The Globe and Mail - 02.11.2019

NOV

• 16,17,20&21

THAÏS

GRAND

OPERA

INCONCERT

NOV

• 7&9

A rare opportunity

to hear Massenet’s

masterwork live!

DAVIS

CONDUCTS

RUSSIAN

MASTERS

NOV

• 13

Sir Andrew Davis conducts

Shostakovich’s triumphant

Tenth Symphony. Plus, the

masterful Karen Gomyo

performs Prokofiev’s First

Violin Concerto.

VIVALDI’S 16 , 17 ,20&21

FOUR

SEASONS

Hear Concertmaster

Jonathan Crow lead

the Orchestra in one

of classical music’s

most iconic pieces.

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAIL O ARTS| R5

U

npredictable weather has
been a routine concern for
outdoor music events since
a summer shower drenched the
unwashed at Woodstock in 69,
but the climate-change-caused
extreme weather of today is put-
ting a damper on festivals like
never before. Flooding, gale-force
winds, lightning storms, severe
heat and outrageous rains are be-
coming the norm, causing orga-
nizers to plan for the worst.
“We’re a lot more diligent now
on our emergency preparedness
and all kinds of contingencies,”
says Mark Monahan founder of
Ottawa Bluesfest. “Events or full
days are being cancelled, and that
makes you wake up.”
The 2019 season was particu-
larly calamitous. In May, at the Ep-
icenter Festival in Rockingham,
N.C., raging winds and a lightning
storm caused the cancellation of
sets by metal rockers including
the Cult, whose 1985 hit(Here
Comes the) Rainwould have ar-
rived too late to warn anyone. Fes-
tivalgoers were evacuated, egress
was in disarray, the grounds were
a mess and the festival gates were
late in opening the next day.
In July, the Country Thunder
Music Festival in Craven, Sask.,
was disrupted by the same atmo-
spheric condition to which the
event’s name alludes. A concert
by American country crooner
Tim McGraw was cancelled after
strong winds uprooted tents and
damaged gear. Flash rain left fans
ankle-deep in mud and water.
Later the same month, in Ed-
monton, temperamental weather
interrupted programming at both
the Interstellar Rodeo and Chaos
Alberta festivals. A thunderstorm
raised fear of nickel-sized hail.
“Please take cover under the ca-

nopy,” Interstellar organizers ad-

vised via social media.

While some locations are more

at risk than others, those organiz-

ers who name their outdoor fes-

tivals Epicenter, Country Thunder

and Chaos Alberta would seem to

be a little too on the nose when it

comes to perilous weather and

the festival experience. There are

countless things that can go

wrong during a festival. Operating

an annual event is a year-round

job consumed by worry and me-

ticulous planning. And now, the

prospects of the work literally be-

ing washed away are all too real.

“There’s a certain amount of

unpredictability that’s more prev-

alent now than when we started

25 years ago,” Monahan says.

“Sure, you’re going to get rain.

Sure, you’re going to get thunder-

storms. But you don’t think you’re

going to get snow in July, and, I tell

you, it’s come close.”

Festival organizers typically

have weather and cancellation in-

surance, but those costs have

gone up since the weather-related

disasters at Big Valley Jamboree in

Camrose, Alta. (where a wind-re-

lated stage collapse resulted in

the death of a spectator in 2009)

and at Monahan’s Ottawa Blues

two summers later, when a sud-

den storm with wind gusts top-

ping 96 kilometres an hour swept

through the riverside site while

Cheap Trick performed. The main

stage collapsed. Thousands

scrambled for shelter.

After those incidents and the

lawsuits that followed, the land-

scape changed. “Our insurance

broker had less options from un-

derwriters and prices inevitably

increased,” says Helen Britton,

vice-president of Six Shooter Re-

cords, the Toronto-based label

that runs the annual Interstellar

Rodeo at Edmonton’s Heritage

Amphitheatre.

