On the last weekend of April, International Jazz Day Peterborough returns for its fourth year with dinner jazz concerts at local restaurants, a jazz workshop, and a headliner concert at Market Hall featuring acclaimed Canadian jazz bassist and vocalist Brandi Disterheft with her band from the epicenter of jazz, New York City.

According to organizer John Fautley, the focus of this year’s event is to feature and encourage women in jazz as well as to encourage amateur musicians of any age to incorporate jazz into their music-making and listening.

And, as in previous years, the event has the goal of cultivating a wider appreciation of and audience for jazz, by giving both local and international jazz musicians a chance to play. It also encourages people to visit downtown Peterborough and dine out at local restaurants while enjoying jazz from local musicians.

On Saturday, April 28th, there will be “Dine With Jazz” events from 5 to 8 p.m. at La Hacienda (190 Hunter St. W., Peterborough, 705-742-1559) featuring Steve Holt and Dave Young, Curry Village (306 George St. N., Peterborough, 705-742-1432) featuring Biff Hannon and Donna Collison, and Brio Gusto (182 Charlotte St, Peterborough, 705-745-6100) featuring Pete Woolidge and Federico Pontani.

New this year is a “Dine Later with Jazz” event on Saturday, April 28th from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at The Social (295 George St. N., Peterborough, 705-874-6724) featuring the Carrie Chesnutt Quartet with Carrie Chesnutt, Mike Graham, Dennis Pendrith, and Rakesh Tewari.

For all the Dine With Jazz events, there is no cover charge — you just pay for what you order.

The dinner jazz concerts have been a staple of International Jazz Day Peterborough since it was first organized in 2015 by Peterborough jazz musicians Chelsey Bennett and Craig Paterson. In 2011, UNESCO designated April 30th as International Jazz Day to celebrate “the virtues of jazz as an educational tool, and a force for peace, unity, dialogue and enhanced cooperation among people.”

Since then, events celebrating jazz take place at the end of April in cities all around the world, including Paris, Milan, and New York City.

Speaking of New York City, the organizers of this year’s event in Peterborough have scored a major coup in bringing Brandi Disterheft to the Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough) at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 29th.

Originally from Vancouver, the gifted upright bassist and vocalist relocated to New York City for an apprenticeship under Miles Davis’ bassist Ron Carter.

Her 2007 debut record, appropriately named Debut, was critically acclaimed (All About Jazz called it “the kind of first album that most musicians can only dream of to launch their careers”) and won the 2008 Juno Award for Traditional Jazz Album of the Year.

VIDEO: “60 Dollar Train” – Brandi Disterheft

VIDEO: “If Dreams Come True” – Brandi Disterheft with Harold Mabern and Joe Farnsworth

The Globe and Mail proclaimed Disterheft as “the hottest bassist in Canadian jazz” and the late jazz legend Oscar Peterson gave her high praise: “As we say in jazz, she is very serious.”

For her Market Hall concert, Disterheft will be joined by three New York jazz musicians: saxophonist Vincent Herring, drummer Carmen Intorre, and pianist Alex Minasian.

Tickets are $30 general admission (cabaret table seats are assigned) and are available in person at the Market Hall, by phone at 705-749-1146, or online at markethall.org.

The doors will open at 6:30 p.m. for a cocktail hour in the foyer prior to the concert, featuring live jazz supplied by Peterborough’s own PWB Trio. The youth jazz trio is comprised of bassist and bandleader Christopher Parnis, pianist Ian Webster, and drummer Aaron Blewett.

Earlier on Sunday and also at the Market Hall, there will be a Jazz Combo Workshop where participants can explore skills in improvisation and small combo musicianship.

The workshop — led by Sean Hully (winds and brass), Mike Graham (guitar and bass), and Brandon Munro (percussion) — takes place from 2 to 4 p.m.

The workshop is free both for participants and observers, but if you want to participate, register before April 22nd at www.123formbuilder.com/form-3474604/Event-Registration-Form.

Participants will be determined based on instrumentation and stated level of ability. Youth participants are encouraged, but musicians of any age are welcome.

For more information about International Jazz Day Peterborough, visit Facebook at www.facebook.com/internationaljazzdaypeterborough/.

I’m sitting at the back of the PCVS auditorium talking with Jen and Greg Nugent, who have invited me to have a sneak peek at Enter Stage Right’s new show After the Battle that opens on Wednesday, April 25th.

As I start my recorder, we are interrupted by a girl dressed up in yellow and green spandex.

