Camille Thomas Camille Thomas by Christian Meuwly The cellist on the roof: finding hope in high-up places WORDS BY SAM HAWKINS & MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK | PARIS | MUSIC NOV 16, 2022 | ISSUE 7 Eighteen months after starting her world-famous rooftop performances in Paris, cellist Camille Thomas takes a moment to reflect before her upcoming international tour. Having endured the isolation and anxiety of two national lockdowns, Thomas is unmistakably cheery. Her city, it seems, is returning to some level of pre-pandemic normalcy, as both artists and audiences take their seats on either side of the stage. Since her rooftop videos went viral, Thomas has been busy: performing in a number of Paris’s cultural landmarks—the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre, and the Museum of Natural History, amongst others—as well as planning her upcoming tour. A true believer in art’s power to bring people together, she is known for her optimism, vitality, and joyful exuberance. With a fourth studio album under her belt—the first classical project recorded in partnership with UNICEF—she’s shown that her altruistic attitude isn’t just lip service. As life in Paris picks up where it left off, Camille reminds us that music is more than just melody and rhythm. It’s hope and beauty—something good for the soul.

Presenting Touch Guillaume Côté by Ella Mazur Guillaume Côté X Lighthouse Immersive WORDS BY MADELEINE KANE & MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK | TORONTO | DANCE NOV 15, 2022 | ISSUE 7 Over the past year and a half, and amidst the waves of ongoing uncertainty, our collective relationship to physical touch has been complicated and, perhaps, forever changed. With his new dance experience, Touch, choreographer Guillaume Côté explores the delicate intimacy of human interaction in an environment that has developed hesitancy toward closeness. Embodied within two dancers, Côté’s choreography delves into the evolution of nature through the ebbs and flows of human influence. The narrative itself inspires inward reflection—especially in a period wherein we fear the mere thought of touch—how have we embraced technology in lieu of physical contact? Influenced by the legendary stage director, Robert Lepage, Côté teamed up with Thomas Payette for the fusion of dance and technology. In the final stages of development, Côté reveals how directing Touch has changed his artistic relationship to open space, as well as finding harmony between the art of the dance and innovative spectacle. sM | How did you approach customizing the performance to the Lighthouse Immersive space, balancing the expansive choreography with the logistics of fitting a large audience into the venue? GC — We’re still fine-tuning. How do we make sure that this very subtle, very delicate interaction they have with each other comes across in this massive warehouse—filled with state-of-the-art projections—and not get drowned out by all of that? We figured out a few of those challenges, but we’re still working. Things like the pillars—we’re considering mirrors on the pillars. Our ideal scenario would have the audience be free to walk around. Now we’re still in the realm of social distancing, so people can’t walk around, so we thought it was safer to have rotating chairs. Ultimately, when the mirrors are put in, the experience gets more fine-tuned. Dance is this really beautiful thing that when it’s really well-directed, it’s very impactful. It can also fall really flat when it’s not directed well. Even where we are now, we feel we could do better. We’ve successfully incorporated the element of the three-dimensional choreography, which is something that very few people try to do. Choreography very often becomes something that you watch from the front. It becomes this two-dimensional experience, as opposed to being a three-dimensional thing where you watch dancers live. So the adventure of the 45 minutes of Touch , with those two dancers, is just so intense. People will have to get used to this way of seeing dance and also being in this environment that in itself is the performance, and that is a beautiful thing. You’re coming to live in this space where these two people are having a very intimate experience within this massive world of multimedia. Some of the feedback was “I can’t see the action”, but I say “there’s so much going on around you!” If you just turn your chair, you’ll see a million little details in the projections behind you. You may not see the performers for four seconds, but you are seeing a lot of other things. It’s like virtual reality, where you have to change your mindset so you’re in charge. You as the viewer are in charge of what you’re looking at and you have to make your own experience meaningful. It’s one thing to say this show is immersive, but it’s another thing to be an audience member at an immersive show. You have to take responsibility to be the one who is curious— what else do they want me to see ? That’s part of the learning curve. I’m learning how to craft a show that is not spoon-feeding my audience with “at this moment you look here,” and “at this moment you look over there,” but giving a space an animation that’s always stimulating, with enough that the audience can always have something to look at.

