
Kristin Scott Thomas on My Mother's Wedding and the unreliability of memory
When Kristin Scott Thomas was six years old, her father, a Royal Navy pilot, died in service. Then her mother remarried another Royal Navy pilot, who also died in service when she was 11. Now, the Oscar-nominated British actor is playing a character inspired by her twice-widowed mother in a new film called My Mother's Wedding, which is also her directorial debut. She joins guest host Garvia Bailey to talk about My Mother's Wedding, the unreliability of memory, and how she got her big break thanks to Prince.
WATCH | Official trailer for My Mother's Wedding:
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Vancouver Sun
10 hours ago
- Vancouver Sun
Review: Music On Main's The Kessler Academy proves Tippett's Concerto is for today
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Something wonderful took place at the Roundhouse on Sunday afternoon, the capstone concert of the latest iteration of The Kessler Academy. A project of Music On Main, the Academy places advanced string players alongside members of the Microcosmos String Quartet. Over an intense period of rehearsal, members of the quartet mentor the students as they prepare carefully selected works for public performance. The Academy was created to honour the 100th birthday of Susan Kessler, one of Vancouver's great music enthusiasts and widow of Jack Kessler, concertmaster of the late lamented CBC Radio Orchestra. The ensemble performs under the direction of Marc D'Estrubé, who leads as concertmaster, emphatically not as conductor. This is collaborative music making, chamber music on a large scale. Get top headlines and gossip from the world of celebrity and entertainment. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sun Spots will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. This year featured two remarkable works written by English composers just before the Second World War: Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations, a song cycle for tenor and strings, and Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra. There was a special guest this summer, British tenor Charles Daniels, who has been featured by Early Music Vancouver and demonstrated his commanding expertise with Baroque music. He is also a superlative exponent of the music of Benjamin Britten, having worked with Britten's life partner Sir Peter Pears. Britten composed his song cycle on French prose texts by Arthur Rimbaud in the USA in 1939, during the pacifist composer's fraught and complicated brief period of self-exile. Presented as the climax of the program, Les Illuminations demonstrated a hard-hearted brilliance and theatricality: clever, showy writing that exploits every string effect in the book and sets Rimbaud's texts with consummate verve. While it lacks some of the heart and humility of Britten's immediate post-American works, it remains a real tour de force. That the young string players were there to back up and learn from a great Britten expert was truly exceptional. They will cherish this memory for the rest of their careers, a lucky association with an artist of commanding authority. Michael Tippett's Concerto, written in England at exactly the same moment Britten was grappling with Rimbaud, is a thornier proposition: a great work that jumbles Handelian counterpoint, folk tunes, hints of blues, and neoclassicism. Tippett doesn't appeal to every listener, and performers and conductors often shy away from his complex works, rife with complicated rhythms and a general sense of scarcely controlled anarchy. He can veer unpredictably from great, long-breathed tunes to dense chromatic counterpoint, from learned complexity to naive sentimentality. Where pros often choose discretion as the better part of valor and exclude Tippett from their safe playlists, the Kessler bunch rushed in with enthusiasm and determination. While it wasn't the most polished performance imaginable, that was definitely not the point. Tippett was woke long before the invention of the somewhat odious term: he supported causes popular and controversial, was fiercely egalitarian, and more than a little contradictory. He believed in great ideas, individualism, and artistic truth, without pandering to commercial tastes. If I know anything about a composer I admire immensely, I am sure he would have judged this a great performance: young 21st-century players, a mosaic of Vancouver-style multiculturalism, playing their hearts out in music often considered too close to the pastoral English tradition to be universally relevant. What nonsense — and what sublimely audacious programming! Sir Michael would have been pleased. Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances.


CBC
12 hours ago
- CBC
Vancouver filmmaker's tragicomic documentary about Filipino typhoon survivors gains buzz
Twelve years ago, Typhoon Haiyan claimed thousands of lives in the Philippines, and filmmaker Sean Devlin went to the country a year later to work on a film. In the process, he created a semi-fictional movie featuring Filipino people who made the best of the tragedy. His film Asog has received praise at many international film festivals.


Winnipeg Free Press
17 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Book Review: Debut novelist Aisha Muharrar deftly explores love and loss in ‘Loved One'
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