“We need your help,” says the girl to Jen, the show’s director.

“What’s wrong?” asks Jen.

“Amy’s costume,” says the girl vaguely.

“What’s wrong with Amy’s costume exactly?” Jen pushes.

“Everything. It’s not fitting right.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Jen says.

These interactions are the reason I always cherish the time I spend with the cast and company of Enter Stage Right each year.

Now in its fifth year of operation, Enter Stage Right is a not-for-profit theatre company run by Jen and Greg Nugent — a sister-and-brother team who were former theatre kids and are now working as teachers.

When the duo realized that most area high schools no longer had the support to do theatrical performances, the pair created their own theatre company so that the area high school students slipping through the cracks can have their opportunity to be hands on in creating an original show.

Soon after I begin my recorder again, a tall girl wearing an awkwardly fitting blue spandex costume walks along the stage.

“Amy! Your costume is probably difficult because you put it on backwards,” Jen yells at the girl on the stage. “The zipper goes up the front.”

I never know just what’s going to happen when I come to visit, but I know that it’s always going to be a lot of fun.

Following up their production of Everybody Loves Archie last year, this year Enter Stage Right returns to comic books for inspiration with Greg’s original play After the Battle, which he first mentioned to me nearly three years ago.

After the Battle takes the audience into a world of colourful heroes and inept villains.

“The premise is about what a superhero does after there are no more battles left to fight,” Greg explains. “But it also looking at the idea of purpose — all the characters are looking for their role in the world. A lot of them have chosen a path that they thought at one time was the right one for them, but now they are trying to discern whether they should stay on it or take a different path.

“Sometimes we get caught in specific roles in life. We continue doing things that we don’t enjoy because that’s our role. A lot of the show is about characters looking at if they should break out of that mold and if they should take a different path, and the difficulty in doing that when you’ve put so much in that role. It’s hidden in there, with all the puns and songs and slapstick, but we manage to pull it all together with a wonderful cast that is really talented at what they do.”

When a meteor crashes into a high school in an unnamed metropolis, all the students are given super powers by the space rock. Some choose to be heroes, while others choose to be villains. But when the most powerful of the heroes, Captain So Much Better Than You, wipes out all the city’s crimes within a matter of days, the heroes and villains are swept into a state of banality and boredom where they don’t really know what to do with themselves.

Enter Madison Clark (played by Britney Burton), a normal girl who leaves her small town to move to the big city. While unpacking she meets inept burglar The Gooch and her canine-turned-human companion Snitchy (Jordan de Groot and Lauren Wilson, who perform as a hilarious comedy duo). Through her new unlikely friends, Madison is introduced to the community of third-tier heroes and villains that remain in the city.

“Madison Clark is our eyes and ears in meeting all the heroes and villains,” Greg says. “We get to see them through her eyes. In their eyes, the heroes think they are absolutely fantastic and key to the survival of the city, but through her eyes she sees that they are not as great as they may think.”

Although crime has been abolished in the city, one arch villain remains: Masterplan (played by a deliciously diabolical Elen Gaquollan). While the heroes tolerate her big ideas, Masterplan doesn’t seem to be able to get things to work out for her.

“Master Plan is the only super villain that has not been put in prison because she’s so bad at what she does that there is no point,” Greg says. “So she goes around with all these intricate and elaborate plans to take over the world that ultimately always blow up in her face.”

For After the Battle, Greg has created a whole world of zany and hilarious characters: The Multi-Purpose Marauder (Antje Kroes) who has 67 super powers, each more useless than the next; The Bureaucrat (Isaac Martin), who can do math equations really quickly; Appleonia (Lena Ross), who has an unlimited supply of apples, as well as apple puns; and, my personal favorite, The Wave (Taite Cullen), who is an angry homage to Aquaman.

“The Wave does not get along with people very well,” Greg says. “She’s a hero and is saving people in this town, but she really doesn’t like them.”

Other characters include The Guy in the Mask, played with awkward hilarity by Joel Alexandra, and the sultry Eye Candy, played by Amy Daye, who … well, her name kind of says it all. More characters appear in the yet-to-be-revealed second act including Reverend Right Hook (Shayne Fertile), The Green Thumb (Ceilidh Peters), and The Unspeakable Horror (Katey Cliff).

