Music Biz Headlines, March 1, 2021

By Kerry Doole

These three brothers are raising Canada’s largest venture fund for BIPOC founders

 Sheldon James had watched his brothers — accomplished actors with a Golden Globe nomination and credits including Homecoming and Halle Berry’s film Bruised — make progress in combating racism and promoting Black actors in Canada’s entertainment industry through their non-profit, B.L.A.C.K. Together, the three could do the same for BIPOC entrepreneurs. – Rebecca Szkutak, Forbes

Four female Canadian music producers on their dream studio gigs, from Shawn Mendes to Cher

The participating Canadians in a new Global Network for Female-Identifying Music Producers are Hill Kourkoutis, Maïa Davies, Elisa Pangsaeng,  Erin Costelo and Denise De’ion. Four of them talked to The Globe and Mail about their dream production jobs. – Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail

New technology is helping musicians play together virtually in real time - by eliminating lag time online

Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention – and in creating a technique allowing musicians to play at the same time while being connected over the internet (a quandary that required him to write computer code for the first time in 20 years, harking back to his early days as a software engineer), Adrian Cho appears to have achieved the Holy Grail. – Bruce Sach, Globe and Mail

John Rowlands:  Give him a hand

Famed photographer John Rowlands isn’t just a National treasure, he’s a global treasure and Canada is proud to call him a Native Son. After a series of strokes, this Canadian master photographer needs support with daily living and with cataloguing his millions of unique images as a national cultural heritage. – Don Graham, Cashbox

Online music festival features Canadian composers, musicians

The 8th Festival de la Voix will be live from March 14 to April 10, but, because of the pandemic, will be accessible for free online. Canadian composers and musicians will present four eclectic concerts and three vocal workshops from venues on Montreal’s West Island. A pre-festival webcast featured an excerpted performance of Handel’s Messiah with Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. – Lynn Desjardins, RCInet

Reggae resiliency

Musician's winding journey to Winnipeg leads to launch of new single. – Alan Small, Winnipeg Free Press

Bryan Adams shows love for North Vancouver's Lions Gate Hospital

Canadian rocker Bryan Adams is showing a little love to the staff at Lions Gate Hospital. Adams took to Twitter last week, posting a photo with his mother who is being treated at the North Vancouver hospital. “Thanks to the incredible staff at @lghfoundation (lions gate hospital) (sic) in North Vancouver for taking such good care of my mum Jane,” the tweet reads in part. – Mike Lloyd, News1130

The music plays on despite pandemic

Though the coronavirus has devastated the live music scene, it hasn’t quite delivered a similar knockout blow to the recording biz.. “The pandemic has provided a lot of opportunities for video and online collaboration, as performers are looking for ways to record and stay active,” Hamilton-based cellist-producer-audio engineer Kirk Starkey. – Leonard Turnevicius, Hamilton Spectator.

Follow along as Halifax’s reggae-roots royalty Jah’Mila takes over The Coast’s Instagram 

We went behind the scenes with the singer-songwriter Thursday before her Symphony NS showcase. – Morgan Mullin, The Coast

Juno-nominated pianist investigated by VSO for hosting conspiracist party

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s School of Music says it has barred an instructor from its facilities while it investigates him for potentially violating Covid-19 restrictions. The school says it takes the allegation against jazz pianist John Stetch, a seven-time Juno Award nominee, “very seriously” after video emerged appearing to show him hosting an illegal gathering this past weekend. Vancouver police are also investigating. – Kelvin Gawley & Miranda Fatur, City1130

Cadillac Bill returns with more crafts and conspiracies

Rocker/TV host Bill Boyd-Wilson, also known as Cadillac Bill, is back with his sidekick Pepper the Hedgehog for another season of “crafts and conspiracies” on the Cadillac Bill Show. The half-hour, made-in-Hamilton production is now airing its sixth season on Cable 14 and worldwide through streaming services. Fifteen episodes have been prepared for season six, all shot in Boyd-Wilson’s basement home studio. His fellow musos from The Hammer also appear. – Mike Pearson, Hamilton Mountain News

The Leonard Cohen exhibit at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal is not meant to say goodbye

Posthumous attention is out of the troubadour’s hands, four years after his death. But he might be pleased to know he’s still getting headlines. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) has launched the online exhibition Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, a virtual version of the mammoth multimedia exhibition of the same name that drew record-setting crowds to the Musée in 2017. – Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail

Chin Injeti releases new video/single For the Love of Life

Vancouver songwriter and producer Chin Injeti has released a new video-single titled "For the Love of Life". The former frontman of Bass is Base--who has won various Grammy and Juno Awards and made music with or for the likes of Dr Dre, Eminem, Drake, Pink, and K’Naan--recorded the song with Teon Gibbs. – Steve Newton, Georgia Straight

Okanagan hip-hop musicians and rappers highlighted in online concert series

Live music will be reverberating through Kelowna once again, as an Okanagan production company is bringing local hip-hop musicians and rappers back on stage as part of an online music series that caters to all music lovers. – Global TV

Toronto hip-hop combo Stayoutlate drop WUSSUP off their upcoming project.

