Makin’ their own waves
Festival adds young songwriters to the mix
Another group of artists have been added to this summer’s Makin’ Waves Festival, giving the public a chance to see some of this area’s youngest up-and-coming performers, says event organizer Joe Costello.
“The festival is a curated festival so we chose our artists for our main stage for very specific reasons — so whether we want to have a good portion of artists to be women for instance or have First Nations performers, people of colour, we choose our artists based on those ideologies as well as providing the highest quality entertainment we can for our festival,” said Costello.
“This gives us the opportunity where we can learn about new artists that perhaps we didn’t know about before … or we can see the progression of these young artists.”
The concert series, now in its third year, will take place in Sydney’s Wentworth Park bandshell area on Thursdays between July 5 and Aug. 2, starting at 6 p.m. All concerts are free and there will also be food trucks and vendors on site.
The latest group to be added are five young singer-songwriters who will open each show with three songs. This include performers as young as 14 years old like songwriter Breagh Kelly from Glace Bay and more seasoned performers like Cameron Hollohan, 24, of
Sydney.
“It’s giving an opportunity for us to give a platform for young emerging artists who are writing their own music to come in and play a show with professional production, get paid to do it and then play to a large audience and hopefully that will raise their profile within the community — they can start to obtain other gigs with festivals or venues and stuff like that and they can continue on with their career.”
Besides Kelly and Hollohan, other new performers include Sarah Ellen Morrison, 23, of Sydney, Rudy Pace of Sydney and Curtis Matheson, 23, of Glace Bay.
Hollohan, will open the July 5 concert at 6 p.m. featuring Ria Mae and Carmel Mikol. Hollohan is a youth care worker at the Whitney Pier Youth Club who has been writing and performing since he was 14 years old. He has recently
re-emerged as a performer, taking the stage in local pubs and expanding his songwriting.
The July 12 concert will feature blues guitarist and songwriter Matheson, who performed on 2017’s Breakout Stage. He will hit the Makin’ Waves stage solo this year opening for Matt Minglewood and Billie Yvette, presented by Marine Atlantic.
Kelly will open for Pretty Archie and Jordan Musycsyn Band on July 19. She is a Grade 8 student at Oceanview Education Centre and the recent winner of the ECMA Music Moves You contest. She has been performing at all-ages events and open mics throughout the community, and her song “Safe and Sound,” about her missing dog Jakk, was a viral video on social media in 2017.
Morrison will return home from Halifax with her band in tow for a special acoustic performance
alongside Hillsburn and Diyet & the Love Soldiers on July 26, presented by Atlantic Lottery.
Morrison has been performing locally and in Halifax for a number of years. She was a guest performer at the 2017 Sydney Credit Union Makin’ Waves Music Festival with rapper Mitchell Bailey who, like her, was a CBMic Front Stage Contest winner.
Opening the final concert of 2018 on Aug. 2 will be Sydney’s Rudy Pace. Best known as the front man of touring rockers The Electric Spoonful, Pace has been increasingly writing and performing solo and will be taking his folk songs to Wentworth Park this summer.
He will be joined by Toronto’s The Beaches and Cape Bretonborn songwriter Greg MacPherson.