A Mid-Winter Concert with Sarah Jane Scouten (BC), Suzie Ungerleider (BC), Grant Lawrence, Q Brooke Bachand, and Mark Kilianski
Welcome to your new favourite holiday tradition. We love celebrating the coziness and crispiness at the darkest nights of the year. It is a turning point when we begin to welcome back the sun, in the eternal dance between light and dark. This Mid-Winter celebration will include performances from West Coast songwriter and medical herbalist Sarah Jane Scouten plus celebrated local musical guests, connected by a love for the natural world. Through music, these artists will be exploring subjects of sustainability, climate change resilience and environmental action. Expect to learn something, to feel something and to get closer to nature.
During COVID, Sarah Jane trained as a herbalist in the UK and now integrates ecology, sustainable land use and traditional wellness practice into her work as an artist. Living in SW Scotland, she brings along traditional British plant knowledge and folklore as well as a collection of Scottish ballads. Sarah Jane will be joined by special guests Suzie Ungerleider, Grant Lawrence, q Bachand and Mark Kilianski. Artists and writers will collaborate and explore their connection to nature and why it’s worth saving this Yuletide.
SARAH JANE SCOUTEN
Four-time Canadian Folk Music Award nominee, Sarah Jane Scouten is a songwriter of rare quality, combining sounds of early country music, ballad singing, folk rock and 60’s soul. It’s modern indie Americana that knows exactly where it comes from, with confidence and sophistication only bought by time. Surrounding herself with top-notch musicians, the live show is as dynamic as her five albums: at any moment making feet move or eliciting laughter or tears. She is dry, funny, irreverent yet generous. Her latest album ‘Turned to Gold’ has been called an “unendingly lovely record” by the Georgia Straight. She has a job to do and she takes it very seriously: to entertain, to inspire and to be cathartic. An ever expanding palette and a warbling iconic country voice – honed over many a campfire – brings a freshness to her brand of ambient indie Americana. It’s as relevant today as it is rooted in the music of her forebears.
Raised in a musical family on Bowen Island, British Columbia, Sarah Jane now calls both Scotland and Canada home. The daughter of a Scottish immigrant to Canada, she was raised with ceilidh culture and fiddle music which fed directly into her passion for American old time, country and folk song. Her father played the 5-string banjo while her mother taught Scottish country dancing, and with that she found her way in music through songwriting.
Like any songwriter worthy of the name, Sarah Jane explores love with a fine-toothed comb, but isn’t limited to romantic love. Love of a place, a time, the natural world and all its inhabitants tug at her sleeve, which she handles with equal power to delight and break a heart. According to Tom Power of CBC q, “Stan Rogers was able to do it, Ron Hynes was able to do it, Kate McGarrigle was able to do it – and Sarah Jane Scouten is able to do it.”
Sarah Jane Scouten showcases a major talent and a whole lot of versatility.” – No Depression
“An agile voice, ruminative songwriting, and love for classic country, indie pop, and everything in between.” – American Songwriter.
SUZIE UNGERLEIDER
Suzie officially opens a new chapter of her already distinguished and highly successful career with the release of her Juno-nominated album entitled My Name is Suzie Ungerleider. Bursting with her trademark evocative melodies and trenchant lyrics, it’s the tenth solo studio album by the American-born, Canadian-raised artist revered for such landmark records as Johnstown, Sleepy Little Sailor and A Girl in Teen City. It’s also her first since the artist formerly known as Oh Susanna announced that she would now record and perform under her birth name.
The three-time Canadian Juno Award nominee has been turning heads with her singular song craft since before she released a debut EP in 1997, made back in Vancouver after her college years. She got more used to singing in public and wrote a few songs, before making a demo tape that caught the attention of the music industry. Compelled to relocate to Toronto, she met musicians who loved the Carter Family and Hank Williams as much as she did.
“It was at this point that I started to feel the parts of myself integrating,” she says. “My musical self, and who I am when I’m not onstage, these started to feel more one and the same. By telling my own stories, I was showing who I really was. I was lifting the veil of Oh Susanna and revealing who I was as Suzie Ungerleider.”
The desire to reflect her true self as both an artist and a person culminates in a superb new album that stands tall among Suzie Ungerleider’s best work. It’s not just the name change that has her feeling more like herself than ever. “So here I am, leaving behind the trappings of a persona that gave me the courage to climb up onstage and reveal what is in my heart,” she reflects. “Now that I have grown, I am ready to shed that exoskeleton,” concludes Suzie. “It once protected me, but I need to take it off so I can be all of who I am.”
