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.
Our pal Dr Christopher Labos will be talking up his book, Does Coffee Cause Cancer? on Friday at Indigo Brossard, 6-9pm and Saturday, 11am-1pm at Indigo Place Montreal Trust. If you head downtown, look for our newly-minted retiree Ken Connors!
Le Patin Libre elevates figure skating to high art. Their new dance-on-ice show, Murmuration, attempts to recreate the collective movement of starlings with 15 performers. The troupe has serious artistic chops: they performed last year at the Venice Dance Biennale. Murmuration continues at the Mont-Royal arena in the Plateau until Sunday. The audience is invited to skate on ice after the shows, with $5 rentals available.
Check out 69 different sustainable vehicles at the seventh edition of the Montreal Electric & Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle Show. Until Sunday at the Big O.
Music lovers across Canada will mark Record Store Day on Saturday. Visit participating shops Atom Heart, Aux 33 Tours, Beatnick Music, Boîte à musique, Freeson Rock, Le Nouveau Soundcentral, Le Vacarme and L’Oblique.
Battlewar: Over the Top pits wrestlers like Champion Benjamin Tull, Karl Jepson and "Mononc" St-Jacques in a variety of matchups, Sunday, 8pm at Foufounes Électriques.
Acclaimed playwright Drew Hayden Taylor returns to the city for his second Montreal show of the season, with his new play, Open House. Four would-be home buyers visit an open house; their differing backgrounds set up a debate about who most deserves the keys. This Infinitheatre show is coming at a timely moment, when housing is at a premium across the country. Until April 28, at Factory Studios, 2000 Rue Notre Dame E.
Final weekend for Fifteen Dogs, an adaptation of André Alexis’s award-winning novel about dogs gaining consciousness. Two deities, Hermes and Apollo, make a bet over a drink at the Sir Winston pub and decide to grant awareness to 15 dogs in a kennel. Mirabella Sundar Singh, who was in the original sold-out Crow’s Theatre production in Toronto, is reprising her role. The show is served by being transposed from Toronto to Montreal, with an attention to locality that comes through in the set and script. Until Sunday.
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.
Touring show Shen Yun makes its annual visit, bringing large-scale classical Chinese dance to Maisonneuve Theatre. Friday, 7:30pm, Saturday 2 and 7:30pm and Sunday, 1pm.
The Hudson Film Festival will screen Quebec film, Ru, based on the life of Kim Thuy, Friday at 2pm. Two artsy films follow: the Oscar-winning short The Last Repair Shop (directed by Canadian Ben Proudfoot) at 4:30pm, followed at 8pm by another Oscar-winning Canadian doc, Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got. The 1985 film follows the King of the Clarinet. Other films screen Saturday and Sunday, at the Hudson Village Theatre.
Les Grands Ballets unfolds a double bill: Edward Clug’s ode to life, Carmina Burana, and Jeunehomme, a 1986 homage to Mozart by Uwe Scholz. Until Saturday at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier.
Friday’s music picks: Ottawa singer TALK continues to tour his debut album, performing with opener Sofia Duhaime, at Beanfield Theatre, 8pm, before returning to the venue on Tuesday the 23rd. Nigerian Afrobeat singer-songwriter Davido at Place Bell in Laval, 8pm.
And it’ll be like meeting your dad’s not-so-secret second family: Orchestre métropolitain Yannick Nézet-Séguin splits his attention with other orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra. The musicians from the city of Brotherly Love are coming to visit Montreal, to perform Rachamaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Florence Price’s Symphony No 4, Friday 7:30pm. Rachmaninoff, whose 150th birthday was marked last April, had a long and fruitful relationship with the Orchestra; Price is considered the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and Yannick and the Orchestra recorded her Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 in 2021.
Festival de la voix is technically over, but a final ‘après festival’ event will spotlight singer-songwriter Connie Kaldor performing and telling stories from her 45 years in the business. Free, at the Stewart Hall Cultural Centre in Pointe-Claire on Friday 7:30pm.
Saturday’s music picks: Punk rock cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Club Soda at 8pm. Alt-indie singer-songwriter Elliot Moss, Petit Campus at 8pm.
Fantastical tales and fables from the works of Sibelius, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mendelssohn will be performed by the 110-strong St. Lawrence Choir, soloists and an orchestra at Légendes, Saturday, 7:30pm at Maison symphonique.
Nuits d’Afrique continues its series of weekend concerts, Les Cabarets Acoustique, including jazz singer Thaynara Péri, a Brazilian native now based in Montreal, who performs 9pm Saturday at Club Balattou.
Sunday’s music picks: Nuits d’Afrique presents Malian singer and Grammy winner Oumou Sangaré at MTelus, 8pm. Florida Soundcloud rapper and skateboarder BLP Kosher at Le Studio TD, 8pm.
The very funny Zabrina Douglas expounds on her time as a nurse and growing up Jamaican-Canadian. Her debut album comedy album, Things Black Girls Say, was nominated for a 2023 Juno. She headlines at The Comedy Nest, with support from the likes of Rodney Ramsay, John Cotrocois, Hadi Kubba and more! Friday and Saturday, 8 and 10:30pm.
Several shows on tap at Montreal Improv in St Henri, including The Immigrant Edition, an improv show based on real-life stories of moving to start a new life, Friday 9:30pm.
At burlesque headquarters The Wiggle Room: owner Frenchy Jones hosts two nights of magic: Mamma Mia! ABBA Burlesque goes Friday, 9pm with Maria Topcatt, Yaya Havana, Petro and Roxy Torpedo. And appropriately on Saturday, at 9pm: it’s 4/20: Mary Jane Burlesque, with Rosie Bourgeoisie, Elle Diablo, Enshantay and Mina Minou. The Gay AF Comedy Tour turns up with headliner Al Val and guests, Sunday, 8pm.
ONGOING EVENTS
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 Arsenal hosts Immersive Disney Animation, which spotlights House of Mouse characters and music, including movies like Frozen, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. At Arsenal Contemporary Gallery until May 4.
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.