Arts

Lee Maracle is one of Canada’s most prominent aboriginal writers. An active activist, she has travelled across Canada, written many books, and proven that if you’re dedicated you can make your voice heard. “I live my life as I live my life. I’m what I call a sovereign Stó:lō woman,” says Maracle. “I live my […]

Until Thursday, February 23 Get high Have you ever wanted to sing? The Gettin’ Higher Choir is looking for new additions to their troupe this spring season. All voices welcome; no audition necessary. The choir will be recruiting until February 23; for full dates, times, and locations, visit gettinhigherchoir.ca. Until Saturday, March 4 Get secretarial […]

Cooking is great. The smells, taste, and presentation of a dish can go a long way, working together to bring the art of cooking into day-to-day life. A new art performance, Practices of Everyday Life: Cooking, combines two popular art styles—dancing and cooking—and is helped along by visual media prompts and large moving projections. Composer […]

After a six-year break, BC-born/Montreal-bred indie rockers Wolf Parade are returning to Victoria. For drummer Arlen Thompson (who was in the University Transfer program at Camosun in 1999, when he also penned some Nexus articles), proximity and timing played a large part in the band reuniting, recording new material, and touring again after the release […]

Local conductor Yariv Aloni scoffs at the idea of calling a composer “dead.” After all, their music is alive, he says. As the musical director of the Victoria Chamber Orchestra (VCO), he will be conducting what he calls “timeless music” here in town on February 17, when he brings Beethoven’s music to locals. “It never […]

Betraying the Martyrs The Resilient (Sumerian Records) 4.5/5 Paris-based deathcore band Betraying the Martyrs’ third full-length, The Resilient, is fierce and electrifying. Riddles of political statements find their place in the lyrics while beckoning an intense emotion within the listener that wills them to listen further. Lyrically, the album is profound; the instrumentation is astounding, […]

Shane DeGraaff, lead vocalist of Calgary hardcore band From the Wolves, says that his musical motivation came early: his father was into music, so when DeGraaff was a child he was already playing instruments. And when he discovered punk, DeGraaff picked up a bass guitar and started playing in punk bands. DeGraaff says that playing […]

The Victoria Film Festival (VFF) is a city-wide event, with different movie houses pulling their own weight, taking on showings; it’s a silent culture of film that takes hold of the town, enthralling those in the know. The fest is host to a multicultural cast of players, with films from around the world—Japan, Australia, France, […]

This month, venues along Victoria’s waterfront district will be transformed into a world of near-mystical performance art rooted in the wayfaring soul of the European Roma and the sparkling jazz clubs of the first half of the 20th century. It was by the blending of these two styles that Django Reinhardt, himself Romani, crafted a […]

Toronto’s USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) are playing not one but two dates in town on their current tour for new album New World Alphabet, and there’s a reason for that: it was Victoria where the band first started to get noticed outside of Toronto. “In 2008, when our first song got discovered and started getting […]