Glenn & Margaret are back in town to perform at St. Norbert's Arts Centre on Friday, July 28th. They will perform live in our studios Thursday morning.

 

Glenn Buhr presents a retrospective of his work over the past 20 years, including some recent piano music, some jazz-oriented work for piano and bass, a new song cycle, a brief reading from his book Our Native Song, and a collection of recent songs written with novelist Margaret Sweatman.

After the Flood: Glenn Buhr with the Broken Songs Band will be performing at the St. Norbert Arts Centre, July 28 at 7:30PM. 

He’s joined by the Broken Songs Band: Margaret Sweatman, vocals/percussion/harmonica; Alan Beardsell, guitar/vocals and Gilles Fournier, bass/vocals.

Tickets are available here.

 

Glenn Buhr has a broad and various musical life. He’s composer, a jazz pianist and a singer/songwriter. He’s also developed a reputation as creator and performer of unique remixes of classic rock and popular songs, giving them all his own peculiar compositional voice.

Recently he’s worked with Madeleine Peyroux, Ron Sexsmith, Kiran Alhuwalia and Sarah Slean as arranger, producer and composer. He’s toured Canada twice as a jazz artist, and he’s also performed his own piano concerto with the Esprit Orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He won the Genie Award for best song from the film Seven Times Lucky in 2005. He’s the winner two SOCAN awards for his music, and he’s a 4-time Juno Nominee.

Buhr is also a composer of concert and stage music for symphony orchestras, ballet companies, string quartets and various chamber ensembles. He became well known in Canada in the mid-80′s when the Toronto and Montreal Symphony Orchestras first championed his work, and in the mid-90′s as front man - with conductor Bramwell Tovey – of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival. Buhr and his band recently performed a new song cycle with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under conductor Bramwell Tovey during the VSO’s 2017 New Music Festival.

His music has been performed all over the world by such diverse ensembles as the London Sinfonia, the Tokyo Ballet Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra pianist Louis Lortie, soprano Tracy Dahl and many others. His 3rd Symphony (a choral symphony) was premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in February 2008 with pop singer Sarah Slean as soloist.

In 2003, his full length ballet Beauty and the Beast was premiered by the Birmingham Royal Ballet in Birmingham, England. The work has since toured the UK three times for a total of more than 150 performances. The ballet toured to Hong Kong (2005), Japan (2008) and to mainland China in 2009. He has also composed a number of scores for film and theatre and has collaborated on several other dance projects.

Glenn Buhr’s book Our Native Song - a collection of essays on music – was published in May 2013. He is Professor of Music Composition and Improvisation in the Contemporary Music Program at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Glenn Buhr is well-known in Winnipeg for his work as co-frontman (with conductor Bramwell Tovey) of Winnipeg’s New Music Festival - developed by Buhr and Tovey with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in the mid-90’s. The festival was remarkably popular, and got the orchestra more media attention - nationally and internationally - than ever, or since.