And now, as they say, for something completely different. Swedish band Louisa Lyne & di Yiddishe Kapelye are touring their show Leonard Cohen in Yiddish and it made its Toronto stop at Lula Lounge on Tuesday evening as part of the Ashkenaz Festival. It makes sense right? Cohen’s roots were in the Yiddish speaking community in Latvia and somehow Yiddish seems apt for his typical subject matter.
Taraf Syriana are an interesting collection of musicians. They are all conservatory trained but in different genres from western classical to Syrian classical to Romani (and probably more) and they play a variety of instruments from different traditions. They combine all this to create a kind of fusion folk/rock inspired by the music(s) of the lands from the Balkans through Syria to Kurdistan. They use quite a bit of amplification and the overall effect is like a sort of eastern Mediterranean Fairport Convention although there’s more composed music and less traditional stuff in the Taraf Syriana rep.
Tongue in Cheek’s latest show, Democracy in Action, took place at the Lula Lounge last night. The concept was pretty straightforward. There were eight (almost) singers and a pianist. Each singer offered up five numbers ranging from opera through art song to musical theatre and pop. Advanced on-line polling had selected one song per singer. Polling of the audience in the house produced the other two. The in house polling was supported by really rather well done videos in which the “composers” tried to persuade the audience to vote for their stuff.
operaramblings 