My Ottawa Folk Fest Highlights

We cut Friday night short and arrived to see Ottawa's Ana Miura. Her performance to a fairly small crowd was really great- beautiful voice, great guitar. The highlight was Ana playing a homemade ukelele (more on ukes later). We liked her so much we bought 2 disks at the CD Warehouse tent. Check Ana out at http://www.anamiura.com/.

We went with the entire family on Saturday.

The highlight of the afternoon was the Ukelele workshop where my kids got the chance to build a kit ukelele under the watchful, expert and patient eye of lutier Wolf Kater http://www.wolfkater.com/. Thanks Wolf! See http://www.ottawafolk.org/index.html#ukelele for more details from the Festival on the workshop.

The kids later went on to Ukelele 101 where they learned to play their creations. The instructors were a distinguished looking older man and a young bearded fellow who were introduced without much fanfare. Imagine our surprise to find the older man was Chalmers Doane, member of the Order of Canada for his work teaching children to play the ukelele and for developing a highly successful curriculum for schools. Chalmers is incidentally the father of the beautiful Canadian singer Melanie Doane!

The younger bearded man was James Hill who is considered one of the most talented ukelele musicians in the world, something that was confirmed watching a number of performances on Sunday! We were amazed by how humble and down-to-earth they both were.

One memorable quote from James: "Tuning, like aircraft maintenance, is always worthwhile". You can see more about James at http://www.ukulelejames.com/

Music highlights for me were D Rangers, Wil http://ibreakstrings.com/, (this guy is great - another CD purchase from CD Warehouse!), Ottawa's Roxanne Potvin (great voice and guitar), guitar great Colin Linden and of course Sarah Harmer http://www.sarahharmer.com/ who closed out the show with her great voice and band.

Sunday afternoon we attended a number of great workshops where a number of different artists were brought together to play their music and accompany each other.

More great shows here. Unfortunately we couldn't see all the workshops at once so missed Ana Miura and Sarah Harmer at the "Tuned Into Nature" workshop.

We did see Dala with Radoslav Lorkovic who played an amazing accordian and piano on his own songs. He also appeared with the D Rangers on Saturday. They were unfortunately drowned out by sound bleed from the Dance tent by Donna the Buffalo, another great band from upstate New York, featuring accordian and washboard.

We also saw James Hill, Anne Davison, Roxanne Potvin and Catherine MacLellan at the Blacksheep Live workshop. This was one of the first times we heard James play ukelele on his own, with partner Anne Davison playing cello and accompanying others. Anne by the way, lights up the stage when she smiles! Roxanne Potvin was great again doing acoustic versions of her songs. Catherine MacLellan from down east (Halifax, but her heart belongs to PEI evidently) has got a wonderful voice. She was the hardest working performer on Sunday, performing on 3 stages throughout the day.

Later we saw Colin Linden, Lynn Mile and Catherine again in a tribute to Rasputin's, the Ottawa folk music venue that was destroyed by fire earlier this summer.

The evening concerts began with The Duhks, followed by James Hill and Anne Davison again. Great performances by the Duhks. James demonstrated his master of the ukelele by showing how to use it as a percussion instrument and play it with chopsticks, as well as play some of his own compositions, Chalmer Doane's and traditional arrangements with Anne on cello.

The highlight of the evening for us for powerful music was American blues folk songstres Odetta who in her 70's has a powerful voice surpassed by only her wit. In introducing one song, she was discussing birth control and wryly commented that now, as ever, was still a good time to use a rubber (condom) if you are having sex!

The evening was closed off by Rufus Wainwright. We left during his performance as the battle between "chairs" and standing people escalated and unfortunately spoiled the warm fuzzy feeling that the small and intimate performances from the preceding days had created.

The top performers in my mind from the weekend were Colin Linden, who is just an amazing guitar player and was improvising to play along with Lynn Miles and Catherine MacLellan. Also James Hill in his performances with Catherine and Roxanne. Just incredible!

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend of great music. On big thank you to the Festival for making it a welcoming event for families! The children paid no admission and the Ukelele building and Ukelele 101 workshop, Instrument petting zoo and kid activities made it a real family event.

P.S. What is it about bringing chairs to outdoor music events and expecting people will not stand in front of the stage? Take a hint people - if you want to sit, go to the National Arts Centre - they don't have a mosh pit there!