Northern Lights Festival Boréal brings back past festival performer Ben Sures for a show at Fromagerie Elgin Feb. 18.
If you were to describe Sures’ performance style, it's very melodic, great acoustic playing, excellent storytelling and moments of stomach clutching hilarity, said a press release.
When he performs solo, he takes you in on his storytelling journey, he connects with the audience, when he performs with a group his gifts on the guitar really come alive and the powerful melodies become centre stage from the back up vocals. Deceivingly down to earth, he is so comfortable on stage, sometimes you forget there is a stage and this is a concert going on. He has toured Canada, The UK and performed in Beirut, Lebanon.
Sures is the 2005 winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the folk category (out of 15,000 entrants). He has performed at many of Canada’s folk festivals and has regularly been featured on CBC Radio for over two decades. He has has shared festival stages with Ani Difranco, Dave Van Ronk, JP Cormier, Burton Cummings, Spirit of The West, Ferron and more.
This natural storyteller and guitar player draws the listener in to his musical world from the very opening line. A unique perspective, a great story, and a melodic heartbeat are what create Ben’s engaging performances. Juno winning musician Caroline Brooks of The Good Lovelies describes Ben Sures ‘my modern day Paul Simon’.
Andrea Ramolo opens the show. Ramolo, one half of acclaimed Canadian folk-pop duo Scarlett Jane, has a new solo album, NUDA (Italian for naked).
The album emerged out of a deep depression following a romantic breakup and a shift in her artistic path; but brought about a hugely positive metamorphosis, personally and creatively.
Cool, dark, understated and melancholy, the alternative-folk album produced by Michael Timmins — a man who knows about melancholy and understated in his own band Cowboy Junkies — has a companion version of the same songs without a full band.
Stripped down to its barest form, Da Sola (meaning by myself), was produced by her pal Faye Blais and features Andrea singing and playing either baritone or acoustic guitar.
“It was shedding pieces of who I thought I was — as an artist, as a lover, as a woman,” said Ramolo. “I wanted the project to unabashedly expose that process; that battle with ego and identification in an attempt to just be, to reveal all my cuts and bruises in this process of becoming.”
Tickets to the show, which starts at 8 p.m., are $25 and can be purchased at Fromagerie Elgin, at the NLFB office, or online at nlfb.ca/BenSures.
