Tag Archives: Music

Local band celebrates 20-year-anniversary with live show

By Louis Belcourt, CKTZ News, through an LJI grant from Canada-info.ca

Editor’s Note: Greg Osoba is a CKTZ News contributor. 

A local band is hosting a free show to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

Six Foot Johnson — a band including Garden Stein on drums and vocals, Danfver Johnson on harmonica, rhythm guitar and vocals, Dave Murray on lead guitar, and Greg Osoba on bass and vocals — has practiced “over 800 times at about 40 practices a year,” including numerous live shows, over their 20 year career. The group considers themselves “Cortes Island’s house band.”

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Seafest returning to Squirrel Cove Saturday May 20

 Seafest is returning to Squirrel Cove on Saturday, May 20, 2023. 

“SeaFest is coming out of hiatus. It ran for over 20 years and then we shut it down during COVID. We were going to start it up last year at the Gorge, but then the Gorge was going through a lot of changes. This Sea Festival is coming back to Squirrel Cove. The view is spectacular. I think it’s got the best view on the island and it’s got a rustic feel about it too. The old store has been there for a hundred years. The interpretive centre is there. This Seafest probably won’t be as big as it was the last few years at the Gorge. It will be more like a community get-together. We’re going back to good food, good entertainment, and a lot of locals coming,” said Julia Rendall, Secretary of the Cortes Island Seafood Association.

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What makes this region sing?

Originally published on qathet Living

The International Choral Kathaumixw is a project of the Powell River Academy of Music, founded on the model of artistic excellence promoting cultural diversity, acclaiming members of Tla’amin Nation while welcoming and embracing cultures from around the world. 

The festival takes place July 4 to 8 this year and is filled with concerts, common song singing, choral & vocal solo performances, conductor’s seminars and social events. It is a place to learn from each other and from world-renowned choral personalities. 

Kathaumixw is a Coast Salish word gifted to the festival by the Elders of Tla’amin Nation – whose Traditional Territory we share. Since the first festival (1984), the International Choral Kathaumixw has taken place biennially, except for a break during COVID.

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The Quadra Project: In Memoriam, Yurii Kerpatenko (1976 – 2022)

No one on Quadra Island is likely to have known Yurii Kerpatenko. He never lived here and he never visited here. Had he been alive on November 15th, 2022, he probably wouldn’t have noticed that his longer life was adding a mere half a second to the arrival of the 8th billion person to Earth’s human population. Yurii Kerpatenko would not have cared because of other pressing concerns.

These concerns were more than symbolic, and they relate to us on our little island in the wholeness of things because we are able to live in a society of law and order, to go about our daily affairs without fear, to trust that one day will be as normal as another, and to freely express our opinions without state censorship or physical oppression.

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Community choir leader reflects on over a decade of gathering in song

CKTZ News, through an LJI grant from Canada-info.ca

Dayna Davis, leader of the community choir Isle Sing, has witnessed a natural evolution of her group’s involvement in the larger community on Cortes Island, BC since its beginning around 2009.

In the last few years, the choir has been called on to sing with and for locals in their last days before passing and to lead songs as an integral part of burials. The group has performed at various events and always acknowledges members’ birthdays, as well as the arrival of newborns with a song or two.

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