WUSSUP is the latest single from Toronto-based hip-hop collective Stayoutlate featuring Casino Costa. The group comprises rappers Tremayne, Charlie Noiir, and Scotty IV. – Sami Huda, Serious Betty

International

Just 7,500 artists on Spotify — out of 8 million — make $100,000 or more annually

Approximately 7,500 artists – 0.09 percent of about eight million on-platform creators – earn $100,000 per year or more on Spotify, company higher-ups have revealed. The noteworthy statistic came to light last week, during the Stockholm-based service’s ‘Stream On’ investor conference. Spotify spent a good portion of the live-stream highlighting payout figures in an effort to demonstrate the progress it’s made “in helping more creators succeed." – Dylan Smith, Digital Music News

Spotify launching 'HiFi' lossless streaming option later this year

Spotify today announced plans to introduce a new "HiFi" premium tier later this year, which will provide higher-quality lossless audio. According to Spotify, the feature will offer CD-quality music that will let fans experience more depth and clarity in their favorite tracks.  – Juli Clover, Macrumors

Why limited-capacity concerts just don’t make sense

Partial-capacity shows are not economical for most concert halls or musicians, and politicians who pretend otherwise are failing to understand the way the live music industry operates. – Samantha Hissong, Rolling Stone

Live Nation just sold 170,000 tickets for UK 2021 summer festivals... within 3 days

Live Nation and its subsidiary, Festival Republic, didn't hang about after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an announcement last week on reopening plans. The companies quickly announced that their Reading & Leeds festival – an annual fest taking place across two locations in the UK with a combined capacity of around 180K would be going ahead between August 27 and 29 this year, and that tickets were on sale. – Tim Ingham, MBW

Live Nation expecting summer concert return

Outdoor shows will be the first to return. During the back half of 2021, Live Nation is expecting to produce nearly double the concerts it typically promotes in a single year. Pent-up supply and demand is swiftly approaching as vaccine distribution accelerates and Covid cases decline worldwide. – Buddy Iahn, The Music Universe

Lee Daniels and Andra Day take on Billie Holiday’s legacy

Lee Daniels didn’t want to touch the story of Billie Holiday. “Lady Sings the Blues” already existed after all. The 1972 film with Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams showed him Black romance and a Harlem like he’d never seen on screen before. But it wasn’t her full story.–  Lindsey Bahr, AP

Allen Ginsberg put the Beat in rock 'n' oll (Beat poetry, that is)

Ginsberg was an inspiration for multiple musicians, from Bob Dylan to Patti Smith, but his crucial role in late-20th century Anglo-American music is often overlooked. Two new albums shine a welcome light on those contributions. – Geoffrey Himes, Paste

How this ‘physician-musician’ is trying to use the power of melody to heal patients

While trying to unleash the power of music therapy, this doctor is advocating for a fraternity of physician-musicians appointed by the National Medical Council to lay down an academic music therapy curriculum. – Prerna Mistra, The Indian Express

'It was tribal and sexual': Alice Cooper on the debauchery of Detroit rock

When the shock-rocker returned to the place of his birth in the 60s, he found a raw paradise of unsegregated rock’n’roll. As Cooper releases an album celebrating the city, he and his peers relive one of the US’s greatest music scenes. – Michael Hann, The Guardian

Dear Sir or Madam: Paul McCartney memoir due out in November

Paul McCartney is finally ready to write his memoirs, and will use music — and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet — to help guide him. “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present” will be released Nov. 2, according to a joint announcement Wednesday from the British publisher Allen Lane and from Liveright in the United States. McCartney will trace his life through 154 songs, from his teens and early partnership with John Lennon to his solo work over the past half century. Irish poet Paul Muldoon is editing and will contribute an introduction. – Hillel Italie, AP

10 new albums to stream today

February 2021’s final New Music Friday has arrived, and with it another heaping helping of music worth wrapping your ears around. A handful of Paste’s most-anticipated releases of the month are here, including a potential career-best effort from the great Julien Baker, an out-of-nowhere new Nick Cave & Warren Ellis record, and more. – Scott Russell & Paste Staff  

Two-thirds of New York City’s arts and culture jobs are gone

New York City’s museums, sports arenas and entertainment venues are slowly coming back to life. But the sector has contracted dramatically under the pressure of the global pandemic, according to a report from the state Comptroller’s Office. Jobs in arts, entertainment and recreation fell by 66% in 2020 from a year ago, the largest decline among the city’s economic sectors, erasing a decade of gains in what was one of New York’s most vibrant industries, the report said. – Spencer Norris, Bloomberg

The best Black music biopics ever

The Black artist’s journey possesses all the tropes of a classic Hollywood film- dramatic, tragic, mythological and purely American. It’s no wonder these stories have gotten the Hollywood treatment for nearly forty years now, which continues with recent streaming series’ (such as Hulu’s Wu Tang: An American Saga and BET’s American Soul) and promises to be on the entertainment forefront with the upcoming film release of Billie Holiday Vs. The United States. – LA Weekly

Lady Gaga’s dogs recovered safely after theft, shooting

Lady Gaga’s two French bulldogs, stolen by thieves who shot and wounded the dog walker, were recovered unharmed Friday, Los Angeles police said. A woman brought the dogs to the  Olympic Community Police Station. Lady Gaga’s representative and detectives went to the station and confirmed that they were the dogs, Tippet said. The singer is currently in Rome to film a movie. – Stefanie Dazio, AP

Spotlight: Aaron Lee Tasjan on Sylvain Sylvain pointing the way

In the essay below, the acclaimed singer/songwriter offers a fond memory of his friend Sylvain Sylvain, who died last month from cancer at the age of 69. – No Depression

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis give a troubled world a place to turn to on the monumental triumph CARNAGE

CARNAGE has come out of nowhere as a surprise album. Recorded quickly in lockdown, the eight-song release finds Cave teamed up with Warren Ellis—his trusted artistic foil in the Bad Seeds, right-hand man in Grinderman, and go-to collaborator for soundtrack work. And, covering everything from break-of-dawn gospel to minimalist electro, it's unlike anything the two have done before. – Mike Usinger, Georgia Straight