The Music Festivals are Coming: From the CPO and the Kid’s Fest to the Warped Tour

Band playing onstage outdoors
From the 2009 Calgary International Blues Festival
Promotional Photo from Calgary International Blues Festival website

Isn’t it too early to be thinking about festivals? Isn’t the ‘festival’ intimately associated with the summertime, or at least the growing warmth of spring? Sure, there’s a winter festival, but that’s just for crazy Canucks who actually WANT to be outside in the winter, and besides, musical instruments don’t do so well when the frost is forming on the brass.

Ah, yes, festivals do evoke warmer times, warmer climes, sitting on the grass listening to the notes drift across the water from Prince’s Island, or watching a new performer on one of the smaller stages introduce us to their craft with the birds flitting around and the smell of grilled meat nearby.

But that doesn’t mean it’s to be ignored until then. There’s the CPO’s Tchaikovsky Festival going on right now, courtesy of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. That’s not going to frost up the brass, you can be sure, but it’ll probably melt some hearts. B-)

And there’s also the Calgary International Children’s Festival coming up shortly, which, in the genre of music, supplies lots of entertainment to Calgary. Having worked with the festival a couple of times, I can tell you that the music which so-called ‘children’s performers’ provide can easily surpass the last time you were in a bar with a desultory pianist and a surly waitress.

Or a surly pianist and a desultory waitress.

They probably haven’t been to a music festival recently. ‘Nuff said.

Have you noticed that the root of ‘festival is ‘festive’? Access lots of festival and other Calgary musical event information here:

Hopefully once there, you’ll also look up some of our multicultural festivals, seasonal festivals, location specific festivals, or perhaps, one of our extreme sport-music festivals. Don’t get your tickets mixed up: you wouldn’t want to go to the former when you’re dressed for the latter:

Van’s Warped Tour 2010

Calgary Folk Music Festival

Calgary International Reggae Festival

Calgary Jazz Festival

Calgary International Blues Festival

Calgary Culture

Posted by Paul Verhaegh

Author: Carey Rutherford

Swallowed by the mutual loves of words and music (but far too chicken-shit to perform them with a band), Carey’s writing career started slowly as a freelance writer in 2003, starved him nearly to personal bankruptcy until 2008, and changed directions while writing for FastForward, Beacon Calgary, GayCalgary, and Examiner magazines. With the death of many old-school periodicals, and the explosion of musical diversity in Calgary, the modern approach to writing about live music performance in the Calgary region presented uncluttered landscapes for the focussed passion that Carey’s conversations with musicians, drag queens, festival producers and small animals has uncapped. He was moulded by the brilliance of paper-based periodicals old and new (Life, rolling Stone, Swerve! and Adbusters etc.), and sees the info-verse as needing creative, empathetic, but clear-eyed Agents to communicate these performances.