Music at Spirit Square is rolling again.
June brought the start to the River Concert Series every Thursday evening at 7 p.m., and Lunch in the Square on Tuesdays at noon, as well as the relocation of the Farmers’ Market to Spirit Square on Sundays from 10am to 2pm.
Despite the cancellation of the June 9 concert due to the rain storm, there’s lots more music to come this month.
In the lead-up to Pride Day, the River Concert Series features queer, non-binary, indie-songwriter Beau Wheeler on Thursday, June 16. Blessed with a set of pipes that would be the envy of torch and twang era KD Lang or a young Robert Plant, Wheeler’s songs touch on love, loss and redemption, and an unflagging ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
Adrian Mack of The Georgia Straight describes Wheeler’s voice as effortlessly big. A true force of nature, Wheeler’s singing tears down walls and dissolves barriers as they effortlessly channel all they’ve got into each syllable and phrase of every vocal performance. They can sweep from an incendiary roar to a barely audible whisper in the space of a breath. Their four-piece band includes Jesse Waldman on guitar, Julie Bevalis on bass and Michael Simpsonelli on drums.
Then on June 23, the River Concert Series hosts Vinta, four brilliant performers and close friends at the cutting edge of European traditional music in Canada.
Nearly a decade of these four musicians hanging out at fiddle jams around Toronto culminated in this quartet, bringing new intensity to old tunes, and growing new tunes from old sources. A band of multi-instrumentalists and genuine scholars of the music, Vinta is making music that is powerful, profound, and highly danceable.
In the great void of 2020, the four musicians “bubbled” together and passed the indeterminable days in a backyard in Guelph, Ontario where they played every fiddle tune they could remember, and learned new ones when they ran out. Their resolve to bring live performances to live people saw them parading through farming communities on oxen-towed hay wagons and popping up at patios and parks around the region to attract anyone and everyone to their energetic performances. This month they are on the west coast to play the Campbell Bay Music Festival on Mayne Island, as well as their stop in Campbell River.
Lunch in the Square will feature local electric blues quartet Tightrope on June 14 and Scottish fingerstyle guitarist and singer Simon Kempston on June 28. The Farmers’ Market will feature Doug Folkins June 12, Lovebirds on June 19 and Willow on June 26, and Spirit Square will also host National Indigenous Peoples Day and Pride Day before ending the month with the Canada Day celebrations.
For a complete listing and more information go to www.spiritsquare.ca or facebook @CRSpiritSquare.
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