Toronto – It’s already autumn before you know it, and the inaugural year of the Canwest Cabaret is here to help us get through the colder patches (or expose us to, depending on how far you need to travel). Set in the Young Performance Center and backdropped by the hip distillery district, the event is a refreshing break designed to offend those head-nodding/booty-shaking shows and trump them with style. Although each show is only for 1 hour, the intimate cabaret setting generates a flare that’s much higher class. Needless to say, it identifies with a different age bracket… but we’ll get to that.
Sarah Slean has been on the playlist for a long time. Even though Wiki labels her piano-pop (and every time the p-word enters the brain it kicks on autonomic revulsion), I love the mindset that the meandering and catchy melodies place me – far more pensive then I’d care to get out of. In hindsight it’s perfect for the cabaret with candle-lit tables full of people slow-sipping their margaritas – where they sit temporarily lovelorn even if he/she’s a chair and an arm-stretch away. Let’s just say the best praise I can give this concert was the fact that I loathed shooting the first 3 songs and actually couldn’t wait for their media-liaison to come over and tell me time’s up – so I can sit down and listen. Her music has certainly grown deeper from her Night Bug days. On the slower songs, Sarah prowled over the piano looking for the right time to strike. “Get Home“, “Shadowland”, and “No Place at All” was all up to par with the recordings. Her voice was crisp, and the 3-piece band worked extremely well to replace some of the guitar scores that were there. Faster songs like “Euphoria” and “Parasol” were also pretty well paced. Seeing the contrabass cut across all the strings in a motion that looked like slitting-throats was very entertaining. And if I was a betting man, I’d put $20 on the drums having much more fun than the other two.
All in all it was a very fun show, but I guess now it comes to the part – I wished the crowd was younger. This is the “Young” Center, for crying-out-loud. I saw silver-haired veterans dotting the tables as if I was at TSO, and the few people in their 20-30s were tucked away upstairs with me. Is the venue or format inherently prohibitive? Probably not, and maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that the Canwest Cabaret is in infancy – I look forward to seeing Toronto embrace this great series in the next 7 years.