Latest news with #AvaKobrinsky
Winnipeg Free Press
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Cheers to 50 years of the Folk Fest — & 50 more
Opinion Five years ago, there were no festivals. It was the summer of 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic meant no live… anything. No music. No theatre. All the festivals that have come to define summer in Manitoba were purged from the calendar. Organizations did their best, of course, offering smaller, virtual presentations for a time defined by staying home. But it wasn't the same. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Lineups stretch far past the entrance before the gates open at Folk Fest on Thursday. Five years on, music festivals, in particular, are still feeling the aftershocks of that time, owing to both financial losses sustained as well as increased operational costs in a post-pandemic landscape. A spate of cancellations of American music festivals last summer prompted NPR to call it 'the festival recession.' It was a trend we saw on this side of the border as well. Just for Laughs cancelled its 2024 events in Montreal and Toronto. And some of these festivals — popular, beloved festivals, even — never recovered. The Regina Folk Festival, which was supposed to celebrate its 53rd year in 2025, announced it would be permanently shutting down in March after going on hiatus in 2024. The Vancouver Island MusicFest is not happening this year, while the 2025 edition of the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival could be its last. It's against this backdrop that the Winnipeg Folk Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend. Fifty years is an incredible — and, these days, an increasingly improbable — run. Especially since it was supposed to be a one-off, originally conceived by founders Mitch Podolak, Ava Kobrinsky and Colin Gorrie as a celebration for Winnipeg's centennial in 1974. But a legacy festival isn't built by mere endurance — or survival — alone. It's built by people who have a vision for it, who can recognize both where it came from and where it could go. MANITOBA ARCHIVES Winnipeg Folk Festival founders Mitch Podolak (left) and Ava Kobrinsky in 1977. It's built by the generations of people who have grown up with it, who take their kids or grandkids to Birds Hill Park every second weekend of July. It's built by the people who dedicate hard-earned vacation days and money to attend every year, regardless of who is performing. It's built by the people who volunteer their time and energy to making sure the whole thing runs as planned and can pivot when it doesn't. Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. Festivals need stewardship. We all saw the grotesque failure of Woodstock '99 and its wholesale abandonment of the peace and love ethos that made the 1969 event so iconic; organizers didn't care about making it a safe temporary community. So much of what makes folk fest what it is is exactly that: community. Sure, there's the annual kvetching about the lineup — someone's best-ever year is always someone else's worst-ever and vice versa — or even the definition of 'folk 'music. But even that is part of the ritual. Creating the kind of place where people want to return again and again, year after year, decade after decade is no small feat and it doesn't just happen. Nor will it continue to happen if we don't keep supporting it and our new normal will look a lot like that summer of 2020. Crowds at the Little Stage on the Prarie during the 2011 Folk Festival. Folk fest is special and rare and ours. Cheers to 50 years — and here's to 50 more. Jen ZorattiColumnist Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen. Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
What's up: Ava Kobrinsky celebration, cocktail competition, tapestries, Mari Padeanu, Scattered Seeds
West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave. Saturday, 8 p.m. Tickets $35 at TODD KOROL / FREE PRESS files Ava Kobrinsky and Mitch Podolak stand in front of the soon to open West End Cultural Centre in 1987. For 50 years, Ava Kobrinsky has been a pillar of the Canadian folk music scene. Together with her late husband Mitch Podolak, Kobrinsky co-founded the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the West End Cultural Centre and Home Routes/Chemin Chez Nous. They hosted thousands of travelling musicians at their Wolseley home and helped launch the careers of too many artists to count. In 2021, Kobrinsky was inducted into the Order of Manitoba for her outstanding commitment to the arts, having played a role in the establishment of many other cultural organizations, including Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre and Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers. Saturday's concert at the WECC is a celebration of folk music and one of its fiercest champions, featuring Burnstick, James Culleton, David Graham, Sheena Legrand, Onna Lou, Flora Luna, Daniel Peloquin-Hopfner, Leonard Podolak, Jorge Requena Ramos and Orit Shimoni. — Jen Zoratti In Good Spirits cocktail competition WAG-Qaumajuq, 300 Memorial Blvd. Monday, 6:30-9:30 p.m. Tickets: $70 here. