Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 50

fvr Music, art and theatre lovers welcome summer with Ssl mmc Sterling awards D3 f4S Christopher Lloyd signs tip for Comic Expo D4 edm ontonjournal.com rta i merit or II ife 1 7 0 EDITOR: KKRI SWEETMAN, 780 429 5346; arts8cUfeedmontonjour nal.com WEDNESDAY. JUNE 26, 2013 i i i i 5 IS i i i Swift conquers 'Redmonton' i -X. SVJ- Alu' UlUT 1 Taylor REVIEW Taylor Swift With: Ed Sheeran When: Tuesday night. Second show Wednesday at 7 p.m. Where: Rexall Place Tickets: Sold out FISH GRIWKOWSKY Edmonton Journal In 2013, borders are for suckers.

Desperate to attract any drinker, small-town bars first came up with this idea, Taylor Swift's world-conquering alchemy: Hot country one night, dance music another, and slowly but surely a little of both till chocolate met peanut butter, the modern love story. With more A-list awards than any human has digits, Taylor Swift and her 24-or-so semis out back are a long way from that legendary tear in a beer, and her first of two shows Tuesday night at the NHL arena had lavish video productions, drummers on strings, dub-step, banjo, clockwork ballet, spinning flags, endless confession just a non-stop, postmodern twist of expectations soaring rictionlessly between genres, decades and emotion-matching costume changes, each matching the nine-month tour's name, Red. Swift, 23, rocketed sparks with her opening modern rock number State of Grace, that perfect face dominating onscreen, soon amid choreographed moves down an anchor-shaped stage. "I tend to get along best with daydreamers," she explained before the country number, Mean. "Meanness is not something that people outgrow, it turns out.

There's always going to be someone who picks on you." Then she turned the rink into a giant carousel, one of the best modern country moments I've ever seen, a little Ryman on the blue-line. JOHN LUCAS tDMONTOS JOl RNAI Tuesday night. For more photos from the show, go to edmontonjournal.comphotos. i I ,1: we were in a gothdubstep castle with Skrillex, a Penn-sylvanian in Transylvania! Confessional as Oprah, she saved for the end the eclipsing We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together, a full circus with clowns, confetti and bunny costumes. Its remnant acoustic guitar strumming through the giant beats, those soaring Brit multi-track vocals and even the subject matter all comes together to where Taylor Swift is today, 26 million albums and 75 million downloads down the road.

Apparently she dated some dudes, too. fgriwkowskyfi eJ on ton jo urnal.co Instagraml Twitter: iPfisheyeoto hard work. And certainly opportunities came my way in a lot of different forms like the opportunity to play with Miles Davis's band and to work with a lot of other great musicians." While the man's creative energies show little sign of abating in his senior years, hf has taken on new responsibil ities, as a goodwill ambassa dor for UNESCO, and as an educator for the Thelonious Monk Institute at UCLA and next year, at Boston's 1 Iarvard University. Could there be a better ambassador for music in general and jazz in particular? Sff HASCOCK page 1)2 Taylor Swift performs the first of A few songs, like the somewhat flat Stay Stay Stay, evaporated compared to the giant 22, where, Swift in hot pants rode manback through the pumped crowd. Swift explained her return to Edmonton.

"Where were the really notoriously crazy crowds? I missed you terribly. Here tonight, 13,000 of you have opted to hear me sing about my feelings for the next two hours. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making my music the soundtrack to your crazy emotions." The always-smiling, mouth-never-closed blond singer disappeared into the floor as the TVs floated around, forming an up-front stage where she sang the shoop-shoop You Belong for a lack of talent. At 73, Herbie Hancock is one of those rare humans who seems to have it all. Few musicians in modern times have straddled and co-led innovations over such a range of musical styles from helping to define post-bop jazz with Miles Davis in the 1960s, excursions into the avant-garde, setting a new definition of funk with his Headhunters band in the 1970s, charting a No.

1 hip-hop hit with Rockit in 1984, creating the Oscar-winning soundtrack for the film Round Midnight, interpreting Gershwin with the likes of Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell, and tapping the I l-ltE I -r- two concerts at Rexall Place on to Me. During the stellar and mournful Lucky One, 15 dancers dressed all 1950s swirled around her with flash-bulb cameras and movie theatre ropes. The obligatory solostool spotlight moment was White Horse, one of many breakup songs she openly admitted writing. Opening, Joel Crouse of Holland, was first out with an amplified acoustic man cluster and some kindly country pop. If You Want Some, the 21-year-old's first hit, isn't even his best, but he's perfectly tuned to the kind of self-referential optimism that has even living country legends spinning in their graves.

The first spine-shattering shrieks amid the Herbie Hancock plays the Edmonton International Jazz Festival on Thursday night. possibilities of pop and global music collaborations and performing contemporary classical works with orchestras. Hancock relishes challenge of playing music "Can I get a hell, yeah?" he yelled, "If you are too cool to sing, you came to the wrong concert!" From Framlington, U.K., the ginger singer quickly proved himself a rousing sort of awesome, creating his own looping band behind himself with a multi-channel beatbox recorder as he pushed live through the thrilling greenery of his African, Caribbean and East Coast rap influences. He'd be brilliant as a folk-fest head-liner for his second visit to Edmonton. "If you put an in front of it, it would be Redmonton," Swift joked before their duet, Everything Has Changed.

She rode a floating platform for Sparks Fly, shifting into 5th for I knew You Were Trouble: Suddenly explain his own broad-based success? A stable personal life might have something to do with it. Hancock spoke on the phone from the West Hollywood home he has owned since 1972, the home he shares with Gigi, his wife of 45 years. Then there's his spiritual life, long centred in the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. But music has clearly been a driving force, ever since he made his stage debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing a Mozart piano concerto at age 11. "I think what's happened to me has been a combination of fate, deliberation and a lot of 4, overwhelmingly young, female crowd came for Ed Sheeran, a Hobbity tangent off Nick Drake who single-handedly proves whatever country music fans evolved into since Garth Brooks transfused all that Kiss blood into their veins, they no longer belong to the southern U.S.

The idea any of this music would or should be traditional is misplaced, really, Swift's operating system having a lot more to do with Shania Twain than Patsy Cline or even Dolly Parton. She's the now and immediate future of country, strict musical borders a done deal on the global cruise ship. Sheeran's slow peaks and long whoas of Give Me Love tasted like young Van Morrison in the zone. The author of tunes like Maiden Voyage, Cantaloupe Island and Chameleon has a sense of charm tempered only by his innate style, humility and erudite speech. It's no fluke that Hancock was only the second bonaf ide jazz artist to win the Album of the Year Grammy, for his 2007 release River, a tribute to friend Joni Mitchell (he has won 14 Grammys in all).

"It was a shock, but of course I was extremely happy about that and I think Joni was thrilled too," he says. "She is so amazingly talented as a lyricist, a poet, a musical craftsperson, and then a visual artist." How does the music master RTY i i PREVIEW Herbie Hancock At: Edmonton International Jazz Festival Where: Winspear Centre When: Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $64.45 $85.45 from the Winspear box office (780-428-1414 or winspearcentre.com) ROGER I.EYESULF Edmonton Journat Making music is a multi-faceted endeavour which very few people ever get completely right. Real artists aren't always adept entertainers, while stage personas sometimes stand in it pi FINAL WEEKEND art galley of beta An exhibition featuring works by renowned artists Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Tom Thomson and more.

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