A Night Of Pianos at Club PuSh—A Curatorial Statement by Club PuSh Curator Veda Hille
November 30, 2014
At Club PuSh, you can catch startling, experimental performances in a casual, social setting. Set at Performance Works on Granville Island, Club PuSh is a cabaret-style theatre where you can grab a few drinks, sit back and enjoy a great show. Every once in a while we pounce on a theme night. On January 24, we bring you: A Night Of Pianos! (Not an official title.) Club PuSh co-curator Veda Hille lays out one of her personal favourites of the 2015 Club PuSh line-up. It’s a triple-bill of international musicians, diverse in their style but common in their huge talent.
The evening starts with Gérald Kurdian, who comes to us from Paris. He plays pianos, and toys, and things with strings. 1999 is a meditation/extraction of the TV series Space 1999. It contains love songs and little dances. Sometimes you don’t need to write very much as a curator, because a show is compelling purely on the basis of a few short sentences. Gérald is a delicate musician, a sharp wit, a sweet soul, and perhaps a bit of a joker. Let’s welcome him across the sea.
Then comes the second act: Nick Jaina with The Hole in the Coffin. We’ve had our eyes on Nick for a few years now, waiting for the right moment to haul him up here from Portland. It’s tough, he moves fast these days. In particular he’s been running away to New Orleans. When I asked him what he might bring to PuSh, he got all excited about this story about a guy who goes to a New Orleans funeral, and somehow gets talked into taking the place of the corpse. It’s a convoluted revenge story, and a hole in the coffin gets you a perfect birds eye view of your own memorial. Nick is going to tell us this story in grand detail, while playing a grand piano. This is a show he made just for us, although it will carry on past our world premiere. I, for one, will welcome a little New Orleans heat in the middle of our January.
We end the evening with a special edition of Late Night at Club PuSh, when we push things late into the night. We welcome Christine Fellows, on her Burning Daylight Tour, to the stage at 10pm.
Christine already lives in the pretty intense winter place of Winnipeg. In 2011 she kicked it up a notch and went to the Yukon to be songwriter-in-residence in Dawson City. The North has inspired a lot of writing, and Dawson City is kind of the literary hub. Out of this residence came Burning Daylight, a book of poetry and an album of songs. They are wicked good poems and songs. I jumped at the chance to put Christine and her two cellists onstage at Club PuSh. Her shows are always unique and delicate and fierce, and they rarely tour for very long so you have to catch them when you can. We call ourselves the northwest, and I love the line between BC and Yukon, the true north-northwest. We may be the southern end of the Canadian line, but we know the value of the burning daylight.
Veda Hille
Club PuSh Co-Curator
Catch this special triple-bill on January 24 at Club PuSh (Performance Works, Granville Island). When you book a ticket (on your PuSh Pass, Youth Passport or single tickets) to 1999 & The Hole in the Coffin, stay on for Late Night at Club PuSh with Christine Fellows for free. Or if you’re joining us just for Late Night, tickets are only $10.