Latest news with #CrystalBallroom
The Age
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘She just conjured electricity': Celebrating Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett
Before Madonna talked sex and sexuality on stage, a working-class girl on the other side of the globe was shocking audiences with her fierce and powerful performances. Chrissy Amphlett was unlike anything Australians had seen when she burst on the stage in 1980 as lead singer of Divinyls. Without her it's hard to imagine Amy Taylor from Amyl & the Sniffers, or Amphlett's fellow Geelong-born rocker Adalita. A new show opening next week called Amplified showcases the work of the late artist – Amphlett died from breast cancer in 2013, aged just 53 – as well as her extraordinary impact and legacy. Making the work has been a wonderful process, says Sheridan Harbridge, who stars in the show, and co-created it with acclaimed director Sarah Goodes and musical director Glenn Moorhouse (Hedwig and the Angry Inch). Trawling through YouTube and watching old performances by the Divinyls and Amphlett solo, Harbridge says there are hundreds of comments from people writing things such as 'I saw them at the Crystal Ballroom and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen'. 'And then women saying, 'I'd never seen a woman act like that and I didn't know you could',' the actor-singer-writer says, adding that 'equally for men, they were watching something quite electric'. 'I spoke to someone who worked with her and they said, 'she just conjured electricity'.' Raised in a Pentecostal Christian family in Gippsland, Harbridge wasn't allowed to watch shows like The Simpsons and The Golden Girls, but thankfully her mum didn't know what Rage was, so that was where she first came across Amphlett.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘She just conjured electricity': Celebrating Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett
Before Madonna talked sex and sexuality on stage, a working-class girl on the other side of the globe was shocking audiences with her fierce and powerful performances. Chrissy Amphlett was unlike anything Australians had seen when she burst on the stage in 1980 as lead singer of Divinyls. Without her it's hard to imagine Amy Taylor from Amyl & the Sniffers, or Amphlett's fellow Geelong-born rocker Adalita. A new show opening next week called Amplified showcases the work of the late artist – Amphlett died from breast cancer in 2013, aged just 53 – as well as her extraordinary impact and legacy. Making the work has been a wonderful process, says Sheridan Harbridge, who stars in the show, and co-created it with acclaimed director Sarah Goodes and musical director Glenn Moorhouse (Hedwig and the Angry Inch). Trawling through YouTube and watching old performances by the Divinyls and Amphlett solo, Harbridge says there are hundreds of comments from people writing things such as 'I saw them at the Crystal Ballroom and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen'. 'And then women saying, 'I'd never seen a woman act like that and I didn't know you could',' the actor-singer-writer says, adding that 'equally for men, they were watching something quite electric'. 'I spoke to someone who worked with her and they said, 'she just conjured electricity'.' Raised in a Pentecostal Christian family in Gippsland, Harbridge wasn't allowed to watch shows like The Simpsons and The Golden Girls, but thankfully her mum didn't know what Rage was, so that was where she first came across Amphlett.
