There are a lot of chefs in the kitchen for the Canadian premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, a triptych set in three time periods that tells the stories of amateur actors (played by real actors) involved in staging performances of the story of Christ. Three different Toronto independent theatre companies, all with reputations for innovative staging and creation in their past work, each tackle one of the three acts. Ordinarily, such a complicated arrangement would be to a show’s detriment, but not in this case. While you need to be prepared for a marathon of theatre (the show runs four hours, incluing two intermissions), you’re certainly going to get your money’s worth.

“A cross between Woodstock and the Algonquin Round Table,” is what Michael Redhill called it. Dorothy Parker grinding out an electric cover of “The Star Spangled Banner”? Well, not quite. Rather, Redhill, the literary curator for Luminato 2013, was describing A Literary Picnic, the annual festival’s celebration of storytelling, creativity, and the written word.

The 2013 Toronto Jazz Festival descends on the city this Friday with a huge “free for all” event. That means all of Friday’s programming at every Jazz Festival venue is, yes, completely free of charge. There will be concerts from local favourites Molly Johnson and Mary Margaret O’Hara, plus a show by Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves, who will be launching the fest from its epicentre, Nathan Phillips Square.

Here’s a rundown of some of the shows worth checking out on Friday—and during the rest of the festival, when you’ll actually have to pay.

Folks who are planning on having a swim in the pool at Scadding Court Community Centre over the next few days may find themselves a little disappointed. Those who want to go fishing, however, will probably be ecstatic.

For the rest of the week, the Community Centre will be holding its annual Gone Fishin’ event, meaning its indoor pool will be an indoor fish pond. The pool has been drained, dechlorinated, and refilled with 2,000 rainbow trout, to be caught by local children and families.

For a band about to release a first full-length album, Toronto’s Bravestation have already found themselves sharing the stages with some prominent names, including all of the great Y-named bands like Young Empires and Yacht. They have just released a new single, “Signs of the Civilized,” that has taken their genre-defying sound to new heights. In preparation for their CMW show (8:30 p.m. Saturday at Horseshoe), guitarist Derek Wilson—with Devin, one half of the group’s formidable brother tandem—found time to answer our questions.

Torontoist: Why should we see you at CMW?

Derek Wilson: We’re finally playing new songs from our upcoming album, and we’ll even throw in a performance by Wintersleep as part of the deal if you come and watch our set.

What’s your favourite Toronto venue, and why?

Horseshoe Tavern is legendary, for sure. But we also really enjoy playing Wrongbar, it has a great layout and vibe.

What’s your preference: indoor or outdoor venues?

Indoor venues are usually more intimate, and shows in them take place at night. Everything good happens at night.

What’s your preference: giant music festivals, or single shows?

I’ll have to take a rain check on this question since we’ve yet to experience SxSW, Coachella, or Osheaga.

Any advice for CMW-goers?

Find the parties with free booze and soak in as many performances, venues, and panels as possible.

What’s your favourite moment in a concert you’ve played so far?

Our encore performance of “As We Rest” in Ottawa at Ritual where members of Young Empires joined us on stage while our friends, fans, and family sang along to every word was magical, for us.

What’s happening for the band after CMW?

We’re releasing videos/short films for two new songs entitled “Signs of the Civilized” and “Western Thrills,” with an album surfacing shortly thereafter.

Dan Magan plays the Haliax Pop Explosion in November 2011. Photo by Corbin Smith.

Screw fighting, Saturday night’s all right for music. Sunday, too.

Fanfarlo
Mod Club (22 College Street)
Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

This London, England-based quintet broke onto their home scene in 2006, but didn’t make the jump across the pond until their debut full-length album Reservoir dropped in late 2009. But they found a home with their blend of pop and folk, the adorable vocals of Amos Memon and Cathy Lucas, and a unique orchestration with an eclectic assortment of instruments. Since then, they haven’t stopped adding to their arsenal of musical tools. Their latest album Rooms Filled With Light, released last month, mixes in a heavy dose of ’80s electronica—which works much better than it sounds.

Go if: You don’t have enough musical saw in your life.

Bravestation
Horseshoe Tavern (370 Queen Street West)
Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

Describing music to someone can be an undeniably tricky endeavor. It’s always important to proceed with caution when trying to reduce an artist’s sound to a complex formula employing mash-ups of genres and other bands—sometimes qualifying this amalgam even further by then placing it in a quirky location—like, say, space or the rainforest. So to say that Toronto’s Bravestation are like the long-lost stepbrother of The National who happen to have been raised by the Killers in a small African village, may not entirely do the group’s rich textures any justice.

Perhaps some music simply needs to be heard, and that’s what is happening more and more for Bravestation these days. Having confounded rock critics even further by earning Peter Gabriel comparisons with their new single, “Signs of the Civilized,” they are readying their debut full-length for release later this year. If it sounds anything like their previous output, it will be both surprising and likely to blow up the super-computer that creates these hybrid genres.

Go if: You want to take your own shot at classifying the unclassifiable.

Artist Select Series: Brendan Canning
The Garrison (1197 Dundas Street West)
Saturday, 9 p.m.