VIDEO: Singing in the Stairwell Vol. 11: Amy Daye (“Eye Candy”)

Much of the play’s emotional arc seems to revolve around Masterplan’s sidekick The Get It Girl, played by Lydia Etherington. A wonderful young actress who I have seen on stage before (most notably in Ryan Kerr’s production of Voices in 2016), Lydia takes on the role of this important character after the original actress left the production three weeks ago. With Lydia’s hilariously dry delivery, I can’t imagine anybody else as The Get It Girl.

“As Masterplan’s sidekick, The Get It Girl signed up for this great plan of taking over the world, but now it’s been seven years and it’s not going well,” Greg explains. “She’s one of the smarter characters in the show and begins to realize that this plan is not going to happen. However, she’s stuck in this rut where she needs to decide if she’s going to dedicate everything to taking over this town, or move on and do something different.”

Although superheroes are big business at the box office today, Greg admits that he took his inspiration for After the Battle from the 1966 television version of Batman starring Adam West.

“I think that version of Batman was such a magnificent show because it’s not like any other television show that’s out there,” Greg explains. “You’ve got this very interesting combination of action and comedy, and it often felt like all the actors had come from different genres and were coming together to be in on a big joke.

“So I came from the idea that it was very tongue in cheek, and everybody was in on it. I began to wonder what it’d be like if it was like this, but the characters weren’t in on the joke, and what they thought they were doing was not as heroic or villainous as they thought it was.”

With the exception of Amy Daye, Antje Kroes, Isaac Martin, Lauren Wilson, and Jordan de Groot, most of the cast of After the Battle are new to Enter Stage Right. The majority of the performers that appeared in Jen and Greg’s last two productions, Welcome to Butternut Grove and Everybody Loves Archie, graduated from high school last year and have moved on to other pursuits.

Thus, for After the Battle, Jen and Greg had the difficult challenge of recruiting an entire new company of performers to create the world of After the Battle. However, like other years, I was struck by the high energy and talent of the group.

“You’re always a little bit concerned in the first rehearsal if the cast is going to mesh or not,” Jen says. “But it was pretty obvious from the get go that they cared about the show and each other and creating a good story. If they can embrace their characters from the beginning, then it gives them a chance to be able to play around with them and help develop them more.”

In promoting the company, Jen says that Enter Stage Right really depends on the kids in the company as being their best ambassadors.

“The best way we get kids out (to participate in Enter Stage Right) is by word of mouth from kids that have a positive, uplifting experience, or feel really empowered and given a leadership opportunity,” Jen says. “Greg and I can go to schools to do workshops but, although we are not unlikeable, we are still adults … so sometimes what we say is taken with a grain of salt.

“When you have a group of kids who are respected and appreciated, then they are the ones who will tell people they should get involved. When you are doing something that isn’t officially affiliated to their school, then their heart is really in the right place. They really love theatre and are doing it for the right reasons.”

As a local theatre program, Enter Stage Right is very special to me. I have a great respect for Jen and Greg, and always admire the creativity and cutting-edge humour in their scripts. As someone who attended a high school that didn’t have a lot of support for the arts, I find that I relate to the kids appearing in the production, and I am always amazed by their spirit, their energy and their creativity.

But what I find the most important is that Enter Stage Right provides a safe and inclusive environment for local teenagers to create something interesting that can be enjoyed by audiences of every age. I believe in the work that Jen and Greg and their company do every year.

After the Battle is a fast and witty show that had me laughing out loud and falling in love with each character. If you love superheroes, or have a kid who does, or you just want to support some talented kids creating some fun theatre, come and see After the Battle.

After the Battle runs from Wednesday, April 25th to Saturday, April 28th at the PCVS Auditorium (201 McDonnel St., Peterborough). The shows starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are $15 at the door for adults, or $10 for students and seniors.

As long as I have known Randy Read, artistic director of New Stages Theatre Company in Peterborough, he has been telling me about Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America. It’s a show that often comes up in our conversations, and a show he has told me I need to see one day.

We will all finally get a chance to experience this two-part American modern classic in April and May when Randy presents a staged reading of Angels in America, featuring an all-star cast of local and out-of-town actors, as part of New Stages Theatre Company’s popular Page on Stage series.

On Sunday, April 22nd, Randy and his players will present Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches, and will continue with Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika, on Sunday, May 27th. Both performances take place at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough.

“It’s a magnificent play,” Randy says. “The language is so rich. The themes are so complex and relevant to everybody in some way.”

