Album features takes on Winnipeg’s iconic songs by women and gender-diverse singers

Winnipeg’s musical canon will soon have something of a greatest hits album.

Her (204): Stories of One Great City Revisited, a collaborative record to be released in March by the Manitoba Chamber of Women in Music, will feature women and gender-diverse artists singing iconic songs from Winnipeg’s 150-year history.

Participating musicians include Boniface, Keisha Booker, Rayannah, Rhonda Head and others.

The project was unveiled Friday at a media conference attended by local politicians and music industry figures.

What’s up: Ilya Osachuk, Mavis Gallant collection, ArtsJunktion reopening, Sum 41 and Folk Fest In the City

Winnipeg-born jazz bassist and composer Ilya Osachuk, currently based in New York, is returning to his hometown this Friday to perform music from his debut album The Answer.

Vibrant city centre, thriving arts community

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will be among the first recipients of the Downtown Arts Capital Fund, a new $2-million initiative included in the 2024-27 multi-year City of Winnipeg budget.

Half a million dollars will be allocated annually, pending city council approval, for organizations with more than 40 years of presence downtown.

“This fund enables us to provide funding towards transformative capital projects that will ensure our arts organizations have the resources they need to remain strong and accessible for years to come,” Mayor Scott Gillingham said at Wednesday’s announcement at the ballet’s studios on Graham Avenue.

“This investment in our arts organizations is an investment in the future of downtown Winnipeg and it’s an investment in the culture of Winnipeg.”

Grace, brilliance, art and fun: Four Winnipeggers share their best intentions for 2025

The Free Press invited four Winnipeggers — tamara rae biebrich, David Pensato, Dorota Blumczyńska and Kate Fenske — to share their intentions for the year ahead with us.

Six students, one mentor, 18 months for original view on what it is to be young in 2025

Eighteen months ago, “six kids and one old man” got together with a single goal in mind: to write and perform a full-scale production from scratch for the province’s oldest professional theatre company, Théâtre Cercle Molière.

“We started with nothing. What came next was up to them,” says educator Philippe Habeck, the self-described old man in question who oversaw the development of Here and There!

The possibilities were endlessly exciting — and a tad intimidating — for both Habeck and the six high school and university students who were brought together after participating in Cercle Molière’s annual Festival Théâtre Jeunesse two years ago.

With one original script, what could they tell the world about how it felt to be young in 2025?

Corb Lund, Jill Barber at Festival du Voyageur

Corb Lund, the Barr Brothers, Leif Vollebekk, Jill Barber, Roman Clarke, Ami Cheon and Al Simmons are among the musicians taking the stage at the 2025 edition of Festival du Voyageur, which runs Feb. 14 to 23 at Whittier Park.

There will be a few new attractions at this year’s fest, including L’shed à Léo, an exhibition of objects and photos that mascot Léo la Tuque keeps in his shed from festivals of yesteryear.

Visitors will also find an interactive self-guided activity tours of Fort Gibraltar, a new outdoor lounge, a beverage shack, information panels about maple syrup production and an ice sculpting workshop. Also new this year: the option to purchase weekend passes.

And, for the first time since 2023, snow sculptures will once again be part of the cityscape in the weeks leading up to the festival. Last year’s event looked a little different owing to unseasonably warm temperatures and little snow on the ground.

Voice from musical edge of African diaspora

“You know the way hip-hop took over the world for a while? Afrobeats is going to be the next wave,” says the Nigerian-born, Winnipeg-based musician, Tomiwa Omolayo, who sees himself as a futurist.

Indigenous theatre festival striving to offer ‘something for everyone’

Kiyanaan — the name of a new Indigenous theatre festival in Winnipeg — is a southern Michif word meaning “us,” but the festival’s founder says “us” means everyone.

“It’s an inclusive ‘us,’” says Charlene Van Buekenhout, a Métis theatre producer who’s been planning the event for more than four years.

“I can’t pretend to know what everyone needs or wants, but I envisioned getting Indigenous artists, supporters and administrators in the same rooms to figure out what we need to do to create spaces for ourselves to make theatre viably and sustainably.”

For Van Buekenhout, that has meant looking backwards, forwards and all around when it comes to the festival’s programming, which includes new works from emerging writers, an in-depth conversation with Little Bird star Darla Contois and a staged reading of Ian Ross’s landmark 1996 production, fareWel.

Storytellers compete for bragging rights and cash prizes in new story slam competition

A 100-year-old war vet and a gym teacher walk into the Royal Albert Arms.

One tells a moving story about landing on Juno Beach on D-Day. The other about strange things she’s confiscated from her students.

Guess which story turns out to be more NSFW?

