Sarah Deshaies produces the Andrew Carter Morning Show. Every Friday at 8:20am, she tells you about the big, quirky and off-the-beaten-path events happening in Montreal. Here is this week's list, with links for more information so you can get out and enjoy the city! Submit your event to sarah.deshaies@bellmedia.ca.
Spend some this Mother’s Day at the Botanical Gardens, where the cherry and magnolias trees are blooming, along with the tulips, primroses and many other flowers. Check out the blooms of the week here
The Botanical Gardens… cherry trees, primrsoes, tulips and magnolias are out! And learn about the Japanese art of flower arranging, with presentations this weekend by the Montreal chapter of Ikebana International.
Nearby, the Montreal Planetarium’s new show imagines what human life could like on Mars.. in 2100! With help from NASA aerospace engineer Farah Alibay and celebrated troupe Cirque Éloize, ROUGE 2100 explores the environment of the red planet as well as what astronauts would need to survive. You’ll have the A-I bot Felicity 87, to take you through the immersive exhibit.
The 4th Montreal History Festival spotlights the city’s 14 history, archeology and ethnology museums with a variety of mostly free programming this weekend. The big ones are all here (McCord, MEM, Pointe-à-Callière) as well as some lesser known establishments, like the Lachine Museum and the Maison Nivard-De Saint-Dizier Museum in Verdun. The McCord will host a guided tour Saturday, on the Peel Trail, which tells the story of an Iroquian village, before European explorers arrived. Full programming here.
Last call for the 17th edition of Sketchfest, with a mix of solo and group “scripted” comedy from Montreal and beyond. Each show has three acts, and there are multiple shows rolling this weekend, including Friday’s 8pm show with Emily Jeffers’ Bitty-Bat, a delightful clown show that blends the dance of Loie Fuller, the music of Fantasia and Nosferatu. Emily shares the stage with solo artist Pat Gourdeau and local double act, Nightmare Slags. Out-of-towners Ajahnis Charley and Amander Xeller will wrap up the week Saturday, 9pm, followed by the late-night best of the fest show at 11pm.
Opéra de Montréal continues its run of Verdi’s La Traviata. Courtesan Violetta has been transformed as a jazz entertainer in 1920s Paris. Can she and her lover, Alberto, find a way to live out their romance in spite of societal and family pressures? Until May 14 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.
Lakeshore Players Dorval are putting on their biggest show yet: Guys and Dolls! Two odd couples are at the heart of this Tony-winning musical musical: a gambler and a missionary, a showgirl and the guy who runs the games. The tales of New York’s underbelly in the 1920s and 30s were originally inspired by the short stories of Damon Runyon. The Players perform at the Louise Chalmers Theatre at John Rennie High School until May 18.
Last chance to spend time with Shakespeare’s heroines and villains in Thy Woman’s Weeds, a new work by Montreal playwright Erin Shields. Seven stellar local actresses incarnate characters like Lady MacBeth, Goneril, Juliet and Ophelia as we weave between the stage and wings. This is a savvy, smart and galloping romp! Stepping in as director, Shakespeare-in-the-Park’s Amanda Kellock unpicks the patriarchal worlds the Bard built for his female characters, at the Centaur until Sunday.
Another play with seven women on stage: the Segal Centre is warming up for Selina Fillinger’s POTUS, or Behind Every Great Dumba** Are Seven Women Trying To Keep Him Alive. It’s a fast-paced farce in which the Leader of the Free World kicks off a crisis with a four-letter-word. While President remains offstage, we gaze upon the constellation of women around him, including sister Bernadette (comic Elvira Kurt). First preview is Sunday, 1:30pm preceded by the Sunday at the Segal chat. I will be sitting down with a stellar panel to talk about women being in positions of power. Join us for free coffee and rugelach, Sunday at 11am.
Friday’s music picks: Ice Cube O'Shea Jackson Sr. at Place Bell in Laval, 7pm. Influential ‘world punk’ Montreal punk band, GrimSkunk at MTelus, 7:30pm. Swedish progressive metal group Soen at the Beanfield, 7:30pm. Norwegian black metal band Abbath at La Tulipe, 7pm. Dubstep DJ and producer Must Die! at Fairmount Theatre, 10pm. Folk-country singer Willi Carlisle at Bar Le Ritz PDB, 7:30pm.
The Orchestre Philharmonique du Québec will be joined by an array of vocalists, like Jonas and Lyxé, for Tribute to the Beatles, the Philharmonic Experience. The musical evening is the Institut du cancer de Montréal’s 15th Concert Against Cancer. Friday, 8pm at Maison symphonique.
Saturday’s music picks: Nuits d’Afrique continues its series of weekend concerts, Les Cabarets Acoustique, including the genre-spanning JabDjab, a Montreal-based trio whose members come from Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada, onstage 9pm Saturday at Club Balattou.
Sunday’s music picks: Manitoba’s Boy Golden indie-country songwriter (and ‘minister at the Church of Better Daze’) at L’Escogriffe, 8pm.