Lucas Debargue Lucas Debargue by Olga Nabatova A Virtuoso Challenges the Status Quo Caption WORDS BY ARLAN VRIENS | PARIS | MUSIC NOV 15, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Lucas Debargue has all the glittering hallmarks of a star on the rise. After high-profile success at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, the French pianist has produced no less than four solo albums on Sony Classical, in tandem with a globetrotting tour schedule. After this kind of success, Debargue could be forgiven if he had chosen to settle into a rhythm of crowd-pleasing recital favourites like Chopin, Liszt, or Bach. But, instead, he remains fiercely committed to his core values, advocating for works and experiences that surprise and entice his audiences. Joining smART Magazine , Debargue outlines a vision for a musical world in which creativity and conviction trump boilerplate virtuosity. He discusses his newest album, Zal - The Music of Miłosz Magin (Sony Classical), and what Magin’s music has meant to him and his friends. He is deliberate in his aspirations to introduce audiences to lesser-known musical territories and describes the complex relationships he sees between contemporary composers, audiences, and performers. Debargue also discusses his own burgeoning work as a composer and his interests in writing tonal music in dialogue with past composers.

Ragamala Dance Company Ragamala Dance Company How a mother-daughter duo is bringing classical South Indian Dance to the global stage WORDS BY NAVYA POTHAMSETTY | MINNEAPOLIS | PERFORMING ARTS FEB 27, 2023 | ISSUE 11 Born and raised in Tamil Naidu, India, Ranee Ramaswamy is a first-generation Indian-American now living in Minneapolis, where she founded Ragamala Dance Company in 1992. Co-leading the company with her daughters Aparna and Ashwini, the trio see family as an “artistic incubator through which we craft multidisciplinary, intercultural dance landscapes.” The Ramaswamys were trained in Bharatanatyam – one of eight standard South Indian classical dance forms – by Alarmél Valli in Chennai, India. Since its founding over 20 years ago, Ragamala’s dancers have performed at venues ranging from college campuses to international festivals, disseminating South Indian classical dance to diasporic populations and curious dancers worldwide. Ramaswamy’s production style thematically and aesthetically stratifies traditional Bharatanatyam elements. Her two most recent projects – Fires of Varanasi and Sacred Earth – chart new trajectories of interdisciplinarity; intersecting traditional choreographic vernacular with input from a...

Soundstreams Presents: The Garden of Vanished Pleasures INTERVIEW ─ Director Tim Albery leads us through a lush biographical opera as it prepares to bloom again Words & Interview by Eva Stone-Barney ISSUE 15 | TORONTO | ANY: TORONTO Like any art form, opera relies heavily on traditions and conventions: in order to be opera, a piece of theatre needs to meet certain expectations and adhere to ways of doing things. As is the case in any creative space, however, these rules are made to be broken, and expectations made to be upended. Enter The Garden of Vanished Pleasures , which will take to the Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre at Canadian Stage later this month (April 25-27). Directed by creator Tim Albery, The Garden of Vanished Pleasures , recounts the later years of English artist, writer, director and activist Derek Jarman’s life. Jarman, who is perhaps most known for films such as Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1986) or Edward II (1991) died in 1994 due to complications with HIV. An avid gardener, he spent the end of his life at a cottage on the south-west coast of England. The Garden tells this story, and provides touching commentary on themes of love, lust, loss, queerness, and isolation─accessible even to those completely unfamiliar with Jarman’s life and work. Tim Albery The Garden has itself lived an interesting life thus far. As was the case with many shows in 2020, its premiere — which was to be part of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s 21C Festival — was cancelled. Instead, Albery and his creative team took their project online, and adapted the show for digital distribution. The show has since received critical acclaim for its digital presentation – it was a finalist for Opera America’s 2022 Award for Excellence in Digital Opera. Many artists, and theatre makers in particular, suffered immensely as a result of the pandemic. Albery and his team’s creativity in the face of disaster, though, speaks to a silver lining. The forced expulsion from the dark, cozy warmth of theatres and opera houses propelled opera into the vast expanse of the internet, and with this, offered up an opportunity to tell new stories, to new audiences, in ground-breaking ways. Hyejin Kwon Now, some years after its first bloom, The Garden will finally receive its stage premiere with Soundstreams. This run of performances is musical directed by pianist Hyejin Kwon, and will star countertenor Daniel Cabena, mezzo-soprano Hillary Tufford, and sopranos Mireille Asselin and Danika Lòren. The ensemble is rounded out by cellist Amahl Arulandandam and violist Brenna Hardy-Kavanagh. Starting from top left: Daniel Cabena, Hillary Tufford, Mireille Asselin, Danika Lorèn, Amahl Arulandandam, and Brenna Hardy-Kavanagh Rather unconventionally for an opera, the music in this piece is written by not one composer, but two. Canadian composer Cecilia Livingston’s songs are woven in and around Translucence , a song cycle by English composer Donna McKevitt, which sets texts by Jarman himself. McKevitt worked with Jarman at the end of his life, scoring music for his final film, Blue (1993). While art song and opera are traditionally understood as separate entities in the world of classical singing, here they are one and the same. This act of recombination, of working with existing, disparate musical and textual material to create something new and cohesive, represents another way in which Albany and his creative team challenge the artistic conventions of opera, and open up a whole new arena of creative possibility in which to work and play. How better to honour the life and work of a ground-breaking, boundary-pushing artist like Derek Jarman. CANNOPY x Soundstreams