Both are participants in the Winnipeg Story Slam, a new monthly-ish competition organized by professional MC, consultant and reporter Nicole Dubé, who is perhaps most recognizable to Winnipeggers for her 10-year tenure as a CTV anchor.

Welder-blacksmith’s creations blossom out of scraps of copper, bronze and steel

Lynndon Novak can make anything from metal. Barbecue tongs, fire pokers, door handles, table legs… he’s crafted them all in his forge.

Using a hammer and an anvil he manipulates copper, bronze and steel, creating everything from ladles, bowls and scoops to dragonflies, frogs and flowers.

His copper roses are especially arresting; layers of petals, each cut and textured by hand, are overlapped and stacked to form an exquisite flower.

Each blossom — complete with sepal, stem and, should the occasion require, leaves and even thorns — is a perfect mimic of the real thing.

Waitress delivers winning balance of sweet, spice, song and strong performances

In the first moment of Waitress, light empties through marshmallow clouds to illuminate Jenna Hunterson (a marvellous Stephanie Sy) as she mixes the standard base for one of her all-American pies.

But even if she is the only one with sugar on her apron and flour in her hair, Jenna’s creations aren’t hers alone. Anonymous helping hands reach out with core ingredients, and once the finished peach, apple and blackberry pies are placed on the countertop they belong to everyone who walks through the door of Joe’s Diner.

The possessive apostrophe is the most vital punctuation in this powerhouse musical of ownership, self-sufficiency and belonging, directed with risqué zest by Ann Hodges at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre.

A Tony-winner written by Jessie Nelson with music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles, Waitress took a little bit longer than expected in the oven on opening night, with a keyboard malfunction leading to a nearly 20-minute delay ahead of the first notes. But once music director Floydd Ricketts got that sorted, the talented cast made itself at home inside Brian Perchaluk’s dreamy version of Joe’s — a restaurant stuck in its own past even as its next-gen customers progress beyond the rigid stereotypes of mid-century American ideals in the background.

Feds raise curtain on new grant for MTYP

The parliamentary secretary to the federal heritage minister visited the Manitoba Theatre for Young People Thursday to announce a $500,000 grant on his department’s behalf.

Visiting Winnipeg in Pascale St-Onge’s stead, Vancouver-Granville MP Taleeb Noormohamed got a first-hand look at MTYP’s facility, which is currently undergoing the most significant renovation since it opened at The Forks in 1999 as it nears the $9-million goal of its capital campaign.

The cash injection from the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund comes 11 months after the federal government committed $1.3 million toward the theatre’s sustainability upgrades.

Noormohamed, who also visited the Manitoba Métis Federation Thursday, said that while arts funding is often an early casualty in budgetary trimming, that shouldn’t be the case.

You are here, and there: Morgan Traa's first solo exhibit grapples with sense of place

A semi-photorealist, post-hoc survey of adolescent waystations, Morgan Traa's first solo exhibition, My City is a Graveyard, opens Friday, Jan. 10, at Aceartinc.

Otto Schenk, director known for traditional opera productions, dies at 94

Otto Schenk, an actor who became a noted director praised for traditional opera productions and criticized by advocates of contemporary approaches, died Thursday at age 94.

Schenk lived in Austria, and his death was announced by the Vienna State Opera.

He created 31 productions there, starting with Janáček’s “Jenůfa” in 1964 and ending with Janáček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” in 2014. Many of his creations remain in use, including a 1979 version of Johann Strauss II's “Die Fledermaus” that was streamed around the world on New Year's Eve.

“Otto Schenk is an essential, unforgettable chapter in the history of our theater,” Vienna State Opera Director Bogdan Roščić said in a statement. “But he was also an artist who shaped the world of theater for half a century like few others. As sacred as the theater was to him, he approached the works naturally and fearlessly, drawing on an immense knowledge. An infinite love for the singers went hand in hand with hard, uncompromising rehearsal work and honesty. ”

Exhibition of religious relics both reverent and tongue-in-cheek

An internet meme showing an image of a skull with gaping sockets reads: “When a Protestant says something so Relicphobic, you gotta hit ’em with the St. Thomas Aquinas stare.”

The meme seems to be an example of what’s been called Catholic Core, a gen Z and millennial trend. Exploring Catholic themes and esthetics in a very internet way, Catholic Core occupies a tense place between reverence and irony in an era of disbelief and “online brain rot.”

“I did not know this!” says artist Francine Martin after seeing the meme.

“Yeah, that’s interesting, I had no idea,” artist Tricia Wasney says with a laugh. She is inside her art studio, which is brimming with second-hand treasures, Catholic paraphernalia and elegant jewelry of her design.