Category: news

This Sunday, April 20th, The Carnival Band will be performing in an event celebrating the candidacy of Gregor Robertson for Mayor of Vancouver. A long-time sustainability and ethical business advocate, Gregor has worked as an organic farmer, co-founded the Ethics in Action Award winning juice company Happy Planet, and currently serves as MLA for Vancouver-Fairview. As MLA, he served as the Opposition Critic for Small Business and Co-Chair of the Caucus Climate Change Task Force, as well as putting forward two private members bills mandating clear food labeling and the regulation of carcinogens, toxic substances and genetically engineered food. The “Artists for Gregor” event hopes to raise awareness about his platform and inspire political empowerment within East Vancouver’s rich artistic community.

The evening is planned to run from 7-10pm in room 210 of the Trout Lake Community Center, and is free and open to the public. The Carnival Band will be joined by local pop act Bridge, other performance artist guests, and of course Gregor himself.

This Sunday, April 6th, the Carnival Band will bring its music to the 11th Annual Port Moody Festival of the Arts, at 2425 St. Johns Street in Port Moody. This event marks the first of the summer festival performances for the band, which is ready for the music and the sunshine.

The Open Air Orchestra Society is glad to support the Port Moody Festival of the Arts. In fact, many of the society’s values are mirrored in this event: providing opportunities for their community to work with and learn from professional performers and artists, as well as providing affordable and accessible arts experiences both ticketed and free in a diversity of venues throughout Port Moody.

To learn more about the festival, go to www.pomoartsfestival.ca. Hope to see you there!

The Grind Show is coming to the Backstage Lounge on Granville Island this Friday, March 28th. The show is an Ayden Gallery production including music by The Carnival Band, PIM, and Brasstronaut. Also in the show will be dancing by the Rococo Dance Troop and a photography exhibit by Betty Pietak.

The Carnival Band is highly charged for the event after a series of explosive performances at the HONK festival in Seattle last weekend. Bringing back the collective energy of the best alternative street bands from around the United States, the band is sure to bring the house to its feet. The event starts at 9pm, and has a $6 cover charge for non-performers.

The big weekend is finally here. This Friday, March 21st, The Carnival Band will be crossing the US border by train, bus, and automobile to attend the inaugural Honk Fest West in Seattle. The festival is a convocation of sixteen street bands from all over the United States, as well as hundreds of impromptu performers and supporters of community music.

The group will be performing three shows a night, both Friday and Saturday nights, and open jams will be happening all throughout the city. In addition, Carnival Band co-director Tim Sars will be hosting a jazz theory/improv workshop as part of the festival’s programming. Alternative community music guru Gregg Moore will also be in attendance and conducting workshops on street performance and the power of music.

On the evening of March 6th, The Carnival Band had it’s first performance at the newly remodeled Commercial Drive restaurant, Lime. Grateful for the bigger stage that the renovations afforded, the band spread out and filled the house with music from twenty performers – from trumpets and tubas to surdos and djembes, saxophones and tambourines. The band’s two full sets were well recieved, with standing-room-only in the house until the last round of encores rang out at 11:30.

Among the highlights of the night were some great solos and dancing from some of the band’s newest members, an alto sax and a trumpet player, both just out of elementary school. The Open Air Orchestra Society is grateful for this opportunity to share our music, and hopes to revisit the cozy venue another time soon.

“For the 3rd time in a row, The Carnival Band added a welcomed dose of energy and vitality to kick off our 4th annual ‘Promoting Healthy Living: A Multicultural Health Fair.’ Wearing an array of colourful costumes representing different fruit and vegetables, the band trumpeted their way leading our special guests from the Opening Ceremony, such as Mayor Sam Sullivan, into the exhibition hall.

Their diverse music style left a lasting impression on our multicultural audience and conveys the importance of joyful fun to anyone seeking to lead a healthy lifestyle.”

-Vivianne De Pass, Health Fair Coordinator

Today the Carnival Band performed for one of its favorite audiences: children. Over one hundred kids from grades 1 to 5 danced, sang, and shook the auditorium for over an hour in the small east Vancouver school of Henderson Annex Elementary.

This unique environment allowed the band to add short but engaging lessons in music history and performance to its regular repertoire of fun and funky tunes from around the world. The children responded enthusiastically, asking to hold instruments, play notes, and clap out rhythms of their own.

The band is grateful to the school’s administration for the opportunity to reach the leaders (and musicians) of tomorrow.

The Carnival Band has been invited again this year to participate in Vancouver’s Chinese New Year Parade, one of the city’s largest non-commercial parades. The event starts at 10am on Sunday, February 10th at the Millenium Gate (Pender and Taylor St.) in Chinatown, and features the largest assembly of traditional lion dance teams in Canada.

As well as showcasing Vancouver’s vibrant Chinese and Asian communities, the parade provides a safe and fun setting for a wide range of street performances representing the diverse cultural heritage of Vancouver and Canada. There are estimated to be 3,000 performers and 50,000 spectators at this enormously engaging event, and Channel M’s media coverage will bring the parade to thousands more.

Bill Clifford of the Anti-Fascist Marching Band has begun organizing the 1st annual Honk! Fest West, to be held in Seattle, Washington on March 23rd. This Honk! event draws much of its inspiration from the enormously successful Honk! festival held annually in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Honk! Fest West celebration will coincide with the 9th Annual Conference on Diversity in Musical Education (C-DIME 9) to be held that weekend at the UW School of Music. Charles Keil, another key organizer who will also be the keynote speaker at the conference, is a leading advocate of early childhood musical education and of grooving street music. See his websites such as www.128path.org, http://BornToGroove.org/, and http://www.musekids.org/.

Honk! events are a celebration of the emergence of a new type of street band, one that is typically accoustic and mobile, often politically aware and articulate, and always high spirited. There is a rich community ethic amongst many honkers, who use their music to erode the barriers between professional and novice, and between audience and performers. Although uniforms are sometimes used as a performance tool, individuality is key, and group members often hail from all range of classes, ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds. Perhaps most importantly, the Honk! website proclaims, “the honkers’ ultimate goal is to have fun, to relish the art of making fun as a form of individual and collective transcendence, and to encourage others to see and do the same.”