Singer/Songwriter night is a monthly public event held on the second Thursday of the month. It is hosted by singer/songwriter Elizabeth Bruce, who has been teaching voice, piano, and songwriting at Alcorn Music Studios since 2007. Indie Night aims to provide a comfortable place for aspiring singer-songwriters to share their music in front of a live audience. Each month there will be a performance by featured artist, followed by an open mic. This series will occasionally host guest speakers to discuss building a career as an independent musician. Participants are strongly encouraged to sing original songs rather than covers. A keyboard is available for pianists. Our Guest Performer plays the first set starting around 8:00 pm. This is followed by an open mic which goes until we are finished. All ages welcome. Cover $5 at the door. If you’ve got questions email elizabeth@alcornmusicstudios.com
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Guest Artist June 14th, 2012 – Chrissy Lovingood Chrissy Lovingood has been writing songs since she learned her first three chords. For her songwriting is “a playground with endless possibilities to explore, and a chance to see life through lots of different lenses.” Folk, blues, country, soul and rock n’ roll get together to stew and then filter through to become the catchy melodies and clever, heartfelt lyrics she offers to everyone who listens. “Performance is about bringing everybody along for a ride outside of themselves so why shouldn’t I try with all I have to make it happen?” With expressive vocals that run the range from warm and sweet to gritty and tough she brings the tales of hopeless romantics, dreamers, addicts, the world weary and broken-hearted ramblers to life. http://www.myspace.com/chrissylovingood
Guest Artist May 10th, 2012 - rorie kelly
“Independent, free, and full of complexity. Difficult to cage. rorie kelly is that type of indie rock.” – LI Pulse Magazine
“Her sound was so powerful, she acoustically filled every square inch of space.” – Canvas Magazine
rorie writes catchy, melodic rock songs that she plays with enough passion to break guitar strings–and go right on playing without batting an eye. rorie is also well known in NYC and Long Island’s singer/songwriter scenes, and her solo performances are just as intense as when she’s rocking with the band behind her. More information can be found on the web at http://www.roriekelly.com.
Guest Artist April 12th, 2012 Devin Johnstone
“Devin Johnstone is blessed with a deep, resonant voice you feel in the centre of your chest…he shares it generously with poetic insight, down-to-earth candor, and charismatic sensuality. His guitar grooves lift you up, mellow you out, make you dance – he knows how to take you to deep places and spin you out into the light.
http://devinjohnstone.bandcamp.com/album/stand-in-for-the-victory-ep
Guest Artist March 8th, 2012 Shannon Rose
Over the past year Ottawa singer-songwriter Shannon Rose has been very busy recording four seasonal, five-song EPs. Each was written, recorded and released in its respective season, highlighting the influence of Canada’s diverse seasons on the songwriter and her band, The Thorns.
Shannon’s love of music was born in Pembroke, Ontario, where she grew up, but she only started writing songs while studying English in Toronto. After graduating, Shannon moved to Ottawa with her guitarist husband and enlisted the talents of some of the city’s finest musicians to help turn her bedroom demos into her first full-length album, Sing Me a Song (2008). Inspired by artists like Sarah Harmer and Laura Veirs, Shannon crafts solid folk-pop melodies that are set on a lush backdrop that includes horns, piano, and strings. For more information or to listen to Shannon’s music visit http://www.shannonroseandthethorns.com/
Guest Artists February 9th, 2012 – Orienteers
“Orienteers are the heavy-lidded lords of a sweet, sleepy land of achingly pretty melodies, peaceful reflection and fuzzy warmth… almost impossible to dislike.” – Trebuchet Magazine
Ben Wilson – Vocals, keys, Guitar
Tom Thompson – Pedal Steel Guitar, loops, Ipod, Guitar
Brennan Pilkington – Vocals, Drums
Laura Greenberg - Bass
Orienteering is defined as a cross-country race in which participants use a map and compass to navigate along checkpoints across unfamiliar terrain. In the case of Ottawa’s Orienteers, music is both navigational tool and terrain. The result is their unique brand of space-folk that seems less intent upon any sort of race, than it does with taking its time exploring the outer limits of an uncharted aural galaxy. In 2011 they released the full-length, Orienteers (out via Antique Room), which in their own words, “…is a travel focused collection of fragile space-folk, layered with looping pedal-steel guitar, wind chime acoustics and warm blankets of bass and brush sticks.” On Orienteers, the experimental melancholia is heightened by countrified guitars, undulating synth and subdued vocals–all swirled into a melodic psychedelic dream, bolstered by solid song writing throughout. Speaking of song writing, we’ve been told that since adopting their new moniker, they’ve been writing at a furious pace.