“Beautifully sung, rich narratives are at the core of her Americana sound.” – Next.
” … few equals in Canadian roots music.” – Exclaim!
” … full of warmth, quiet beauty and odes to family, friends and Canadiana.” – Tom Power, CBC.
MARK KILIANSKI
Mark Kilianski is a guitar flatpicker, banjo player, and singer songwriter, with home bases in Nashville, New Jersey, and Vancouver, BC. But most of the time you’ll find him on the road with Americana/Old Time duo Golden Shoals. In his formative years, Mark immersed himself in various styles of guitar music including classic rock, jazz, classical, and metal.
While pursuing a degree in Jazz Composition at Berklee College of Music, he started meeting bluegrass and Celtic fiddlers and took a stylistic left turn, falling in love with folk music’s raw aesthetic and ethos of anywhere/anytime jamming. This diverse musical background informs Mark’s unique sound and approach to traditional music and songwriting. Throughout it all, Mark pays homage to the old timers of American roots music, with his own personal reverence and humor.
Q BROOKE BACHAND
Two time Irish music award-winning nonbinary westcoast artist ‘q’ (they/them) (formerly qristina bachand ) is a consummate performer who is clearly at ease on stage & they are known for their powerful fiddle & captivating vocals. Their contagious energy and love of Folk and Celtic music is always at the forefront as they bless audiences with energetic and spirited performances which showcase their propensities for fiddling as well as song & story-sharing.
Once a teen fiddle star, in recent years q has blossomed & grown into their (nonbinary) gender identity and life’s purpose & are singing Phil Ochs and Dick Gaughan-inspired rebel ballads and folk songs (a capella & self-accompanied) interspersed with rip-roaring fiddle tunes to help heal the soul. their sets will equally inspire as they will bring you to tears or have you clapping along (& stomping your feet) !
q studied classical violin, however it’s their fiddle skills that always truly shone ; with beautiful tone and passionate delivery. q has received numerous regional and national awards, trophies and scholarships for their fiddling over the years; including full scholarships to study Irish fiddle at ceili camp (Harrison Hot Springs) and Cape Breton fiddle at the Gaelic College (Cape Breton). in addition, q studied song & vocal technique at the irish World Academy; graduating with first class honours from the University of Limerick, Ireland, with an MA in traditional irish music performance (with fiddle as a primary focus) ! interestingly , q also holds an MSc in infectious diseases & public health from VU Amsterdam ; for which they lived and conducted research in Kasese District, Uganda! q is also president of the victoria fiddle society .
“liquid-clear vocal … masterful fiddling … beginning with the clarity , if not majesty , of Q’s vocal strengths … the stage is set for what’s to follow as they shake the Celtic tree ” – Eric Thom, Penguin Eggs
GRANT LAWRENCE
Grant Lawrence is an award-winning writer, musician, broadcaster, and live event host. He is the author of four best-selling books for adults: Adventures in Solitude (2010), The Lonely End of the Rink (2013), Dirty Windshields (2017), and his latest number one bestseller, Return to Solitude (2022). Bailey the Bat and the Tangled Moose, his first children’s picture book, was released in 2021. Grant Lawrence is the first author in the history of the BC Book Prizes to win the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice twice.
Grant is also the host of the CBC Music Top 20, the lead singer of the internationally acclaimed garage band The Smugglers, a Canadian Screen Award winner, and a former columnist for the WestEnder, the Vancouver Courier, Vancouver Is Awesome, North Shore News and Powell River Peak. He is also a goalie for the Vancouver Flying Vees beer league hockey team. Grant Lawrence is married to musician Jill Barber and they live in Vancouver with their two children. In 2024, Adventures in Desolation Sound, a children’s picture book version of Grant’s first book Adventures in Solitude, will be released on Harbour Publishing.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15
Doors open at 7:00 p.m.
Showtime is at 8:00 p.m.
Accessible All ages
MEL LEHAN HALL AT ST. JAMES
3214 West 10th Ave, Kitsilano
$35 in Advance | $40 at the Door
BUY ONLINE
(NO service charges)
Parcel O’Rogues holders RESERVE ONLINE
This show will NOT be available for viewing from home.