Manitoba Live Music Event

About

Manitoba Skyline - World Premiere,
featuring Scott Nolan, Glenn Buhr, and the Fallen Angels Orchestra

Scott Nolan is “a master songwriter, musician, and performer… a true Canadian treasure." -Big Dave McLean

Glenn Buhr, one of Canada’s leading composers, is director of the Integrated Musical Arts program at Wilfrid Laurier University, founder and original designer of the WSO New Music Festival, and an accomplished jazz pianist.
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With Glenn Buhr and Scott Nolan’s recent homecoming to Winnipeg we’ve been restored with two of the prairies’ greatest veteran musicians.
While this is cause for cheering, the project on which these apples-to-oranges artists are immediately embarking is raising eyebrows: an ambitious series of collaborations pairing Nolan’s troubadourial genius with Buhr’s singular gifts as an orchestrator and composer. If classically trained Beatles producer George Martin had in fact been a fifth member of the band, at times they may have yielded something like the musical fruits of this partnership.

On the immediate horizon, in the world of this multifaceted project, is a spectacular orchestral folk concert 8pm, 5 December at the intimate West End Cultural Centre. Flanked by the 12-piece Fallen Angels Orchestra, Nolan and Buhr will premiere nearly a dozen new songs directly from WECC’s floor, while audiences drink in the scene from their seats on the stage and surrounding floor. We’ll hear Nolan’s famous working-class poetry rooted in the Manitoba landscape and Buhr’s wry songs about anarchists and evolution, both set to fresh, impeccable orchestral arrangements by Buhr.

What may seem like an unexpected collision between the pop and classical worlds is, in fact, a natural development for these two eclectic musicians. Nolan’s many years touring Canada and the US thrilled tens of thousands. However, it left the artist feeling understandably fatigued – primarily with life on the road, but also with the arrangement styles common to so many roots acts. Now that Nolan has settled back in Winnipeg, he’s opened his own recording studio, the Song Shop. The space’s emphasis on experimentation and collaboration brought Buhr and Nolan together with the Penderecki String Quartet last June to record new music, of which the WECC concert will be the world premiere. Buhr is also making his way back to Winnipeg after decades as Professor of Music Composition and Improvisation at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. While works like his ballet Beauty and the Beast continue to be remounted to the delight of audiences across Europe and Asia, Buhr – no stranger, as an accomplished jazz musician, to nightclubs and bars– has largely moved towards subversive rock music in recent years.

Buhr and Nolan’s December concert will offer one of the most memorable and entertaining evenings of contemporary Canadian music in the prairies this year. It will also mark the launch of DreamPlay; a virtual art gallery, music platform, and record label, which will be the launch pad for Nolan and Buhr’s new recordings and videos. More details to come in the near future from Buhr and Nolan’s team about this innovative new platform, highlighting the best in prairie music.