Thursday, 29 August 2013
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Bathurst & Adelaide : How to Disappear Completely at the SummerWorks Performance Festival
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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.
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
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.
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.
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
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| 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
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