Rufus Wainwright comes to Victoria
Singer-songwriter has two projects in progress: a pop album and an opera
Montreal-raised, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright plays the McPherson Playhouse on Saturday. He’ll be joined by his half-sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche.
Rufus Wainwright is off-the-pace when it comes to trends but onthe-money when it comes to intuition. Trusting his gut has given the 44-year-old a professional paycheque for nearly three-quarters of his life.
When the big, shiny Can-rock explosion was in full swing during the late 1990s, the Montreal-raised Wainwright was behind the piano for his debut album, sounding positively cabaret; the recording, though a commercial disappointment, earned Wainwright the Juno Award for best alternative album. And in the mid-2000s, when listeners were soaking up the future pop of Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake, the singer-songwriter was recording a Grammy-nominated live album in tribute to Judy Garland.
He’s running contrary to public tastes once more, touring the West Coast in the midst of two significant projects.
He’s at work on a self-described “pop” album, due later this year, while tending to the ongoing details of Hadrian, his self-penned opera set to première in Toronto in October. None of the aforementioned projects should come as a surprise: Wainwright has a wellestablished ability to travel in several directions during his concerts, from songs on his most recent recording, 2016’s Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, to his breathtaking rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Wainwright will return to Victoria for the first time since 2004 for a concert at the McPherson Playhouse on Saturday.
Joining the Los Angeles-based performer for the run of dates — only two of which are in Canada — is half-sister Lucy Wainwright Roche, the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Suzzy Roche. Fewer than 50 tickets were available for the performance at press time.
“I am out this time around as a troubadour, which is a position that is highly prized within our family; pretty much everyone does it,” Wainwright said in a recent interview with the Nottingham Post, a newspaper in England.
“It is me going out there making a living, singing various songs from various periods of my career.”
The brother of musician Martha Wainwright, and son of Wainwright II and Kate McGarrigle, earned a Genie Award nomination at 15, which set him on a course in music almost immediately. Despite some patches of uncertainty (his difficult tour to support 2010’s All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, shortly after the death of his mother, sent Wainwright into a deep depressions), music is a profession from which he cannot seperate himself.
“I never had to make the difficult choice between music and embroidery,” he said. “My parents’ train of thought was always ‘Either they will go out into the world and sing or they will stay at home and be afraid.’ I feel that I chose the right track.”