It’s not just the storms. Exces-

sive heat caused the cancellation

of this summer’s OZY Fest in New

York’s Central Park. Rising water

levels in Lake Ontario pushed the

beloved Camp Wavelength indie-

rock event off Toronto Island per-

manently. Outdoor theatre is also

affected. For its Shakespeare by

the Bow outdoor program, Theat-

re Calgary, after multiple smoked-

out shows, now has a wildfire

strategy in place, as does Bard on

the Beach in Vancouver.

If there’s a silver lining to the

storm clouds, it might be that ris-

ing temperatures are causing

“season creep,” a phenomenon

marked by earlier indications of

spring and the delayed onset of

fall. Because of it, the outdoor

music season is expanding. It

wasn’t unusual that Wilco kicked

off its current fall North American

tour in Toronto on Oct. 8, but it

was remarkable that they chose to

book the lakeside amphitheatre

Budweiser Stage. The concert was

the latest ever in the venue’s his-

tory.

“I’m seeing more of it,” says

Brent Staeben, artistic director for

Fredericton’s Harvest Jazz and

Blues Festival, referring to off-sea-

son events. “Nobody’s saying it

out loud, but people are gradually

taking advantage of what we’re

seeing, temperature wise.”

More than ever, live music, not

recorded music, drives the indus-

try. Music calendars are crowded;

there are only so many hot August

nights to go around. “It’s a com-

petitive market and that’s when

you see people booking in the

margins,” Six Shooter founder

Shauna de Cartier says.

Staeben’s outdoor Harvest Jazz

and Blues takes place mid-Sep-

tember. Unseasonably warm

weather in 2017 and 2018 helped

attendance. This year, the 29-

year-running event saw its at-

tendance rise to nearly 100,000, a

record.

When the festival began, we

would get frost by the last bit of

August,” Staeben says. “But lately

we’re getting five or six days of

sunshine. The crowds on the

streets have been absolutely mas-

sive, even at midnight in the mid-

dle of September.”

In addition to running Ottawa

Bluesfest, Monahan is in charge of

CityFolk Festival, Ottawa’s annual

happening at Lansdowne Park.

When he first took over the for-

mer Ottawa Folk Festival, it was an

August event strangely plagued

by bad weather. In 2012, the fest

shifted to mid-September. “We’ve

probably enjoyed our best weath-

er the last three or four years,” Mo-

nahan says. Next year, CityFolk

runs Sept. 17 to 20, its latest dates

ever.

Still, concert promoters have

only so much calendar to work

with. Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy just

played the Jasper Dark Sky Festiv-

al on Oct. 18 in the Canadian Rock-

ies. “It seems like an obvious re-

sult of global warming that con-

cert booking will be affected,” the

singer-songwriter says. “But for

the show in Jasper, we were freez-

ing. It was ‘We are hardy people,

we’re going to do this outside.’

And it was full-on, old-time cold.”

Festivalsseefire,rainand,maybe,coziertemperatures

Climatechangeisreshapingthelandscape

foroutdoormusicevents,butwhilebadweather

hascausedcancellations,relocationsand

destruction,itmayalsohelptheindustry

expanditsfleetingseasonintofall

BRAD WHEELERTORONTO

A thunderstorm rolls into the site of the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, Alta., in 2009. Winds from the storm

caused a stage to collapse, resulting in the death of a spectator, and sending festival insurance costs soaring.

JOHNULAN/THECANADIANPRESS

use her natural conversational

ease to warm up her guests, and

then nudge them to more revela-

tory, meaningful stuff.

Let Ellis Ross show us some of

her vacation selfies, sure – but

when that leads her to talk about

her strategies for living as a single

woman, dig deeper into that.

