ARTFULLY ECLECTIC
Kaleido spreads the love
For over a decade now Kaleido Family Arts Festival has encouraged artists in multiple media to entertain and interact with the public on Alberta Avenue, but this year its theme is even broader.
“The beauty and the crazy of Kaleido is that it’s so artistically diverse,” says producer Christy Morin. “We’re all about creating a community feeling through the arts but this year our theme is international, Kaleido + the World = LOVE. In working with the artistic team our focus was to bring out a nice mix — eastern, western, dance, music and theatre. It’s the most eclectic that we’ve ever been.”
Some 680 artists of all sorts will present or perform at 13 venues, from rooftops to back alleys to parking lots on varied indoor and outdoor stages Friday through Sunday, hoping to surpass previous crowds of up to 60,000. The fest is packed with music and dance but the visual arts, theatre, poets and writers are represented.
Morin and company have tried to incorporate all ages, too.
“We even have an 11-year-old opera singer singing off the Paradiso Balcony this year. I fell in love with this little Filipino guy Angelo Cornell and asked him to come to the festival because he has such a big, beautiful, clear voice. It will be a treat to have him.”
Since Morin founded the festival in 2006 she’s been busy searching out new artists, but more and more they are approaching the fest. While the talent roster is predominantly local there are some notable acts coming from across the country.
Music acts tap all manner of roots, blues, jazz and global sounds from Celtic to Gypsy jazz, to Latin grooves and the Trincan Steel Orchestra. Several shades of Indigenous dance and drumming highlight the Takwakin Village, while the Jazz Alley features names like Jeremiah McDade, Audrey Ochoa, John Sweenie and Jamie Philp. The African dance, percussion and acrobatics of Yamoussa Bangoura’s Cirque Kalabante is a must-see Saturday afternoon on the Avenue Central Stage.
If interaction is your thing try workshopping at the Rhythm Speaks Hip Hop Stage. Five galleries feature visual exhibitions and sales. Theatres play to puppets and the improv experts 11 O’Clock Show. Various food and beverage options dot the site.
To check out the festival’s vast offerings it’s suggested that you survey kaleidofest.ca first or stroll over to one of the information booths on Alberta Avenue to consult the full schedule.
WRITING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
It couldn’t be more appropriate that Carissa Halton launches her book Little Yellow House at Kaleido Friday evening (7:30 p.m., Alberta Avenue Community League). The short memoir from University Of Alberta Press draws on her experiences after moving into the neighbourhood in early 2005, capturing both her family ’s life and the stories of people she has met there. Most of its 24 chapters work as stand-alone narratives but there is a continuous arc to the volume.
Halton’s resume includes past work for the Edmonton Journal among various periodicals, but the creative non-fiction of Little Yellow House came from observing a community in transition.
“My initial intent was to capture how life is being revitalized in this community. We were set up to expect a really unsafe community, but that reputation was so different from what my family experienced. I wanted to challenge this idea that you can qualify a community by crime statistics. There’s so much to learn from the setting and the people who live there.”
When it comes to the festival, Halton enjoys the “element of surprise” that Kaleido’s venues offer. Her daughter grew up assuming “every neighbourhood had a street festival like this” and early on declared she wanted to be a balloon artist.
Halton feels the avenue’s past reputation as a rough neighbourhood is out of tune with reality.
“That reputation almost drew us together more quickly and got us to know our neighbours. The book isn’t a brochure for Alberta Avenue, just an honest view of what it’s like to live in a community with some complex challenges and lots of unique gifts.”
Halton is one of four local writers featured at this year’s Kaleido Festival along with Tim Wilson, Patricia Dunnigan and Rayanne Haines.
BUSTY AND THE BASS
You can call them a multinational band given the members’ origins on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, and during their evolution from a jazz collective to more of an urban soul sound with hints of hip-hop, Montreal’s Busty and the Bass have become musically multifaceted too.
“We’re not all jazz heads,” explains bassist Milo Johnson, “but it’s one of the few areas you can study music in at the college level. The band has changed as we’ve matured as players, songwriters, producers and collaborators from our late teens, and we’re constantly learning about our sound in the studio versus on stage for the approach we want in each context.”
Given their jazz roots you may see some more extended soloing when they play Kaleido on Saturday (10 p.m. Avenue Central Stage), actually their third Edmonton appearance.
“We like to keep the show interesting for ourselves as much as we keep it fresh and surprising for the audience.”
The eight members were students in the jazz program at McGill University when they first jammed on instrumental covers as a one-off party band back in 2011. But something clicked, fans responded, and everyone got more serious about continuing this collective effort. It didn’t hurt when they won the CBC/TD title of Best University Band in 2014, complete with a cash prize that enabled them to make the first of two EP releases, Glam (2015) and Lift (2016).
Along the way the band has come to sport two singers who both double as musicians in a lineup of trumpet, trombone and saxophone, two keyboards, guitar, bass and drums. Songwriting is a collective process, and Johnson reports that the band has a bunch of new tunes to road test here.
After several years the group was a viable entity on the touring circuit too. Now, one year after releasing their critically acclaimed full-length album Uncommon Good (Indica Records), Busty and the Bass are rising stars as a groove band, with nearly 340 performances behind them and an itinerary that takes them all over the continent.