Calgary

Springboard's containR Presents: Wendy McNeill Concert | Opening Act: Kenna Burima's Community Sing Along

Wendy McNeill:

Steadily gaining acclaim for her poignant storytelling lyrics and captivating live shows, Wendy McNeill takes listeners on an emotional roller coaster with a spirit that is both playful and fierce. As likely to be singing from the perspective of a dead man’s accordion, or a misunderstood monster as she is from her own, McNeill is fascinated with twisting the perspectives of the stories we hear, and the ones we tell ourselves. Incorporating layered vocals, guitar, kalimba, and accordion with found sounds, beats and samples, Wendy weaves a tightrope between the intimate and the otherworldly while blurring the line between pop and poetry.

On her latest album,“First There Were Feathers”, Wendy draws from scientific studies, personal experience, classic literature and myth, to explore the beauty, mystery and resilience of birds and how our fate is intimately connected with theirs.

Part folk cabaret, part spoken word, part little red riding hood, part big bad wolf.

Kenna Burima:

Join musician, singer, and storyteller Kenna Burima as she shares her favourite songs that she likes to sing with people she doesn’t know. Guaranteed it’ll be songs you know.

In her adopted hometown of Calgary (Moh’kinsstis, Treaty 7), Kenna Burima has earned a reputation as someone who can turn ideas into big projects, teach the unteachable, and inspire people to come together.

From the indie-folk of Woodpigeon, the sweaty garage sludge of Brenda Vaqueros; grandiose projects abound, nurturing Kenna’s compositional skill and style. Her cherished collaboration with Calgary theatre company, One Yellow Rabbit has offered the unique opportunity to compose for the largest and loudest of instruments, the Calgary Tower’s carillon.

To this day, you can still hear the bells of The Calgary Songs Project, an ambitiously transcribed thirty-song playlist of Calgary songwriters spanning thirty years. This work dovetails into her daytime concerns of offering city street singalongs to unsuspecting citizens, teaching music, and currently developing a songwriting program “The Song” that uncovers the mysteries of songwriting to anyone regardless of training or experience.

But the best way to figure out what drives Kenna is to delve into her solo albums; classical-cabaret-pop affairs that draw on her vast musical know-how.

The complexities of her songwriting reflect the heart of an artist who is never content to restrict herself to one genre, one project, or one ideal. With her third solo album While She Sleeps, the angry intensity of her sophomore release Hymn (2016) turns inward to unravel the quiet mysteries of creation.