On February 8, singer/songwriter Laura Barrett will join forces with Indie Pop group, The Magnetic Fields, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. In 2005, the classically trained pianist bought an african thumb piano--also known as a kalimba--on a whim and has subsequently made a striking imprint on Toronto Indie music. Since then, she has released a…

You may have been ecstatic to hear that Dow will be compensating Bhopa 12 billion dollars for their 1984 chemical catastrophe. Or that HUD would reopen public housing facilities that had been closed since Hurricane Katrina.

I am having flashbacks to Girl Guides at Craft Week’s Knitting Workshop on Monday, as I hold up my knitting needles, trying and failing to mimic instructor Day Milman’s exaggerated gestures. She insists that it just looks complicated. I can feel the ghost of my atrocious wool uniform scratching my leg, along with a good…

The Dinosaur Jr. reunion began as a brief flirtation with the Amherst slackers’ former glory, but with two new albums and some extensive touring under their belts, it seems like Dino Jr. are back, at least for now. This past Thursday, J Mascis brought the reinvigorated power trio to the Phoenix, for a performance that…

U of T's Department of Art's fourth annual graduate symposium took place last Thursday and Friday. Out of Sight: Looking Beyond Seeing was an interdisciplinary symposium addressing the non-visual senses as a means for understanding in the arts. The conference provided an opportunity to explore those senses usually ignored in the appreciation and experience of…

Of the Blue Colour of the Sky - OK GO By Gord Brown OK Go is, so the story goes, named after a phrase that a teacher of a couple of the lads in the band used to start their art class. Maybe it’s my cynical nature, but I wonder if a story this good…

U of T graduate Sandra Laronde’s pioneering vision continues to impact both local and international communities. As founder and Artistic Director of Red Sky - a Toronto-based theatre, dance, and music company - Laronde’s work conveys the culture and artistic expression of indigenous peoples on a global scale. As it celebrates ten years of groundbreaking…

From January 21 to 23, the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama will be holding its annual Festival of Original Theatre (F.O.O.T). Founded in 1993 by U of T Graduate Students of Drama, F.O.O.T is an entirely student-run event that incorporates theatre, film, dance, visual art, performance art, and conference papers which aim to…

While mix tapes and vinyls might have gone largely out of style, music elitism and snobbery certainly have not. If nothing else, director Mark Selby’s High Fidelity, the musical stage adaptation of the 1995 Nick Hornby novel, certainly reminds us of that. Rob (David Light) owns the last “real” record store in town, and has…

The music bubbling out of Arbor Room last Thursday was that of talented Henri Fabergé and his band of travelling gypsies, The Adorables. Their melodic, feel-good brand includes family classics such as Crawl Back, Rub & Suck & Tug ('Til My Vacation's Over) and Ventriloquist Love. The enigmatic Fabergé began his musical adventures as a…

TIFF Cinematheque (previously Cinematheque Ontario) - the year-round screening program of the Toronto International Film Festival - has, under the direction of Programmer James Quandt, compiled a selection of the 50 best films of the past ten years. Who, you may wonder, is the authority behind this Best-of-the-2000s list? The rankings are based on a…

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, The White Ribbon unquestionably deserves the high accolade. Directed by Michael Haneke, the film chronicles sinister happenings in a northern German village in the months leading up to World War I.