A new element in this year’s festival is a joint production between local music agency Young Lion’s Music Club, Spinner, Canadian Music Week, and Red Bull Music Academy: the Artist Select Series. Three Canadian artists were handed the Garrison and six to seven time slots, and got to program their own evening of CMW music. Shad was up first on Wednesday, followed by Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys on Friday, and Saturday ends with Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning, who will host and DJ in between sets. He’s got a doozy of a show, featuring top-notch TO talent like the Balconies, ALX, and Teenage Kicks, plus Montreal’s Uncle Bad Touch and Yardlets. Even a band from down under, Melbourne’s Husky. A guaranteed stellar evening.

Go if: You want a small peek at Brendan Canning’s iTunes library.

Dan Mangan
Canadian Room (inside Royal York Hotel) (199 Queen Street West)
Saturday, 9:05 p.m.

As part of a solid line-up at the Indies that includes Passion Pit and Rich Aucoin, Dan Mangan somehow manages to remain a standout. The singer-songwriter has been on a steady ascent since he first picked up a guitar, and specializes in the kind of lush, intimate tunes that seem only a natural by-product of his Vancouver hometown. There is an earnestness and literate quality to his evocative lyrics that cuts to the core of a myriad of complex emotions.

His rise to prominence began with 2010’s Nice, Nice, Very Nice, which was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize and released in the United States and Europe on the Toronto-based Arts & Crafts label. He has branched out his spare arrangements on his newest effort, last year’s Oh, Fortune, and the result has been an unequivocal success. As evidence, he has been nominated for Junos this year in four categories including, inexplicably, Best New Artist.

Go if: You’re feeling a little melancholy and in need of a big musical hug.

Rich Aucoin
Fairmont Royal York (100 Front Street West)
Saturday, 10:25 p.m.

Rich Aucoin doesn’t do anything halfway. His breakout EP, 2011′s We’re All Dying to Live, is a towering, anthemic achievement that, by recording standards alone, is already day-makingly good as it is. Now imagine that it was written as the soundtrack to a film Aucoin himself edited, spliced together from dozens of others, and that the whole idea took root during a cross-Canada cycling expedition for cancer research a few years back. Oh, and that there’s something like 500 unique contributors on the record in total. No big deal.

We first saw him in his element last summer, at a bar in Halifax called Gus’s. Months later, in January, it was the Drake. No matter where it happens, a Rich Aucoin show is its own universe with its own natural laws, where energy is utterly limitless and confetti cannons are bottomless. There aren’t enough glowing adjectives for what this electro-pop phenom is doing for Canadian music.

Go if: You ever played with a parachute in gym class and totally want to again.

Grahmzilla
Wrongbar (1279 Queen Street West)
Saturday, 1 a.m.

Saturday’s a fine night for dancing, and Toronto favourite Grahmzilla is expert in ensuring that sort of thing goes down. Known for being the music end of ill-fated local duo Thunderheist, and more recently for some sweet slow-jam mix-tapes, he can throw down electro, hip-hop, breaks, and more as if it wasn’t any kind of thing. He also does live PA and DJ performances as Nautiluss, a deep techno project signed to Montreal’s Turbo Records. So… he’s pretty sweet, I guess.

Go if: You’re fixin’ for a throw-down.

Band Oberhofer
Phoenix Concert Theatre (410 Sherbourne Street)
Sunday, 8:15 p.m.

It’s a good thing we don’t go to concerts to read, because with songs like “o0Oo0O0o” and “Away Frm U,” a track list can look more like your 13-year-old sister’s text history. They’d probably be about the same thing too, since Oberhofer’s forthcoming LP Time Capsules II (March 27) revolves around frontman Brad Oberhofer’s broken heart as he moved from Tacoma to NYU and lost the girl. The lyrics are like a page from his diary, but the music is strong and Oberhofer’s voice is bold. With the band on the brink of blowing up, we’re sure Oberhofer will break his fair share of hearts along the way too.

Go if: You’ve never cried and danced at the same time before.

Ali Shaheed Muhammad
Cheval (606 King Street West)
Sunday, 10 p.m.-ish

Known best as the producer and DJ for hip-hop pioneers A Tribe Called Quest, Ali Shaheed Muhammad has had a rocky career since the group broke up in 1998. For a while afterwards, he joined members of En Vogue and Tony! Toni! Toné! to form Lucy Pearl, which only put out one album. In 2004 he released a solo album which, while not being a smash hit or even close, showed that he’s actually not a bad MC. But for his CMW show, he’s going back to his roots—manning the decks at Cheval at an as-yet-undisclosed time. Unlike those cheesy MCs who get lazy and go on DJ tours, Ali Shaheed Muhammad is the real deal, so expect a quality DJ set, creative mixing, and some seriously sweet jams.

Go if: You are a serious nostalgic for back in the days and/or want a reason to go inside a King Street West nightclub.

Tupper Ware Remix Party
Bovine Sex Club (542 Queen St. W.)
Sunday, 11 p.m.