National Ballet’s "MADDADDAM" Siphesihle November and Jason Ferro in Wayne McGregor’s MADDADDAM. Photo by Bruce Zinger. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada. It may not entirely reinvent the wheel, but it certainly ruptures conventions WORDS BY ERIN BALDWIN | Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | Toronto NOV 23, 2022 | COMMUNITY Distorted computer-generated voiceovers and an orchestral score that frequently collapses into static and reverb. A sparse black stage scattered with dancers under piercing spotlights. Video projections that juxtapose wolves gnawing at a carcass with the familiar, brightly coloured images of commodity culture. Welcome to the apocalyptic world of MADDADDAM , the jarring full-length ballet spectacle inspired by legendary Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction, engineered by the visionary choreographer Wayne McGregor, and brought to life by a daring ensemble cast from the National Ballet of Canada (NBoC).

Starry Opera Night Ambur Braid by Jeremy Lewis Celebrated Soprano Ambur Braid reimagines Salome for an Immersive space. WORDS BY ISABELLA ELIAS | ORTISEI | VISUAL ARTS MAR 03, 2023 | ISSUE 9 “It was the last show I did before the world shut down,” says international opera sensation Ambur Braid of Oper Frankfurt’s production of Salome , playing the princess who wins the head of John the Baptist by performing the infamous ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ for King Herod. But the global shutdown presented artists like herself and creative talents in the live concert industry with an opportunity to reimagine how opera is presented and delivered to audiences beyond the constraints of shuttered traditional venues. In partnership with musician/producer Dan Kurtz and visual designer Isaac Rayment, she will resurrect the COVID-cancelled character for an operatic experience staged at the same venue where Lighthouse