Calgary Herald
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Alberta superstar k.d. lang honoured for her 2024 induction into Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame
It was the mid-1980s during the Calgary Stampede when legendary record executive Seymour Stein went to see k.d. lang and The Reclines at the Crystal Ballroom of the Palliser Fairmont Hotel. Article content Article content Stein, who was the golden-earred co-founder of Sire Records and credited with discovering Madonna and the Talking Heads, had travelled to Calgary to see lang play and potentially sign her to his renowned label. Article content Article content 'He did a lot of cocaine and so forth,' lang said Wednesday morning at a private ceremony honouring her induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame at the National Music Centre. 'He fell asleep during my show. It worked out fine.' Article content Article content Stein, who died in 2023, did sign lang to his label and helped shape the early years of her remarkable 40-plus-year career as an internationally renowned singer-songwriter. It was a suitably strange and Calgary-centric anecdote for lang to reveal on Wednesday as the Canadian Country Music Association and the National Music Centre paid tribute to the artist with a ceremony that found her placing her name on the wall alongside fellow 2024 inductee Gilles Godard, who is president of Anthem Music Publishing Nashville. lang has won 10 CCMA awards, eight Junos and four Grammys, received the Order of Canada and became an international star selling millions of albums — but her career in the conservative country music industry has also had a rebellious nature to it. She expanded the boundaries of country music with a post-modern take on the genre that included nods to traditional country-and-western sounds and sophisticated modern influences such as pop and jazz. lang, who was born in Edmonton and grew up in the small town of Consort, has also been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and an activist for animal rights during her career. Article content Article content On Wednesday, lang was surrounded by some memorabilia from her career that included the yellow tulle ballgown she wore in the video for her hit Miss Chatelaine from her 1992 breakthrough album Ingenue and a framed image of her famous 1993 magazine cover for Vanity Fair. Shot by renowned photographer Herb Ritts, it featured lang wearing a suit and tie and sitting in a barber chair having her face shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford. It is considered an iconic image in queer culture. Article content 'I never felt like I belonged in the room, I still don't,' lang joked on Wednesday in a brief speech before putting her plaque on the wall. Article content 'I'm just so honoured to be here and to be amongst you and amongst the people on the wall and all the people in this building and all the youngsters that are making Canadian music and continuing to make Canadian music world-class and cutting edge,' she said. 'We are very, very blessed with our musical aptitude in Canada.'
Boston Globe
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Celebrity Series's Stave Sessions defies easy classification, again
Seven years later, satisfying the AI — or whatever's powering the streaming service of the day's algorithm — has Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up On Tuesday evening, the small audience entered to find the lights already dim, and Providence-based singer and composer (and Bent Knee cofounder) Courtney Swain's setup onstage blanketed with artificial roses. Swain stood behind a flower-strewn keyboard for most of her almost seamless one-hour set with collaborating guitarist Tim Doherty; with her hands so obscured and the layers of her supple, strong vocals wreathing the room, she often seemed to be coaxing music from the blooms. The apocalyptic but strangely consoling lyrics set against the gentle instrumental background made for a meditative, inward-looking experience. Only near the end of the set did she address the audience, hinting that this might be one of her last shows under the Courtney Swain name as she formalizes this new artistic project under a different moniker. Advertisement Singer, sound artist, and composer Courtney Swain at Somerville's Crystal Ballroom on Feb. 11, the first night of Celebrity Series of Boston's 2025 Stave Sessions. Robert Torres On Wednesday, That's a process in itself. So, unsurprisingly, the group's setlist mostly consisted of repertoire from its upcoming album, 'Rare Birds,' which releases March 15. There were two originals by Owls cellist and composer Paul Wiancko; a hearty arrangement of a piece by Norwegian/American folk duo Trollstilt; a fascinating and kaleidoscopic inverse-quartet arrangement of Couperin's harpsichord piece 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses.' The most memorable was Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh's ecstatic 'Raqs,' written originally for Kronos Quartet — which, not so incidentally, has 50 percent overlap with Owls by way of Wiancko and violinist Ayane Kozasa, and newly installed Kronos second violinist Gabriela Diaz was in the audience. The adventuresome, try-anything spirit of Kronos is clearly in capable and joyous hands. If the number of professional musicians-about-town in the audience was any indication, Owls just might be a member of your favorite orchestra's favorite quartet. Cellist Seth Parker Woods is also a familiar