The life and music of Kate McGarrigle will be celebrated in concert at Toronto's Luminato festival tonight featuring members of her family, including her sisters, Anna and Jane, and her children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and friends like Emmylou Harris. Luminato also screened a film of the 2011 NYC concert tribute to Kate, an excerpt of which you can watch here along with a CBC performance of Kate's song "(Talk to Me of) Mendocino" by Anna, Rufus, and Martha. The city of Montreal will rename a square in her honor next week.
The life and music of Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle will be celebrated in concert tonight as part of Luminato, Toronto's festival of arts. For the concert at Toronto's Massey Hall, members of Kate’s family—her sisters, Anna and Jane, her children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and her niece and nephew, Lily and Sylvan Lanken, and Anna’s husband, Dane Lanken—will be joined on stage by friends Emmylou Harris, Bruce Cockburn, Ron Sexsmith, Jane Siberry, Teddy Thompson, and many more. This follows similarly star-filled salutes in London and New York to Kate McGarrigle, who died of sarcoma in 2010. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Kate McGarrigle Fund, created to further sarcoma research. You can read many of the family members' personal remembrances of Kate's in the Globe and Mail.
An additional tribute to Kate McGarrigle is due to come next week, the Montreal Gazette reports, when the city of Montreal renames a square in her honor in the neighborhood of Outremont, where she lived. To see a plan of the site, go to montrealgazette.com.
Tonight's concert at Massey Hall marks the culmination of a series of Luminato events focused on the McGarrigles, following last Friday's discussion with Anna McGarrigle and novelist Michael Ondaatje and a Wednesday night screening of director Lian Lunson's film Sing Me the Songs That Say I love You, which documents the 2011 concert tribute to Kate McGarrigle at The Town Hall in New York City. You can watch a clip from Lunson's film, featuring the song "Fare Thee Well," here:
In advance of these Luminato events, Anna McGarrigle spoke with the Canadian Press about her sister's legacy, the primacy of family in Kate's life, and the impact tribute concerts like tonight's have had. "I'm not the first one to say it—my sister was a genius," Anna tells Canadian Press writer Nick Patch. "She was really original and a wonderful musician and a great songwriter." Read the article at yahoo.com.
Last year, Nonesuch Records released Tell My Sister, a three-disc set comprising newly remastered editions of Kate & Anna McGarrigle's beloved 1976 self-titled debut, which includes songs like "(Talk to Me of) Mendocino" and "Heart Like a Wheel," and its equally praised 1977 follow-up, Dancer with Bruised Knees, plus a third disc of previously unreleased songs and demos. Anna recently joined her nephew Rufus and niece Martha at the CBC's Studio 211 for a haunting performance of "Mendocino." Watch it here:
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