The men of Tupper Ware Remix Party are superheroes. Or maybe they’re aliens. Or are they alien superheroes? Okay, so it’s hard to tell exactly what they are, but what they do is a little more transparent: incite dance parties and get bodies gyrating. Dressed in outlandish costumes befitting their nature, they create what could be the soundtrack to a lost ‘80s video game or cartoon. With pulsating drums, crunchy guitars, and dramatic synth lines, the band earns high scores without any need for vocals.

Ostensibly from a distant planet from which they have taken their name (but more than likely calling Halifax their home), the relative newcomers to Earth have self-released albums like 2007’s Sex Is A Machine That Likes To Dance and 2010’s Poised To Dominate. They possess a refreshing, tongue-in-cheek sense of humour in an industry saturated with artists that take themselves far too seriously, and would make an excellent choice for those looking to close out their fest with a bang.

Go if: You want to dance, stupid! Or, if you just want to see a man wearing an oversized parking cone on his head.

In the confusing realm of musical sub-genres, it could best be referred to as dance-rock. Or electro-pop. It’s so hard to tell anymore. But whatever it’s called, you’ll know it by the chest-pounding kick of the bass drum that doesn’t seem to flag even when the singer announces “a slow one.” Or the incessant hiss of the hi-hat propelling a rolling bass-line. Or the snaky guitar runs blending seamlessly with the shifty, echoing synths and textures that are now often played through the newest of instruments: the MacBook. That’s why the kids packed into the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern this Friday night: to catch a bill of well-matched talent in a showcase of a unique sound.

That’s not to say that the bands all sounded exactly alike. Within every musical sub-genre, there are, of course, more sub-genres still—an endless rabbit hole of classification. Paradise Animals kicked the evening off with a moody, even tortured, variation on the theme. To a slick beat and bass groove, singer Mark Andrade crooned in a deep lamenting baritone, as if he wanted to get people dancing, but also have them feel a little bummed about it. As the crowd filtered in, the Toronto quartet played a solid set consisting largely of songs off their new self-titled EP, and managed to set a tone for the rest of the evening.

Montreal’s HonheeHonhee brought punk rock energy to the show, suitably punctuated with guitar freak-outs and “whoa-oh-whoa” sing-alongs. The amply bearded Greg Halpin yelped his vocals with a halting urgency, and fellow guitarist-vocalist Stefan F.-Gow, himself dapperly mustached, matched Halpin’s fervent enthusiasm throughout. There was a pervasive sense of fun during the performance, embodied by a few extended guitar face-offs and the rarer—but far more theatrical—back-to-back interlude. Halpin seemed genuine in proclaiming how grateful the group was to be included on the bill, perhaps sensing the commonality in the entire line-up’s repertoire. At one point he announced that the show was, in fact, their new bass player’s first one. The natural chemistry and camaraderie on display make that claim seem unbelievable. (As do some older photos on the web.)

Preparing to launch their first full-length, Toronto’s Bravestation hit the stage right around the time the place was reaching fire code capacity. In a workmanlike fashion, they got down to the business of creating a densely layered and ambitious variation on whatever the theme of the night had become. While the rhythms remained lively, there was an added dash of drama to the recipe, carried by the versatile lead vocals of bassist Devin Wilson. Early on, “Clocks and Spears” sounded like it could almost have doubled as a mission statement, with its plodding bass washed out in occasional cascades of shimmering synth.

The band announced with a hint of trepidation that they would be playing quite a few new songs, and these seemed to reflect some further sonic experiments. “Signs of the Civilized” showed an expansion into tribal drums, with Jeremy Rossetti exploring the further reaches of his drum kit while Andrew Heppner unleashed a barrage of Eastern-tinged flourishes from his keys and laptop. They closed out their set with crowd favorite “White Wolves,” which saw Derek Wilson’s understated guitar runs leading the charge through a deftly packed three-plus minutes of crafty, indie-rock goodness. Shouts of “encore” were left unfulfilled as the group shuffled off, as unassumingly as they had arrived. No doubt, leaving the room wanting more was satisfying to them. They have an album release coming up, so there will be plenty of time to satiate listeners in coming weeks.

A fitting culmination to the evening, Young Empires—on hand to release their debut EP Wake All My Youth—closed things out with dynamic aplomb. The group tore through a raucous seven-song set. Singer Matthew Young was noticeably amped, interacting well with the warmly receptive crowd, at one point calling for the house lights to be turned down while he provided portable lights to those near the front. After introducing the song “Beaches,” Young’s voice took to soaring heights, and as he passionately wailed about “the way your body moves,” there was the collective feeling that he could have been singing about any of us, or all of us at the same time. It may not have been the deepest of sentiments, but it matched perfectly with the band’s bombastic spirit.

The group briefly left the stage, but barely had any time to catch their breath before returning for a two-song encore. “Enter Through The Sun” turned out to be the ideal closing track—equal parts Bloc Party and The Cure. Afterward, throngs of bleary-eyed hipsters went out into the early morning to search for a suitable after-hours spot. There was no way that anyone was going to be able to get any sleep after the pulse-pounding showcase they had just witnessed.

Photos by Colleen Lam.