. Doing so triggers the audio instillation in different ways so that the live sounds of the street are mixed in varying degrees with amplified street sounds coming through the headphones. Essentially, you create your own soundtrack to  the live action of daily life at Queen & Gladstone.

Marc De Pape, Neighborhood Watch, 2013
audio and physical computing

Another Toronto-based piece is Mel Coleman's fittingly titled Condoscape. The collage of condo buildings reflects what's going on right outside the gallery doors as Toronto continues to grow at exponential rates.

Mel Coleman, Condoscape, 2012
collage on canvas

A more metaphorical look at shifting grounds is the (very) short film Lug Me Islandia by Maria Flawia Litwin. The interactions between the artist and her suitcase are meant to express her relationship to her personal "immigrant journey". Those finer intentions may not come across to every viewer, but the suitcase is such a universal symbol of change and of covering new ground that the theme manages to come together.

Maria Flawia Litwin, Lug Me Islandia
film

Some of the other pieces which feature landscape or architectural collage and photography have a less clear connection to the theme. Closer inspection of the description next to one photograph revealed that the building pictured was in Detroit, a city currently in a state of serious flux; but I've never been a fan of art that relies on a description to connect with the viewer or the spirit of the exhibit.

The hotel-turned gallery makes for a beautiful exhibition space. The architecture adds a vintage touch and makes the rooms feel much warmer than a sparse modern art gallery.

Even the bathroom has character! Terrible lighting, but a beautiful claw-foot tub.

If you're looking to see a variety of art without being overwhelmed by the volume of work, The Annual is the place for you! It's also very reasonably priced at just $5 a ticket and students get in for free.

Dates: October 10-13 2013
Location: Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St W at Gladstone.

For more information on hours and special events visit their website.

Queen & Shaw: Public Art

There's a new addition to the courtyard in front of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

Bathurst & Adelaide : How to Disappear Completely at the SummerWorks Performance Festival

How to Disappear Completely is not your average piece of theatre. Created and performed by award-winning lighting designer Itai Erdal, this production combines the heart-felt storytelling, documentary filmmaking, and the artistry and mechanics of light to create a piece that is altogether spellbinding.

Erdal is a story-teller, plain and simple. Being in the audience of How to Disappear Completely feels more like you're catching up with an old friend than witnessing a traditional narrative unfold onstage. Erdal tells us about his friends, family, goals, and dreams with such openness and generosity that his one-man show never borders on self-indulgence.

How to Disappear Completely has two distinct sides. The first is Erdal's abridged autobiography: the story of his life and family with a focus on his mother's terminal illness and eventual death. Erdal projects film footage of his family that he took himself during this time to bring the other characters to life and allow their own voices to speak onstage. The second is a mini-lesson on the mechanic and art of lighting design. Erdal operates the majority of the lighting cues himself from onstage and takes the audience through some of the artistic and technical process of lighting for the theatre.

Each of these stories alone could not sustain an entire full-length performance, but together they complement each other by their opposites. Together, they create a fully varied emotional and intellectual experience despite being very weakly linked thematically and structurally. Regardless, this is an autobiography, and perhaps family and light are both such large parts of Erdal's life that they cannot be separated.

Since life is not crafted as simply and carefully as a piece of fiction, we cannot ask that a biography be perfectly structured and still expect truthfulness and accuracy in the story-telling. Structural issues are why I usually steer clear of biopics and biographies, but Erdal has created a piece of theatre so unique in its use of lighting and documentary film that it never ceases to entertain. How to Disappear Completely manages to keep you on board wherever it may decide to ramble.


Remaining Performances at SummerWorks:
Friday August 16 at 3:00pm
Sunday August 18 at 12:30pm

Remaining Performances at the Stratford Festival (as part of The Forum series):
Thursday August 15 at 2:00pm
Saturday August 17 at 2:00pm

For more information check out the Facebook page or the SummerWorks website.
The annual Summerworks Performance Festival runs until August 18.

Dundas & Crawford: An Interview with Musician Brooklyn Doran

Brooklyn Doran is a Toronto based theatre artist and musician, originally from Kenora, Ontario. Her debut EP, written this past year, is set to be recorded in fall 2013 and released in early 2014. For a preview, check out her website.