The Mundane Minimalism of Max Richter’s In A Landscape Max Richter - by Dane Thibeault On the Richter scale, this latest album goes to the max WORDS BY REBECCA LASHMAR | ILLUSTRATION BY DANE THIBEAULT | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIE SUTTER | ENSEMBLE DECEMBER 10, 2024 | OXFORDSHIRE How can an artist remain grounded in the present moment despite a world constantly grappling with the barrages of political fury, environmental crises, a ravenous consumption of content and the nonsense-economy it generates? Let’s not forget that we are still in a period of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting hurly-burly of uncertainty and anxiety is a pandemic in its own right. The idea of slowing down, finding the eye of this hurricane, and living in the now feels like something that belongs in the fantasy aisle of your local bookstore (one that’s about to go out of business because no one’s reading). Somewhere amidst this chaos, there is the quiet power of a pulsating sound that’s always been there, calling us to stillness. It is the gentle tap of the mundane. It is the sound of the quotidian, of the neighbour’s cars starting with reluctance, birds chirping through their tree-top gossip, of mediocre coffee being brewed, the slightly-wobbly wheels of rolling suitcases headed for the airport. This is the sonic landscape in which our lives are rooted and, like waves walloping against a shoreline, generates a rhythm that’s inherently, inexplicably, therapeutic. It is within this deep rhythmic well that composer and pianist Max Richter has found the makings of his ninth studio album, In a Landscape . With a successful career across various mediums, Richter’s output has always explored the friction between a cohesive humanity and an intractably fragmented world. The accumulation of his accolades resemble a mountainous landscape of mostly peaks, from creating one of the most celebrated classical works in the 21st Century with The Blue Notebooks in 2004, to surpassing one billion streams as of 2019. There are many lovers of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons who’ve eloped with Richter’s re-composition since it came out in August of 2012. His compositions have laid the sonic carpet for some of the most acclaimed films ( Lore , The Patience Stone ) and TV shows ( The Handmaid’s Tale , The Last of Us ), showcasing his range of musical storytelling fit for commercial and art house box offices alike. In a Landscape is the 2024 addition to Richter’s sprawling catalogue, an album that parades Richter’s infatuation with that indelible concoction of the mundane and the minimalistic. Mapped out across 19 tracks, In A Landscape glides on the tectonic plates of melodic interludes and the tuneless snippets of sounds cultivated from daily life - all labelled “life studies”, a total of nine are interspersed along the album’s 76 minutes. From footsteps in the woods and the rustle of distant conversations, to the gentle murmur of a piano playing in the next room, Richter goes spelunking through the soundtrack of our daily lives to find a soothing narrative. Rather than instigating images of serene imagined landscapes, these life studies draw the listener back into the rugged pantry of their own surroundings. It seems to offer—on the minimalistic platter which Richter has been polishing across his decades-long career—a small pause, a respite from the psychic and physical grind. Richter, however, doesn’t quite practise what he’s preaching with In A Landscape ─that he’s setting the mundane to music doesn’t mean his music has become mundane. The shadows cast by the work-a-day scenes explored in this album are set against an epic backdrop of his influences: poets who laboured over the threat of materialism, or the intrigues of love and despair. The silage of the likes of Anne Carson, Wordsworth, Keats wafts through the titles and thematic materials of the album. Hence Richter’s description of In a Landscape as a “reconciling of polarities.” Here, his musical instinct is to slow down in a world that insists on acceleration. Here, the arithmetic and repetitive styles of Phillip Glass and Terry Riley are combined with the expressive baroque flora of Bach and Purcell. As if to resolve, a priori , any speculation regarding where he himself stands between within tug-o-war of polarities, Richter borrows the album’s title from John Cage’s 1948 composition─a seminal study in meditative minimalism. Yet another evidence of Richter’s mission to reconcile polar opposites can be found in his creative process which mixes the tactility of notating the score by hand and recording the album at a state-of-the-art studio. That being Studio Richter Mahr, a rustic English retreat in Oxfordshire with an ethos of environmentalism, sustainability, and localism. The “studio”—run in collaboration with Richter’s wife, Yulia Mahr—functions more like a multi-purpose creative laboratory with a constant stream of resident and visiting artists. Deciphering whether the studio is the architectural realisation of In A Landscape , or the album is merely the musical distillation of this creative hub’s daily operation, is a task akin to a hound hunting its own tail. Either way, the real feat of In A Landscape is the sincerity of the compositional gesture. A gesture unencumbered by the composer’s own illustrious accolades and the hi-tech environment that produced this album. A gesture that seeks to hold the listener in place, to sit in stillness. A stillness that brings to mind the closing lines a Derek Walcott poem, “Love After Love”: Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Get your exclusive Colour 2LP Edition of In A Landscape (with Signed Art Card)