In other words, expect Orienteers to be the first in a series of space-folk masterpieces. However, until the arrival of the next album, feel free to bask in the glory of the current release. And when they come to your town, be sure to catch the live act. Each delicate performance draws you in to a carefully composed world of sonic exploration.
| http://antiqueroom.ca |
Guest Artist January 12th, 2012
Abigail Lapell is a folk-noir singer-songwriter from Toronto. Her debut album, Great Survivor, showcases a rare talent for evocative songwriting and addictive melodies—along with a crowd-hushing voice, rich in emotional colour. Drawing from folk, indie and traditional influences, Abigail has won over audiences of all stripes with her precise, crystal-and-smoke vocals and sparse-plucked electric guitar. Her music is often likened to leading lights like Sandy Denny, early Cat Power or a stormier Natalie Merchant — but there’s something distinctive in Abigail’s bittersweet tones and darkly playful lyrics that defies easy comparisons. Abigail has toured across Canada, Europe and the U.K.; been featured at festivals like NXNE, Pop Montreal, Winterfolk (Toronto), Sappy Fest (Sackville, NB) and In the Dead of Winter (Halifax); and shared stages with the likes of Rae Spoon, tUnE-yArDs, Snailhouse, and Greg MacPherson, among many others. Abigail’s relentless performance schedule in the past year has included tours on Greyhound Buses, trains, and — most quintessentially Canadian — a 10-day canoe tour along Ontario’s Grand River. Recorded by Heather Kirby (of Ohbijou), Great Survivor was released in Spring 2011 and features talented collaborators like Jessica Moore (banjo, vocals), Lisa Bozikovic (piano, vocals), James van Bolhuis (drums), Aaron Lumley (double bass) and Julia Collins (violin). “Great Survivor is an emotional chamber, furnished with bare acoustics and anchors around Lapell’s confident, smoky vocals. It’s an impressionistic debut, one that feels like it comes from inside.”- BlogTO
“There’s beauty indeed in the smoke that flows from her lungs, the way her words disperse storms, set the sky to gently falling.” – Said the Gramophone
“Clear as a bell vocals, fluid and resonant guitar playing and a little bit of foot stamping for emphasis to boot… Take the chance to see a show if you can.”- Muso’s Guide
“If you can’t find it in your heart to give Lapell points for spending almost every day on a Greyhound bus for a good half of August, then you might consider giving her a kudo or two for really knowing her way around a personal and plaintive tune… Go ahead, let yourself be impressed.” – Hour.ca
Guest Artist December 8/2011
Neil Gerster http://www.facebook.com/neilgerster once fronted the Ottawa pop-folk quartet Lighthousekeepers from 2001-2003. As far as public profile goes, he thereafter buried himself under a rock, re-emerging in 2011 with his “ukulele album”, Hearts and Other Shipwrecks, containing 14 tracks of poetic lyrics, summer sounds, sea imagery, tales of online dating, mellotron accents, but especially the sounds of ukuleles and banjoleles throughout.
His first ukulele was an bought grudgingly: a week of imagining a high-pitched, gut-stringed strumming in a song he was writing ended in a trip to a music store and an impulse buy. The next week, he wrote three new songs. The uke was almost instantly the easiest instrument for him to compose with. Besides his present ukulele fixation, Neil plays guitars, keyboards, basses, flute, kalimba, glockenspiel, cornet, guitarrón and drums (he’s in the market for a mandocello or cittern). Mom started him on violin lessons, he begged to quit, she said no, he moved to piano, begged to quit, she said no, he moved to vocal lessons, begged to quit, and Mom finally let him. Mom was gracious enough to then get him a guitar as a birthday present a couple of years later, and even more graciously sprung for guitar lessons when Neil begged to start. Playing guitar turned music from a language of too many precise and individual notes into a more manageable slang of chords, which were so much more flexible. Suddenly any instrument was an easier tool for expressing himself. Neil has been fortunate enough to play with Mélissa Laveaux, the Urban Aesthetics, Marie-Josée Houle and the Attention Deficit.
Guest Artist Nov. 10/2011
Eleanore Altman www.eleanorealtman.com A native of Montreal, Eleanore Altman studied voice with Beverly McGuire (Concordia) and Colette Boky (UQAM), and currently studies composition with Lisa Heffter in New York and Alan Belkin (UdeM) in Montreal. She is also an alumna of Berklee College of Music. Eleanore has been heard at Place Des Arts, Centre Pierre Péladeau, and Berklee Performance Center, and regularly performs her original music in and around Montreal. She has appeared as a soloist with the Atelier D’Opéra de l’UQAM in productions of Jepthe, La Flute Enchantée,and Carmen. In 2008, Eleanore wrote and conducted an original score for a production of Mother Courage and Her Children (Gerald W. Lynch Theater, New York) and the following year released her debut album Degrees of Freedom with RCM Records (Québec). Her second album, Biologic, is scheduled for release in early 2012. Eleanore is co-artistic director of Festival Alexandria, a summer concert series in Alexandria, Ontario. In addition to her career as a musician, Eleanore also holds a master’s degree in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and is active in community and mental health work in Montreal.
Guest Artist October 13/2011:
Jon Laurie-Beaumont w
ww.facebook.com/jonlauriebeaumont