Written by American playwright Tony Kushner, Angels in America has a long production history. Part 1: Millennium Approaches made its stage debut in May 1991 at the Eureka Theater Company in San Francisco, with the second part Perestroika making its first official stage performance in November 1992.

However, the show was finally combined when it was brought to Broadway in 1993. Although the show runs approximately seven hours in its entirety, split into two parts and containing four intermissions, Angels in America won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 and was awarded both the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Play in 1994.

In 2003, it was made into an HBO miniseries directed by Mike Nichols and starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Mary-Louise Parker, Emma Thompson, and more. It was the most-watched made-for-cable film that year, garnering much critical acclaim and multiple Golden Globe and Emmy awards.

In April 2017, a revival of Angels in America made its debut on the London stage where it won the Olivier Award for Best Revival. The production has now returned to Broadway for the first time in 25 years, opening on March 25, 2018 and starring Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield.

Taking place in the 1980s during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Angels in America was one of the first major productions to openly examine the relationships between gay men and to deal with the subject of AIDS. Released during an era when society was finally changing its attitudes towards homosexuality, the play was hailed a progressive masterpiece but still raised controversy among groups uncomfortable with the subject matter.

Although the show premiered nearly 25 years ago, the themes of Angels in America are as relevant today as they were when it premiered.

“It’s incredible looking at it again now, how relevant it is today,” Randy says. “It was written in response to the Reagan administration at a time when there was a kind of greed, in terms of money being more important to people than looking after each other.

“It feels like we are regressing in some ways. I haven’t actually worried about nuclear war, in a genuine way, since I was a young man. Now it feels like its surfacing again. The thing about these plays is that they are really about that human beings have no choice but to move forward, and when we resist that we get into trouble.”

Randy began his relationship with Angels in America when he worked as the casting director for the show’s first Canadian production in 1998.

“I probably saw the show twenty to thirty times during that time,” Randy says. “To me it’s just a very special script. I’m trying to think of another play as important as this from the end of the 20th century. There was Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and then Angels in America.”

Because of the magnitude of Angels in America, Randy chose his popular reading series to bring the play to the Peterborough stage.

“Because of the complexity of it, we couldn’t possibly afford to do a full production of Angels in America,” Randy explains. “The rehearsal time involved to do it justice would have to have three or four weeks, and that’s a lot of money you’re talking about.”

However, Randy has assembled a cast of eight local and out-of-town actors for the staged reading: Derek McGrath as Roy Cohn, Jeff Lillico as Prior Walter, Kate Suhr as Harper Pitt, Sergio Di Zio as Louis Ironson, Jesse LaVercombe as Joe Pitt, Linda Kash as Hannah Pitt/Ethel Rosenberg, Megan Murphy as The Angel, and Troy Adams as Belize (who will be reprising his role from the successful 2013 Soul Pepper Theatre production in Toronto).

“The reading series is so successful because it seems people love the purity of the words and the actors,” Randy adds. “If we were doing a full production, there would be very stark theatrical images that we won’t have in the reading. I still think that the language is so rich and strong and character-connected that the audience will have sufficient material to be able to engage.”

Because of the size of the show and its importance to Randy, the readings will differ slightly compared to past Page on Stage readings. The production will include minimal lighting and sound effects, and Randy will disperse with the usual reading of stage directions.

Also, due to the length of the show (each presentation will last approximately three hours, with two 10-minute intermissions), the “talk back” session at the end of each reading will be temporarily retired — although Randy does encourage any audience member who wants to discuss the show to freely contact him via email.

“I have to trust the script and the faith that I have in it,” Randy says. “I have to trust the audience to work with us. I have to trust that they are engaged enough that they’ll stay with us. It’s the words, the actors, and the audience, and that’s enough. That’s all that you need.”

In many of our visits over the years, Randy has expressed how much he has wanted to bring Angels in America to Peterborough. Now that he is finally making that wish a reality, Randy acknowledges the nervous tension he is experiencing about finally staging this show at Market Hall.

“I’m terrified because this show is so important to me,” Randy admits. “It’s hugely challenging. But because it’s so challenging, it gives me a stronger drive to do it. And because there is a fear of failing, there is a stronger drive to make it work. I can’t control anything once things start. I guess that’s what’s exciting about live theatre to me. Once it starts, anything can happen. You have little control over it.”

“But it’s important to me because I really want our audience to experience what these plays are, because they are both very special pieces of work. I know there are a lot of people who haven’t seen them before. I think there is a depth and richness to them and I want our audience to experience this.