When Anna Faris says that her

parents wanted her to be a virgin,

don’t merely reply, “Every brown

person can relate to this” – say

more about how. I want to see

Her exuberance is infectious –
she’s forever dancing, widening
her eyes, playing to her audience.
She’s quick with a quip: When
her line about how rap has be-
come sad – too many lyrics about
“my daddy didn’t love me
enough” – earned a burst of ap-
plause, she shot back, “The
sound of neglected children, all
right!”
And she’s a natural interview-
er. She pumps up her guests’
achievements, whether they’re
generally famous (the writer/ac-
tor Mindy Kaling), famous within
a certain cohort (the sister wres-
tlers Nikki and Brie Bella), or just
breaking out (theEuphoriaactors
Barbie Ferreira and Alexa
Demie).
Although too many of her
questions are tepid – “Did you
have a hot girl summer?” she
asked America Ferrera – her curi-
osity is genuine. “I need to hear
this, tell me,” she’ll say. She asked
Natalie Portman, who was talk-
ing up her astronaut filmLucy in
the Sky, “What other cool crap is
at NASA? Keep talking.”
And she picks up on her
guests’ nuances. “Is this the first
time you’re hearing this?” she
asked Paula Abdul, about a story
Nicole Scherzinger was relating.
As a result, her guests are chatty
and at ease, and the interviews
feel like conversations.
The majority of her guests
have been women, and moments

arise that feel as if they could on-

ly come from two women shar-

ing an experience. Tracee Ellis

Ross, for example, may tell other

interviewers that developing her

line of beauty products for wom-

en of colour was a form of activ-

ism, but Singh made it hit home.

Now for the “but.” I’m not sug-

gesting that Singh shouldn’t be

Singh. There is a difference,

though, between youthful and

juvenile. Sentiments that scroll

across the opening credits –

“Don’t just try to pass your class-

es, try to ace them ... That’s the

difference between settling like a

survivor and conquering like a

bawse” – may play on Instagram,

but they look awfully hokey on

late-night TV.

Same with her guest games:

having the wrestlers play Twister,

dressing up Ferrera for thequin-

ceanerashe never had, making

Portman scroll through her texts

(check out the mild panic on

Portman’s face). They’re terrible,

and that’s surprising, because

you would expect Singh to know

her way around going viral.

Her monologues are the big-

gest disappointment. She calls

them “deep dives,” but her sub-

jects – vegetarianism, the United

States’ bougieness, parents using

social media – are about as deep

as a puddle. Her jokes are rarely

funny, but she repeatedly cracks

herself up as if they’re hilarious,

pursing her lips in faux shock,

doubling over.

Her sexual innuendos are

pitched at the 14-year-olds who

made her a YouTube star, but

how many 14-year-olds are

watching TV at 1:30 a.m.? What is

the point of being, as Singh often

reminds us, the first bisexual

woman of South Asian descent if

she’s not going to be original?

If I were producing Singh’s

show, I would double down on

her strengths. She’s not a kid any

more, nor is her audience. She’s

not on YouTube, trying to be PG

rated; she’s on late night, the per-

fect place to be daring.

I would revamp her mono-

logues and push her to take risks,

to be radically honest about her

life. So she’s the first bisexual, etc.

• what does that feel like? What
  uncomfortable experiences
  shaped her? What are the invis-
  ible barriers she encounters, the
  everyday slights she endures?
  Shy away from party politics,
  fine, but give us a take on con-
  temporary pop culture that is
  more substantial than confetti
  and French fries. Don’t give us
  the beginning of an admission
  such as, “I’m a feminist but I’ll
  pop my booty.” Follow through,
  into the discomfort that makes
  you feel. When discussing inter-
  net trolls, don’t just make a joke
  about dolls – convey the damage
  trolls have done to you.
  As for Singh’s interviews, I
  would be counterintuitive: Jetti-
  son the stupid games that other
  hosts use as clickbait, and con-
  centrate on the click-worthy
  things she gets people to say. I’d

Singh become a true disruptor:

Invite people to a party, but send

them home with something to

think about. Don’t just say you’re

different from late-night hosts –

be different.

North American culture is

more than a little late in elevat-

ing people like Singh to a top job.

Which is why A Little Late

shouldn’t squander its chance to

be a lot more.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Singh:ALittleLateshouldn’tsquanderitschancetobealotmore

FROM R1

Most of Lilly Singh’s guests on her show A Little Late have been women, allowing for moments that feel as if
they could only come from two women sharing an experience.FERNANDOMORALES/THEGLOBEANDMAIL