Photo by Adrienne Callan Photography and Mathias Semmann

On August 1st, Brooklyn launched an indiegogo campaign to fund the production costs of the record, with the goal of making all five songs available online for free. Her campaign includes better-than-average indiegogo perks which encourage donors to commission her talents. For a $40 donation you can be Brooklyn's cover song DJ and request an original B. Doran cover of any song you like! And for $60, Brooklyn will write you a song about anything your heart desires. It isn't often that a fundraising campaign has the potential to be almost as fun and rewarding for the donors as it is for the fundraisers.

I caught up with Brooklyn in Trinity Bellwoods Park for an interview on her new music, the realities of crowd-funding, and how a small town girl came to write songs in the big city.

Design by Maddy Haney at Faith.Trust.Pixiedust

nl: It's been five years since you released your first original song on iTunes, and it remains the only song you've released to date, what re-ignited the desire to start writing and recording original music?

bd: I don't know why I wasn't writing between then and now. I was always playing music but I think I felt like I needed to get better at singing other people's material before I felt comfortable creating my own. In the winter of 2012 that's when I started writing again and I was really excited about it. I guess it was at a point in my life when I realized that I don't have to be just a theatre artist or just one type of person. I can be a musician, and I came to a realization where I gained confidence in myself [...] and some songs just sort of came to me during a weird, rough couple of weeks in my life. And I liked them, and other people seemed to like them, so I thought "why not? let's go for this". There's always going to be someone who may be better than me, but what I have that other people don't is my own perspective and my own experience that I can bring to songwriting.

nl: How would you describe the spirit of the album?

bd: This is going to be my first EP so it's my chance to really establish myself, who I am, my style, and my sound. What I'm really going for is an exploration between where I cam from and where I'm at now. I grew up in a really small town, a really beautiful place and then I moved to Toronto. So with that, the feel of the album would be unplugged, organic material that really personifies the idea of woodsiness and that clash against the idea of urban-ness.

nl: You have a song called "Lansdowne" which, for Torontonians, is going to stand out as a familiar place, so how much does your environment, and especially the city of Toronto, influence your writing?

bd: What I'm writing is coming from what I'm seeing on a day-to-day basis. I feel really strongly about writing what I know. I don't feel like I'm entitled to tell other people's stories, I feel like I'm entitled to tell my story and ask people if they can relate to it.

nl: Speaking more about the type of music we can expect to hear on the EP, who would you say are your top musical influences?

bd: Musically, I'm a little bit stuck in the 2004-2007 indie-folk scene, that was a really good time for indie-folk music. I'm really inspired by Ani DiFranco and Anais Mitchell, two really great female folk artists. I'm into anyone who may have recorded on Righteous Babe Records.

nl: A large part of your current fundraising campaign is that you're going to make your EP available for free. Why is it important to you?

bd: I think that it's important, as a musician whose starting out nowadays, to make your music accessible. People are, in this age of technology, less likely to put money into buying a piece a music unless they already know what it will sound like. So I think that, by making it free, it's opening up my music to people who don't already know about me. The people who are supporting me right now would probably buy the EP anyway, so I think that by donating they're making it possible for other people to discover my music.

nl: Your indiegogo fundraising campaign has been live for five days, how do you feel so far about the success or usefulness of indiegogo as a fundraising platform?

bd: In the first four days I raised over $1000. I'm really excited and really overwhelmed. When you make an indiegogo campaign, you expect your friends and your parents to contribute. When other people contribute unexpectedly it's really overwhelming, and exciting, and moving that someone who I might not necessarily have a direct relationship with would believe in my music enough to give.

nl: What do you project for the next 55 days of indiegogo fundraising?

bd: You can expect me to be way more present on social media than I've ever been in my life. I think something that's very important when crowd-funding is to let people know what's going on. People don't just want to support someone who is cool and mysterious who they don't know. They want to see exactly how their money is affecting that person. None of the money from the indiegogo campaign will go to me personally. It's all going toward the project and toward paying the musicians and artists involved. I think so often people working in the arts don't get paid what they should.

nl: Can you tell me about some of the artists at you're working with on the EP?