The Last of Us: Natasha Mumba Natasha Mumba By Kristina Ruddick “Everybody’s working from a place of desperation” WORDS BY CARLOS IBANEZ | TORONTO—CALGARY | VISUAL ARTS FEB 27, 2023 | ISSUE 11 Toronto’s Natasha Mumba stars in the highly acclaimed HBO drama , The Last of Us, as Kim, a survivor and member of Firefly. The Last of Us is an adaptation of the video game series of the same name, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The show takes place in a post-apocalyptic America, a place of desperation where the main goal is survival for both the humans infected with a deadly fungus virus and for the remaining survivors. Too soon? In conversation with smART Magazine , Mumba doesn’t fail to make the comparison between her character’s struggle and the social dynamics that sparked during the COVID-19 pandemic . An aspiring director, Mumba’s involvement was also an immersive learning experience for her. Here she discusses the dynamics of working on a big-budget production, and her growth as an actor and creator. sM | The Last of Us takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that has been destroyed by a devastating pandemic. What lessons from the real-life pandemic we’re emerging from help to construct the social dynamics of this fictional pandemic? NM ── I think it made me more empathetic...

When Immersive Theatre Goes Too Far Illustration By Alicia Jungwirth The psychological dangers of participatory theatre are present even in the correction to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty WORDS BY HAILEY SCOTT | NEW YORK | ARTS & LETTERS FEB 28, 2023 | ISSUE 11 A trip to New York landed me in the lobby of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a three-hour immersive performance. As I wandered the six-story warehouse by myself, I found a lone actor who took my hand and pulled me into an empty room. He quickly barricaded the door, pulled down the window shutters, and took off my mask, leaving me to question whether this was a part of the performance. He caressed my face and kissed me on the forehead before allowing me to escape. Sleep No More’s mantra, “fortune favours the bold,” mirrors this actor’s dramaturgically integrated performance, which hinges on audiences stepping far beyond their comfort zones and into the arms of strangers. Teetering between reality and performance, my violating encounter might have left some feeling traumatised; however, the allure of the intimate performance instead left me feeling exhilarated. Participatory theatre has transformed our understanding of what being an audience can entail. Rather than sitting on velvet seats in a dark venue, spectators can now experience an interactive journey alongside actors. “Performance” begins to inch closer to reality, both in terms of the experience and...

The DNA of the TSO Gustavo Gimeno and the TSO - Photo by Allan Cabral As the Toronto Symphony Orchestra celebrates 100 years, a new vision takes hold WORDS BY ARLAN VRIENS | TORONTO | PERFORMING ARTS MAR 07, 2023 | ISSUE 11 In 2020, Spanish conductor Gustavo Gimeno took up a new post as Music Director at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO). The timing could not have been more challenging; the COVID-19 pandemic immediately disrupted any kind of consistent planning, even as the TSO geared up to celebrate its centennial in the 2022/23 season. But under the leadership of Gimeno and his artistic team, the TSO has returned triumphantly to the stage, combining world-class orchestral quality with a series of initiatives which respond to this unique cultural moment. The TSO’s renewed joie de vivre is on full display in the Celebration Preludes , a set of ten three-minute orchestral works commissioned from Toronto-area composers to commemorate the orchestra’s centennial and its beloved home city. Speaking with smART Magazine , it’s clear that the Celebrations project is an evolution of Gimeno’s love for Toronto’s vibrant cultural scene. “As we searched for these works, we wanted a variety of styles and backgrounds because that’s what’s faithful to Toronto and to Canada,” he reflects. “We started this project from a desire to hear different voices, and especially those who are under-represented. And from that starting point, by definition, you also get contrasting styles of composition, especially where composers choose to bring in folk music influences. For example, in Luis Ramirez’s Mi Piñata there was a clear influence of Mexican folk music, and Iranian folk music came through in Afarin Mansouri’s Mithrā .”