Works by Beethoven, Elgar, Sibelius and Britten will be on the program for Symphony for The Bell, which raises money for the The Bell Fund, Cedars Healing Notes Fund, and to Cedars CanSupport’s Humanitarian Fund. Sunday, 4pm at the Church of St Andrew and St Paul downtown.
Meet our Friday morning guest, sportswriter Sam Jefferies, who will be signing copies of his new book, Legacy on Ice: Blake Geoffrion and the Fastest Game on Earth. Seattle-based Jefferies chronicles the rise of a fourth-generation NHL player whose career is jeopardized when he is injured while playing for the Habs. Sam will be at McLean’s Pub on Peel, where the book opens, Friday at 4:30pm. Hear Andrew’s chat with Sam here.
Festival Accès Asie celebrates myriad art forms by Asian artists and informed by Asian traditions. Carmina Nisibena is a concert that will blend the ancient and modern, with sacred Assyrian chants and Medieval chants dating back to the 3rd century in the Iberian Peninsula, Saturday, 8pm at Le Gèsu. Join Maître Han Le for a Dian Cha Tea Ceremony on Sunday, 1:30 and 4pm at Thé Guru.
Our friend Joey Elias headlines at The Comedy Nest, with support from the likes of Daniel Carin, Dan Bingham, Isabelle Gaumont and more! Friday and Saturday, 8 and 10:30pm.
Montreal Improv in St Henri hosts a medley of shows, including Choose Your Destiny, in which three troupes (Second Cousins, Your Type, We Are Bradshaw) perform three types of improv. Saturday 8pm.
At burlesque headquarters The Wiggle Room: Friday, 9pm is Decadence, a special bash for performer Pinot Noir, who hosts, jokes and sketches dancers. His invitees: Léo Luxe, Célesta O'Lee, Lily Monroe, Wild D'Lilah and Enshantay. Then, Saturday, at 9pm: The Rococo Show, a Marie Antoinette-inspired show with Butterscotch Blondie, Lara Luscious, Casquivano, Yikes Macaroni, hosted by Roxy Torpedo. On Sunday, 7:30pm The Lucy Show is a mix of queer and femme comics and dancers.
Autism House holds a vernissage celebrating the work of its artists, all of whom are on the spectrum. Join for food, drinks and networking at the Celebrating Neurodiversity Through Art goes Friday, 5 to 7pm at Concordia’s District 3 Innovation Centre (1250 Guy, Suite 600).
Church of St John the Baptist in Pointe-Claire will hold a rummage sale, Saturday 9am to 12pm.
ONGOING EVENTS
Pointe-À-Callière Museum has launched a first-in-Canada show, Olmecs and the Civilizations of the Gulf of Mexico Explore 4,000 years of Olmec history through nearly 300 objects, some of which will be seen for the first time by the public. What’s fascinating is that traces of the Olmecs were not really “discovered” until the 1800s. This show, a collaboration with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, runs until September 15.
Explore the beauty and diversity of our natural world in Root for Nature. This new, 90-minute show is a “nature hike” indoors, conceived as a powerful piece of edutainment inspired by the COP15 biodiversity talks hosted by Montreal in late 2022. This collaboration between National Geographic and OASIS Immersive Studios will take place in the same location as the UN conference, at the Palais des congrès. Also at the venue: Dreaming of Asia is a stunning exploration of Chinese and Japanese culture, making its North American premiere at OASIS Immersions. French digital art studio Danny Rose has crafted four different experiences, including a look at shadow puppet theatre.
The Horizon of Khufu: A Journey in Ancient Egypt is a virtual reality experience that brings you into the giant pyramid in Giza, a 146-metre high pyramid built nearly 3,000 years before the Common era. Noted Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian will be your guide. Studio PHI has brought in this for a North American first. Until May 31, in the Old Port at 2 rue de la Commune.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts explores how nature inspired two great artists of the 20th cetury. Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art is an exhibit curated by the San Diego Museum of Art; it recreates both artists’ studios down to minute detail. Admire O’Keefe bodacious flowers and landscapes, contrasted with Moore’s sculptures inspired by stones and bones, and his Helmet heads. Until June 2.
The McCord Stewart Museum’s excellent and informative Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience. The show profiles the 11 nations living within the borders of Quebec, with testimonies and carefully curated objects. Two of the McCord’s current shows include Becoming Montreal is about the depictions of the city in the 1800s, and Wampum: Beads of diplomacy, which displays over 40 wampum belts from different collections, underscoring their symbolism and history.
Visit the city’s newest museum: Centre des Mémoires Montréalaises promises to capture the metropois’ history and citizens. Check out the vintage neon signs at the entrance, and look for the colourful balls that once decorated Ste-Catherine in the Gay Village. There are two exhibition up now: a lookback at the 90 years of Le Chaînon, the women’s shelter and resource centre, and Détours, which focuses on hidden corners of the city. Located at 1201 St Laurent.