bd: I'm working with Mark Koecher who is my producer. Jeff Gunn and Aaron Corbett will be playing guitar. Aaron also helps me out creatively, we jam together and he plays with me for most of my gigs. I have Jon Foster playing drums, Erik Lindemann on stand-up base, and the artwork and logo design is done by my friend Maddy Haney through her company Faith.Trust.Pixiedust. I've also been so grateful to have (world musician) Kae Sun take me under his wing and mentor me a bit with songwriting over the past few months. I think working with him and taking his advice has really helped me grow as a musician. It's always nice to have someone who you admire and respect be able to speak to you as a peer.

nl: When can we next hear you play live?

bd: I will be playing at Tight-Knit Syria on August 14th at the Mojo Lounge. It is a fundraiser to help a not-for-profit organization so tickets are $20, but all of that money is going to support their cause.

nl: What is your favourite Toronto live music venue, whether you're onstage or in the audience?

bd: I really like playing at The Central. I like the people, and I really like the vibe of the place. It's a really chill spot to hear new music and it's getting big.

Want more information on the talented Brooklyn Doran? Check out the links below to listen to her demos and the songs her donors are commissioning.

Website: www.brooklyndoran.com
Bandcamp: www.brooklyndoran.bandcamp.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/brooklyndoranmusic
Twitter: @brooklyndoran

Bathurst & Bloor : 20 Feet From Stardom

20 Feet from Stardom is the documentary story of the voices behind some of the greatest songs recorded in the last fifty years.

The film is mostly a series of interviews with some of American music's most successful and prolific back-up singers, mixed with some phenomenal singing, killer dance moves, and colourful retro clothing. The focus of many of the interviews tries to shed light on why these amazing voices remained at the back of the stage throughout their careers, so close, and yet so far, from super-stardom.

Some women have tragic stories of the unsuccessful solo albums and cut-throat producers who stole their songs, causing them to fall back down to earth where the harsh realities of every day life meant cleaning houses and teaching school to make ends meet. But showbiz wasn't so tough on everyone, some of the interviews suggest that some artists, like Lisa Fischer, prefer to be just on the edge of the spotlight.

Lisa Fischer has arguably one of the strongest voices showcased in the film, a Grammy award winning solo single, and is considered to be one of the most successful session singers of her time. She's sung backup for a number of superstars including Tina Turner, Sting, and Luther Vandross, and has been the lead female vocalist on every Rolling Stones tour since 1989. But I'd never heard of her.

Is that because she prefers a steady and enduringly successful career singing backup to the potential flash-in-the-pan success of a solo-artist? Or was something or someone keeping her "20 Feet from Stardom" her whole career?

A recurring theme among many of the singers interviewed in the film is the struggle to find the time, energy, and resources to put toward a solo career when they're working constantly for other people. Do you sacrifice a steady (and reasonable) income doing what you love for a chance to stand alone in the spotlight? Or are you content to spend your career as a relative unknown if it means you get paid to sing your heart out on stage, like so many people only ever dream of doing?

Check out the trailer:

I caught 20 Feet From Stardom at the Bloor Cinema on its last night there, but it's still playing in Toronto at the Yonge Dundas and Varsity Cinemas. Click here for showtimes.

Bathurst & Lennox : MSM at the Toronto Fringe Festival

Last night was the opening of lemonTree creations' MSM [men seeking men] at the Toronto Fringe Festival. The culture of online-dating and hookups in the queer community is expressed onstage through a mix of contemporary dance, abstract movement, chat-room transcripts, and living spinning by DJ Scooter of Cub Camp.

Like much of the dance theatre pieces I've seen, this show vacillates between pure dance in which meaning gives way to expression and interpretation, and text-based story-telling that never quite reaches full enough plot lines or characterizations to stand alone. MSM manages to utilize both mediums in such a way that they support one another. Meaning and story are not always clear, but the images and physical work provoke a response on a less intellectual level, creating a gripping and visceral experience.

Not being a member of the queer male community, this piece offered a tiny glimpse into a fascinating world of sex and dating that I know very little about. I wish that glimpse could have been larger, perhaps to satisfy my own curiosity, but there feels like there is room to expand deeper into the culture of the world that inspired the piece. Never-the-less, when we do get a peek inside, MSM offers an unabashed look at their version of the gay online dating experience.

MSM [men seeking men] runs until July 13 at the Randolph Theatre as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Visit their website or Facebook page for more details.
Tickets are $10 at the door; $11 in advance (plus fees)
Call 416.966.1062 or visit www.fringetoronto.com