JULIAN LAGE Julian Lage by Shervin Lainez On Layers, View with a Room, the gritty warmth of his guitar sound Words By Caleb Freeman | Photography By Shervin Lainez ISSUE 12 | NEW JERSEY | ELLINGTON There is a sense of wide-eyed curiosity in Julian Lage when he discusses music. It’s an endearing quality coming from the accomplished guitarist and former childhood prodigy, who once played the Grammys at age 12. Last year, Lage released the acclaimed album View with a Room , his second release for Blue Note Records and his third as a trio with bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Dave King. The ten-song collection featured the addition of guitar icon Bill Frisell and was produced by singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy; it was recorded by Mark Goodell with additional production by Armand Hirsch. For Lage, View with a Room was an exploration, an attempt to “widen the aperture” of a trio record. He has described it as a “kind of seven-person art project” that attempted to balance lush orchestration with an “organic sense of improvisation and the agility of a small ensemble.” The result was a vibrant collection — infused with blues and swing — that highlighted the trio’s skill and versatility while also showcasing the evolution of their sound through their collaboration with Frisell. Lage’s newest album, Layers , is a continuation of the experimental voyage he embarked on with View with a Room . A companion album to View , Layers has “all the musical seeds” of its predecessor, according to Lage─the same collaborators, the same vibrancy and sense of exploration. But at its core, the six-song collection is its own creation. It is sparser and more ethereal, more conversational in its expanded focus. Half of the songs find Lage playing an acoustic guitar, a further departure from last year’s record. The collection is another captivating release, one that stands on its own but also sheds new light on its companion. CANNOPY x Julian Lage Julian Lage by Kalya Ramu Companions CAN | The Layers is a companion to your recent album, View With a Room . This is a formula we’ve seen before with Live in Los Angeles , which was a companion to Arclight . Do you conceive of these companion albums as B-sides to their predecessors, or as expressions of something new, but in the same language? JL ─ In making View with a Room , I wrote a lot of songs and then whittled the album down to about 16. There was a time where Layers was gonna be a 70-80 minute record, kind of like an epic journey. As an experiment, I separated them and said, “Well, suppose the things that are the connective tissue were not used as connective tissue, but as a standalone experience?” And I loved it. That’s how Layers came about. I wouldn’t say they’re B-sides at all, they just originally served a different function. It’s a kind of re-contextualization. Expansion x Distillation CAN | Although there are relatively more layers to this album, it sounds more spare than View with a Room . One of the layers you added to your trio was the guitarist Bill Frisell, and that addition allowed you to achieve “the Technicolor experience” you’ve been searching for. What extra layer of dialogue were you interested in pursuing with this larger role you’ve created for Frisell? JL ─ I think Bill brings interaction. Fundamentally, there is a communication, a trust that I cherish very much. In terms of him expanding the record into the Technicolor experience, especially with Layers , we are leveraging the power of more guitar information. When that energy is shared with two guitars, suddenly that lead guitar voice is more complex. Not only emotionally, but also in terms of overtones. So you’ve got the relationship with Bill that expands the guitar, and then you’ve got the orchestration of two guitars that expands the picture. Improvising Atmosphere CAN | The Layers seems to exist at the intersection of jazz and classical idioms, in terms of balancing improvisation and orchestration and replacing oration with atmosphere. What do you find most interesting about keeping the element of improvisation, while also approaching a diffused atmospheric sound? JL ─ What I’m struck by in listening to the difference between View and Layers is that I think even more of my voice and the band’s voice comes through when there is an atmosphere. With full humility, what I learned in making those two records is that you can use atmosphere and space as a means of revealing character. You can improvise atmosphere. You can improvise context. It’s almost like improvising lighting design: it casts a big light, but it’s ephemeral. You can’t say why it’s having the effect it’s having. Music Videos CAN | You took a unique approach to the music videos, with six videos for VEVO all recorded live and in one continuous setting, utilizing really fluid camerawork. How did this concept evolve, and how does this approach capture the improvisational element of this album for you? JL ─ I think there’s value in presenting two interpretations. You add them together and you get the picture that reveals the studio recording as more deliberate and the video recording as more fluid, more spontaneous, or maybe containing more risk. There’s no law that says you should only hear improvised music, that you shouldn’t see it. With video, and especially camera movement under the direction of Alex Chaloff, who made those videos, I think that tells the story. You go, “Oh wow, these people are doing it in real time!” It’s part of the drama, so why hide it? We like to celebrate it. Gritty Warmth CAN | There’s an impulse to describe your sound as easy listening or lounge jazz, but there’s a volatility to the guitar sound that makes it step into the foreground. You’ve described that sound as “subdued and warm, but also gritty.” It’s the grittiness that sounds novel, as “subdued and warm” has been done before─John Scofield in particular comes to mind. What do you appreciate most about that nervous excitability in the sound you’re chasing? JL ─ The balance that is struck has a lot to do with the guitar sound, but it also has a lot to do, in my opinion, with the context you put it in. If I were in a much louder band, I probably would live more on the grittier side because I would have to live at that threshold of the guitar. Context, to me, is probably of even more interest than the actual sound. The guitar is responding to the context. If the context is liberated and there’s room to ratchet it up or down, you’ll hear those features. Community CAN | Concert venues can sometimes feel coldly transactional, but in some of your concerts for View the venue doors were open about an hour beforehand for fans to show up with or without guitars, and engage in conversations with you about the instrument and your work in general. What inspired you to create this communal space, and how does that change the atmosphere of the concert that follows? JL ─ I have the same curiosity about it. What occurred to me, and my management, and everyone involved, was that the guitar community has a certain spirit of wanting to help one another. Even if you’ve been playing a long time, it doesn’t mean you’re any less privy to the pursuits of someone who’s newer to the instrument. It’s been very humbling for me to learn. I’m in a privileged position to hold space for conversation, and that’s by virtue of being allowed in that venue for that night to put on a show. I love it. I think it’s very grounding, and seemingly impactful for those who come. Or at least that’s the hope. The Great Glaspy CAN | The music of your wife Margaret Glaspy — whose latest album, Echo the Diamond , is out in August — is in a completely different neighbourhood from yours, and yet there’s a shared musical zip code that’s particularly notable in her approach to producing Layers . What sort of creative liberation do you find in having someone who understands you in so many different ways join you in the recording studio? JL ─ With Margaret, I know she knows me and I don’t have to explain it. I don’t have to prove it. I can just follow my nose, play the guitar, and do my best as a musician in this production. I trust that she’ll see the overarching picture and say, “Oh, I kind of lost you there because this other thing took precedent,” and that she’ll be able to hang on to that perspective when I do a take where I think, “Surely I blew it.” And it’s the classic thing, but it’s so often been true of her to be like, “That was it. That was totally your DNA. Anything that you thought took you out of the music didn’t take us outta the music on this side of the glass.” That’s incredibly valuable.