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Mixologists and bartenders will create concoctions at the In Good Spirits cocktail competition Monday. Eighteen of Winnipeg's best mixologists and bartenders will face off at WAG-Qaumajuq on Monday at the In Good Spirits cocktail competition. The third annual competition closes MB Somm Week, which features all manner of tastings and workshops put on by the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Association for Professional Sommeliers (CAPS Manitoba). Each of the participants has been assigned a specific spirit (including whisky, gin, vodka and pisco) on which they're to base their signature cocktail, which they'll create in front of the crowd starting at 6:30 p.m. Beyond that, it's all up to the bartenders and their imaginations to shake and stir the panel of judges and the public, with the chance for contestants to win a distillery tour, a bursary and other prizes. Among those participating are drinks slingers from Darling Bar, Nola, Baby Baby, the Manitoba Club, Solera, Sous Sol and Hy's Steakhouse. Tickets include a welcome cocktail, small bites and samples of the competitors' drinks, with $10 from each ticket sold going to the Canadian Mental Health Association. You don't need to be a member of CAPS Manitoba to attend; for the full list of participants and to buy tickets see — Ben Sigurdson Prairie Deck II C2 Centre for Craft, 1-392 Cumberland Ave. Runs until 26 June (Wednesday to Friday, noon to 4 p.m.) Free Edmonton-based artist Aja Louden's solo exhibition brings his vision of an Afrofuturist world to life in large-scale tapestries. Weaving a tale of two spacewomen — a mother and her daughter — exploring the prairies, Louden's work is a riot of colour and texture with themes of nature and technology running through each tufted piece. Louden's works in yarn explore science fiction, history and fantasy, promising to take visitors on a journey through time, space and alternate realities. — AV Kitching Mari Padeanu Park Alleys, 730 Osborne St. Friday, 9:30 p.m. Free Kinda weird to think Winnipeggers used to bowl without live jazz. SUPPLIED Mari Padeanu performs at Park Alleys on Friday. Over the past few years, Park Alleys has made the unlikely duo a staple of its weekly happenings. Singer Mari Padeanu is one of a few young stars in Park Alley's revolving cast of jazzers. The originals Padeanu performs, many from the singer's recent EP The Fool, decorate funk and pop grooves with romantic whimsy and melodies that harken back to the golden age of crooners. Filling out Padeanu's sound is sizable ensemble, including Josh Bonneauteau (drums), Sam Fournier (bass), Jasmine Henry (vocals), Daniel Nemez (guitar) and Tirian Plett (keys). Total non-sequitur: if you have the chance, check out the punched hole in the wall of one of Park Alley's bathroom stalls. Rather than repair it, management has framed it with the description 'Mixed media: dry-wall and toxic masculinity' and the title Couldn't Beat the Gutter. — Conrad Sweatman Scattered Seeds Craft Market Red River Exhibition Place, 3977 Portage Ave. Friday, noon to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets $10 at SUPPLIED Scattered Seeds Craft Market is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend with a Mother's Day sale. Scattered Seeds Craft Market is celebrating 30 crafty years with a special two-day pop-up at Red River Exhibition Place. The first iteration of the market took place in founder Deb Schwartz's East St. Paul home with crafts made by family and friends. The business quickly outgrew the living room and the sales have become popular annual events for local makers and shoppers. Promoted as 'Winnipeg's cosiest market,' Scattered Seeds' is hosting its first-ever Mother's Day market this weekend featuring more than 160 vendors, workshops, food trucks and a high tea service. Tickets for the latter are $70 per person with seatings still available for Friday between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Admission to the craft sale is free for children aged 12 and younger and discounted for seniors aged 65 and older. Half-price tickets are available for the last two hours of each day. — Eva Wasney
