Category Archives: Culture

Luminato, Toronto’s big, arty theatre/ music/ magic/ visual arts/ dance/ literary/ food/ everything festival announced the full lineup for this year’s event (a.k.a. Luminato6) yesterday at the Sony Centre.

Here at Risky Fuel, we love at least half of the things that Luminato, 6 or otherwise, celebrates, so I went down to check out what they have to offer this year.

The main highlights for our fellow indigent music lovers are obvious, as this year’s free concert series at David Pecaut Square (which will be fitted with dancing windsocks for the entirety of the festival) will include shows by K’naan (Friday, June 8), Rufus Wainwright (Saturday, June 10) and a matinee event with Dan Mangan and Kathleen Edwards (Saturday, June 16), but there were a number of events that I found just as, if not more, intriguing.

Here are, at random, five that got me disproportionately excited:

Love Over and Over: The Songs of Kate McGarrigle

June 15, Massey Hall

Kate McGarrigle was awesome for giving us her children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, but she was also quite brilliant in her own right. The McGarrigle sisters wrote some absolutely lovely music and they sung even more beautifully, with a pitch-perfect and intuitive gift for harmony that no one (save for maybe the twins of Tasseomancy) has been able to match since.

This year at Luminato, family, friends and fans will be paying tribute to the late folk icon with a star-studded performance of her music. Anna McGarrigle, Rufus, Martha, Bruce Cockburn, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Emmylou Harris, Jane Sibbery, and members of Broken Social Scene and Stars, are scheduled to appear, so this concert is basically a music geek’s wet dream, and the closest we’ll get to a live version of the incredible McGarrigle Hour album now that we’ve lost Kate.

Irvine Welsh

June 12, TIFF Bell Lightbox

The Scottish author who made me feel like the biggest bad ass when I was a hopelessly bookish teenager is releasing a prequel to Trainspotting called Skagboys and he’s coming to Toronto to talk about it. This fills me with all sorts of twisted nostalgia, because I miss Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton. And my own youth.

Deltron 3030

June 11, David Pecaut Square

Deltron 3030, better known in the Risky Fuel household as “A Significant Part of Lovage,” will be playing with Montreal’s Nomadic Massive. This is exciting for me, because it means the chance to see Nathaniel Merriweather himself, Dan the Automator, along with Kid Koala. And then I’ll try my hardest to pretend that Mike Patton and Jennifer Charles are there, because this is the closest I will ever, ever get to my beloved Lovage again.

Toronto Carretilla Initiative

June 8-17, The Distillery District and various places through the city

According to the press release, “For Austrian-born artist Rainer Prohaska, preparing and consuming food is a fine art. The Toronto Carretilla Initiative sets to boldly immerse audiences in the process of cooking across the city. The project marks the  first time that Luminato’s Food Program will include an experience that marries elements of visual arts with culinary craft.”

Basically,this dude is going to set up arty installations in which people can prepare food and then eat it. Then he closes up the show and moves on to the next location. It sounds both weird and delicious, which are two things that truly speak to me. Locations will be announced on the Luminato website as the event progresses in case you want to stalk the food-making sculptures with me.

Stewart Goodyear: The Beethoven Marathon

June 9, TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, Koerner Hall

Concert 1, 10:00 a.m. –1:45 p.m., 3 hours and 45 minutes with intermission

Concert 2, 3:00–6:30 p.m., 3 hours and 30 minutes with intermission

Concert 3, 8:30–11:30 p.m., 3 hours with intermission

I’m excited about pianist Stewart Goodyear’s attempt to play all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas in the course of one day (it’ll take over 10 hours in total) for three reasons:

1. It’s a genuinely interesting undertaking.

2. It sounds like something the latest BBC incarnation of Sherlock would do when he’s bored and then Watson would act completely annoyed by the project, but he’d still smile and lick his lips and begrudgingly tolerate the whole experiment, because he loves his nutjob flatmate.

3. As a fitness geek, I’m really curious to know what, if any, training he’s doing for this event. Almost 11 hours of physical activity, even with intermissions, is extremely demanding. How is he building the endurance to handle this? What is he going to eat/drink to refuel himself during those breaks? Is it even possible to remain alert and proficient enough to play piano well after that long, no matter how good and how well prepared you are?

Luminato runs from June 8 – June 17 this year. Go visit their website (launching soon) for more details.