“At the end of the day, as corny as it might sound, I love our audience. I love them individually and collectively and I want to give them the best that I can give them. It’s the whole reason for doing this, really. I think Angels in America is one of the best ten plays written in the last twenty five years.”

Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches will be performed on Sunday, April 22nd at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough). Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika will be performed on Sunday, May 27th, also at the Market Hall. Both shows begin at 7:30 p.m.. Tickets are $25 ($15 students/artworkers) and are available in person at the Market Hall box office, by phone at 705-749-1146, or online at markethall.org.

“My music is the fusion between a mango seed and an apple seed, so it makes a tree that grows in Cuba and grows in Canada.”

That’s a favourite metaphor that Cuban-Canadian singer-songwriter Alexis Puentes — better known by his stage name Alex Cuba — uses to describe how his musical roots influence the songs he writes from his home in northwestern British Columbia.

The award-winning musician will be bringing his Latin-infused soul, rock and pop music to the Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough) at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24th.

The 44-year-old Alexis was born in Artemisa, a city southwest of Havana in Cuba, along with his fraternal twin brother Adonis. Their father Valentin was a respected guitarist and teacher and, at the age of six, the two brothers began playing music in their father’s group of 24 guitarists, including in an appearance that aired on Cuban national television.

When not on tour in Cuba, the boys performed at Artemisa’s Casa de Cultura across the street from their home. They played with Cuban musical legends like Ibrahim Ferrer well before Nick Gold and Ry Cooder made them famous as the Buena Vista Social Club.

VIDEO: “Piedad de Mi” – Alex Cuba

In 1995, the brothers joined their father in a band called Los Puentes which toured across Canada. During this tour, Alexis met and fell in love with Canadian Sarah Goodacre, the daughter of a former NDP politician in British Columbia. Sarah returned with him to Cuba, where they married before relocating to Victoria BC and then eventually to Smithers — Sarah’s hometown — in 2003.

Alexis’ brother Adonis also married a Canadian women he met while on tour and relocated to British Columbia. In Victoria, the two brothers formed a band called the Puentes Brothers, where they recorded the traditional Cuban music album Morumba Cubana, which was nominated for the Best Global Album Juno in 2002.

While Adonis wanted to continue with traditional Cuban music, Alexis wanted to explore contemporary Latin styles, and the two brothers embarked on their own solo careers in 2004 (although they continued to co-write with one another).

Alexis recorded his first solo album as the Alex Cuba Band in 2004. Humo De Tobaco — which featured sons of the musicians in Buena Vista Social Club, two-time Grammy Award winning pianist Chucho Valdesa, and a duet with Ron Sexsmith — earned him his first Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year in 2006.

In 2007, now recording under the name Alex Cuba, Alexis released Agua Del Pozo. The album earned him another Juno award for World Music Album of the Year in 2008 and firmly established him at the forefront of contemporary Latin music.

VIDEO: “Solo Tu” – Alex Cuba

In 2009, Cuba co-wrote and recorded a duet with Nelly Furtado, “Mi Plan”, which became the title track for her album of the same name. He also co-wrote more than half of the songs on that album.

Since then, Alex Cuba has released four more solo albums: Alex Cuba (2009), Ruido En Al Sistema (2012), Healer (2015), and Lo Único Constante (2017).

With his most recent album, Cuba returns to his roots and revisits the musical styles of his childhood. The album was inspired by the “Filin” musical genre in Cuba of the late 1940s to early 1960s (“filin” is derived from the word “feeling”, reflecting the high degree of emotion that singers and songwriters added to their songs).

He’s been nominated for the Best Latin Pop Album Grammy award three times, including in 2018 for Lo Único Constante (he lost out to Shakira), has received three more Juno nominations, and has garnered three Latin Grammy awards.

And Cuba has done all of this from his home in British Columbia, not a place most people would consider to be the home of Latin music in Canada.

“People don’t understand with three feet of snow outside how I can write as much as I write,” Cuba says in a 2010 interview with Guy Dixon in The Globe and Mail. “I will say that I have the only afro in town, so that makes it easy to know who I am, you know?”

Tickets for Alex Cuba’s April 24th concert at the Market Hall are $33 for general admission or $38 for assigned cabaret table seats, and are available in person at the Market Hall box office, by phone at 705-749-1146), or online at markethall.org.

Tickets are also available (cash only) at Moondance (425 George St. N., Peterborough, 705-742-9425).

VIDEO: Alex Cuba finds success in small-town B.C.