brand new love

The latest Serena Ryder album dropped yesterday. And it is mighty fine. It highlights her brilliant songwriting and fabulous voice. I'm really digging all of the songs but especially Hiding Place and her awesome cover of You're No Good.


Also cool is the fact that she is lending her song Sing, Sing to one of my favourite organizations, the Coalition for Music Education in Canada. They put on an event annually called Music Monday, in which they demonstrate the importance of music education by having students all across the country put on outdoor, public concerts. They choose a new song every year for these students to perform. Sing, Sing is an excellent choice for Music Monday 2009.


By the way, if you too feel strongly that music is an integral part of the education of Canadian children, consider becoming a signatory. It doesn't cost anything to add your name to the list of supporters of music education.


I got the chance to see Serena live this past summer at the Burlington Sound of Music Festival. The pictures in this post are a few that I took at the concert. It was a fantastic show! Her band was excellent and I was pleased to see that her bass player, Anthony Lavdanski, was a recent graduate of the school that I work at. It always makes me smile to see "my kids" on stage.

let the music play...

After listening to the Oscar Peterson tribute (see previous post) I explored the CBC Radio 2 Concerts on Demand page a little further. There are some amazing concerts on this site! How did I not know until now that this existed? I often wondered what happened with the tons of live shows that the CBC records on a regular basis, after they have been broadcast on various radio programs. It's so great that they offer some of them up on the website for us to enjoy. So while I've been cleaning up my home office, I have enjoyed some great live shows including Jim Cuddy at Kingfest, Serena Ryder at Hugh's Room and William Carn Quintet at the Rex. And there are a ton of others that I plan to listen to. All thanks to the magic of the interwebs!

you gotta sing sing sing sing...

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks. So much to blog about, but no time to do it. I should be able to catch up over the next week so expect to be dazzled with a flurry of blog posts! Okay maybe not dazzled, but expect a flurry.

Now on to today's rant.

I've appreciated Serena Ryder since I first heard "Just Another Day" off her album Unlikely Emergency. But it wasn't until I heard "Weak In The Knees" from If Memory Serves You Well that I finally bought these two albums. Serena is an incredible talent: brilliant songwriter with a killer voice. Her lyrics and style show a maturity far beyond her 24 years. If Memory Serves You Well is made up mostly of covers and her interpretations are fantastic. I recently downloaded her Sony Connect Set, a 6-song acoustic EP, from iTunes. The acoustic version of "Weak In The Knees" is even more heart-wrenching than the original. The whole EP is fantastic.

I was excited to hear that her new EP Told You In A Whispered Song was out and available on iTunes. But I was disappointed to find that it's only available in the US store. I checked HMV and Indigo to find it isn't available there either. WTF?!? She's Canadian! How can her label not release her recording in Canada? Surely I'm not her only Canadian fan? How long do I have to wait to get this recording?

Sadly, Serena's website is in serious need of an update so I have no answers at the moment. But every Tuesday when the new releases come out, I check iTunes in hopes that it will magically appear. For now, I have her previous recordings to enjoy. I just wish I knew why I can't get my hands on the latest CD. You'd think that with all of this new technology, purchasing music would be easier. But I guess the music fan is still at the mercy of the big record labels. And that really sucks!