Jay Baruchel: All-Canadian Charmer Jay Baruchel by Kalya Ramu 15 questions with Jay Baruchel WORDS BY MADELEINE KANE | PERFORMANCE APR 11, 2023 | ISSUE 5 Sifting through any genre-defining comedy of the last decade, you’d almost certainly find the scruffy yet relaxed charismatic magnet personified by the all-Canadian charmer, Jay Baruchel. As a familiar onscreen staple, with a career spanning over two decades, Baruchel’s performances range from box-office hits to raucous blockbuster comedies, to acclaimed and poignant dramas. In recent years, Baruchel has delved fully into his life behind the camera as a writer and director. His author’s debut, Born Into It: A Fan’s Life , a memoir of lifelong devotion to the Montreal Canadiens, was published in 2018. In 2020, amidst the chaotic reshuffling of pandemic cinema,

Dragonette Returns "Twennies" Cover Art Twennies Serves up Doses of Nostalgia and Futuristic Danceability WORDS BY MILES FORRESTER | TORONTO | MUSIC MAR 16, 2023 | ISSUE 10 Juno and SOCAN award winner Martina Sorbara has been making dance-floor focussed indie-pop through her music project, Dragonette, since a self-titled EP in 2005. Following 2007’s debut album, Galore, and a tour with Basement-Jaxx, Dragonette has released three more albums and a surfeit of body-moving singles and collaborations. Twennies , her latest album, produced by Dan Farber, takes the long view of her prolific career . Explaining the title, Sorbara says, “It’s like the diminutive of ‘twenties,’ as if me and ‘twenties’ are super close. So I call it Twennies ”—dropping the T like a true Torontonian. Its euphoric first single, “New Suit”, is an anthem for navigating a present moment that’s simultaneously nostalgic and accelerated. Sorbara joins smART Magazine to introduce the album’s sonic palette, and what charges her batteries, and how she’s seen the music industry change.