face around Boston, having collaborated several times with local organizations such as Castle of Our Skins; Thursday, he presented his touring program 'Thus Spoke their Verse,' consisting of three sections he called 'hypersuites.' These used sarabandes from Bach's cello suites as launchpads into mostly contemporary repertoire, with mixed but mostly satisfying results. Particularly striking was the transition from the Sarabande from Suite No. 1 into the plucked Calvary Ostinato from Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's 'Lamentations, 'Black/Folk Song Suite,'' which Woods anchored with a hauntingly calm repeated bassline while making the higher strings wail and twang like a banjo. Advertisement Also unforgettable was Fredrick Gifford's 'Difficult Grace,' for layered cello and voice. Reciting excerpts from Dudley Randall's 1968 poem 'Primitives,' Woods adopted a vintage storyteller's resonant tones, which morphed on a dime into a ghostly whisper, all while adding eerie wordless commentary from the cello. I wished he had provided the text of the poem in his program notes — the message was clearly powerful, but chopped up into collage for artistic effect as it was, it wasn't easy to process individual phrases. Woods's keen stage presence helped bridge that gap, however; several times throughout the evening, it seemed he was looking right at me, and I wonder how many others felt the same way. There's an experience no AI can replicate. STAVE SESSIONS Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston. At Crystal Ballroom, Somerville. A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
Boston Globe
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Blending music and imagery, live
'Our goal is for people to think that the band and the visual are a homogenous package — you would think that the band and the visual go together at every single show,' says Harley Spring, one of Digital Awareness's four members. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Since forming in 2021, Digital Awareness has transformed from a novelty of the Greater Boston music scene to a key component of it, splashing color across venues like the Lizard Lounge, Crystal Ballroom, the Sinclair, and the Paradise Rock Club. (Though you're most likely to find the team experimenting at the 4th Wall in Arlington, an after-hours performance space located within the Capitol Theatre). This Advertisement What that unveiling will look like depends on which member of Digital Awareness is leading the experience at Deep Cuts. Just as every musician wields their flair onstage, the self-described 'visualists' of Digital Awareness are artists in their own right, each with their own preferred techniques. Member Nate Scaringi, who is colorblind, tweaks elements like lighting and brightness to align with a performer's energy level. Spring, on the other hand, aims to supersize the experience, asking 'What would a fan in the back of the stadium want to see?'' Some nights, the results resemble waves of static that cycle through the rainbow; at other events, the visuals mimic an abstract painting in flux, like an installation at a contemporary art museum. Every show is a delicate balance of adding depth without becoming a distraction to the audience or the musicians (some of whom wear sunglasses onstage). Advertisement 'We try to remember that we aren't the show — we're a dimension of it,' explains Scaringi. That dimension is quickly expanding. Spring is pursuing a business degree that will help Digital Awareness solidify its presence in Greater Boston, and the team has been reaching out to local venues about taking on a larger role in booking Digital Awareness shows, which would allow them to fully curate the bands on each bill. The opportunity would allow the team to curate show lineups and flaunt their vision on a more regular basis, further bridging the local music and visual arts communities. 'We want to be driving the ship for the night,' Spring concludes. 'We're at a point now where we can make that leap.' GIG GUIDE On Advertisement Dinosaur Jr. frontman Blues giant Celebrity Series of Boston hosts the tenth anniversary of their Stave Sessions at Crystal Ballroom throughout the week, starting with ethereal vocalist TD Garden hosts its first concert of the year on Advertisement Jordana's poppy number 'We Get By' receives an orchestral makeover, courtesy of Calvin Brown and The Gold Tone String Quartet. SPANG NOW SPINNING Jordana with Calvin Brown and the Gold Tone String Quartet, Connecticut singer-songwriter Frank Viele blends folk, blues, and pockets of revved-up rock on his new album "The Trouble With Desire'. Donato Biceglia Frank Viele, 'The Trouble With Desire.' 'These dark days, they'll expire,' Frank Viele assures listeners on 'I'm Not Scared of the Thunder,' a downtempo but defiant standout from Viele's new album. 'The Trouble With Desire' kneads the Connecticut artist's smoky vocals into his natural blend of folk and blues, while leaving room for pockets of revved-up rock like 'Lofi Goodbye.' Waxahatchee's twang touches down immediately on 'Mud,' an outtake from her most recent record, 'Tigers Blood'. Kevin Morby Waxahatchee, BONUS TRACK Whether you loved Sabrina Carpenter 's single 'Espresso' or can't stomach caffeine because of its ubiquity, it's due time to recognize the songwriter who helped serve up the pop megahit. Olivia Rodrigo , Harry Styles , and Selena Gomez . Advertisement Victoria Wasylak can be reached at vmwasylak@ Follow her on X @VickiWasylak.
