Tag Archives: Music

Folk U at the Village Commons Music Series 2025: Denise Wolda, Owyn Pengelly, and Thomas Aerie

July 4, 2025 saw the launch of the Village Commons Music Series, a simultaneously live and live-broadcast show, happening on Fridays from 1 – 2:30pm on the new Pavilion stage. 

Host Manda Aufochs Gillespie was joined by Denise Wolda, Owyn Pengelly, and Thomas Aerie, 3 local musicians who sat together on stage for an intergenerational in-the-round style performance, swapping songs, stories, and jokes.

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Folk U: Awakeneers Live in Studio

Jemma Hicken/Folk U – On June 20th, 2025 guest host Jemma Hicken was joined by the Awakeneers, a 6-person, mostly-sibling folk band, for a short live set and interview. Tune in to listen to some fiddle and folk, hear about the upcoming grand opening of the Village Commons on June 27th, and learn quite a lot about beans.

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Michael Keith & Iris Gildea: Leaving Cortes Island

Michael Keith and his wife Iris Gildea are leaving Cortes Island. 

 “This was a decision we made a while ago.  My wife teaches at the University of Toronto. It’s quite the communte between semesters and we started investigating the possibility of libving somewhere a bit closer to her work. We found the ideal situation in the Maritimes. The commute is about a fraction of the time and we can get the place that really suited us. So we made that decision. It was tough, but  it’s time for the next part of the journey,”  he explained. 

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The Creative Force of Green

April 4 was a special date for two related events at Comox United Church.  The first event was a recital, in the sanctuary, by NIPR Federal Green Party candidate, Jessica Wegg. Soirée de l’Oiseau Rebelle (Evening of the Rebel Bird), featured twelve arias from the 17th to 20th Centuries. Jessica was accompanied by Comox Valley pianist, Sean Mooney, and joined by her voice instructor, Carol Anne Parkinson, in the lyrical duet, “Sous le dôme epais” by Delibes.  Jessica’s powerful mezzo-soprano voice was a surprise to most of us in the audience, and showed us an accomplished artist as well as lawyer, mother, partner, environmentalist and politician. 

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2025 MicroGrants 4 Neighbours Program on Cortes Island

Immanuel McKenty is the new face of the Cortes Island Microgrants 4 Neighbours Program. 

When this ZOOM interview began, he was sitting in a room that looked very similar to where  I interviewed him along with the rest of the Awakeneers on previous occasions.

Cortes Currents: Give me your spiel and then I’ll ask some questions.

Immanuel McKenty: “  The 2025 round of the Cortes Island MicroGrants is now open for applications between March 10th and April 7th. We’re accepting applications for cool projects in on in theCortes community and giving out grants between $50 and $500. The application process is super simple. The link is on the Cortes Foundation website under their Grants section. And there’s also posts on Tideline and the various different Cortes Island Facebook pages. One interesting new thing we’re trying this year for the first time is we’re planning to put all of the applications out for input to the whole community once we receive them. So anyone who lives on Cortes can log in and view all the applications and submit their votes on which are their favourites.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing all the creative projects that get submitted and there’s a few that are coming in already.” 

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