Next weekend is big

From next Friday, March 27th through Sunday, March 29th, the Barking Sphinx Performance Society presents the Unwritten Weekend Festival.

Programmed by Cole Schmidt and supported by partners including Coastal Jazz, Unwritten Weekend has a Franco-flavour to its lineup, likely because of grant funding that supports bringing in its marquee artists. (Arts manager Amélie Malissard, involved in the festival's production, has extended me an open invitation to attend shows on the guest list.) The scope of music ranges from singer-songwriter to improv and back again.

Of course, other places like Tyrant and Frankie's have interesting shows next weekend, too. It added up to such a bounty of live music options that I wanted to walk through it with you today. Here's a look at most of the Unwritten programming, plus some more of my picks from around the community.

Friday, March 27th

Two of Unwritten Weekend's main shows on Friday evening.

7:30 PM - Alliance Française Theatre, Myriam Gendron + Francis Baptiste

The bilingual indie-folk of Gendron's 2024 album Mayday showcases her Leonard Cohen-esque soft, low voice over rolling plucked guitars. Gendron brings themes of motherhood and a parent's passing. French song titles don't necessarily rule out English lyrics, and vice versa. On the album, she closes with a feature by improvising saxophonist Zoh Amba, and she opens with a film-credits-worthy instrumental guitar piece in open D tuning, "There Is No East or West".

Francis Baptiste's Lived Experiences in East Vancouver addresses financial precarity and addiction with a different vulnerability, one found in alt-rock and pop punk. The Syilx Nation artist is unafraid to self-identify in his bio as "[a] washed-up, divorced, recovering alcoholic" and has been a direct, charismatic local performer for several years. (He's also a one-time Rhythm Changes contributor.) While some songs remind me of early Green Day or The Cars, the guitar layers of "Aspirin for the Soul" evoke The Black Crowes.

9:00 PM - Farida Amadou Meets 8EAST

The Brussels-based experimental electric bass player Amadou hits and strums her instrument with objects, makes it crackle, and pulls drones from its resounding hums. "The Virtuous Circle", one three long tracks of her 2024 album, When it Rains it Pours, has all of that.

On the other side of this meeting is a rotating cast of John Brennan, Jesus Caballero, and Adrian Avendaño on drums; Matthew Ariaratnam and Cole Schmidt on guitars; Johanna Hauser and JP Carter on winds; Bahar Khazei and Lisa Cay Miller on keys; and Mauricio Pauly on electronics. The format resembles when Amadou played the Revue Stage at the 2023 jazzfest, co-presented by Coastal Jazz and the NOW Society.

Away from the Unwritten progrmming are a couple more Friday evening shows of note:

• 8:00 PM - Rogue Folk Club, Moneka Arabic Jazz. Canadian-Iraqi vocalist Ahmed Moneka got nominated for Global Music Album of the Year at last year's Junos. Moneka is here from Toronto with a six-piece band with drums, horns, and keys. The vibe of his album Kanzafula is close to the upbeat roots acts in our scene, like Robin Layne and the Rhythm Makers and Locarno.
• 8:00 PM - Frankie's, Wild Blue Herons. Pianist Bill Sample and vocalist Darlene Cooper just released their third album as Wild Blue Herons, It's All About Love. They traverse R&B, what you might call yacht rock, and other sophisticated sounds with an A-team of horns and rhythm players. Sample and Cooper tie it all together using their substantial combined background in gospel.
• 9:30 PM - Tyrant Studios, David Blake Quartet. The New York-based guitarist plays homecoming shows roughly annually. This one features a new band for his detailed and thoughtful contemporary jazz compositions: Jon Bentley on tenor saxophone, Conrad Good on bass, and Arvind Ramdas on drums.

Saturday, March 28th

• 2:00 PM - La Fabrique St-George, David Blake Quartet (no cover). For the flipside of his show the previous night, Blake plays with an entirely different band: Fabrique curator Sharon Minemoto on piano, David Caballero on bass, and Joe Poole on drums.

Also, late at night, there's a never-before-heard chordless trio at Frankie's After Dark. Billed as the David Caballero Organization, the top young bassist takes a turn as leader, inviting tenor saxophonist Lucas Dubovik and drummer Kevin Romain.

Now back to Unwritten Weekend:

5:00 PM - The Hargrove, Willie Thrasher & Linda Saddleback + Amanda Sum

Looking for a sui generis odd coupling of artists? Look no further: Inuvialuit artist Thrasher, in his late seventies, meets the musical theatre-inspired GenZ art-pop of Amanda Sum. I first learned of Thrasher through his song "Wolves Don't Live By the Rules", which my high school's band program once chose to arrange and perform for a Canadian school song contest of some sort.

Sum's latest album is titled, in full, does it make me naive if i've never been part of something where i've meant more to them than they did to me? I most recently heard her open for The Shorties at the Wise Hall, playing songs like "first date face/sex with an ex" solo.

8:30 PM - Red Gate, Farida Amadou + Radwan Ghazi Moumneh + Earthball

This second appearance by Amadou is similar to another one of her 2023 jazzfest engagements: a solo set on a Fox Cabaret triple bill with metal bands Liturgy and Big Brave. This time, only one band of the other two would fit a heavy rock audience: Earthball, a five-piece from Nanaimo who recently gave up the spacebar to have a one-word name. They released their latest album Outside Over There this past November; their drummer is John Brennan, and anyone who went to his duo-drums concert with Chris Corsano should at least check out Earthball.

Montreal-based Radwan Ghazi Moumneh sings and plays traditional Levantine and Arabic instruments, synths, and percussion. He has an upcoming album called Eternal Life No End, a duo project with sound artist Frédéric D. Oberland. Appropriately for someone with Moumneh's pan-DIY experience in hardcore and experimental music scenes, he's releasing it where he has released much of his past work, on Constellation Records (now also home to Bellbird, who I imagine either would get along well with him or already do).

Also, on both Saturday and Sunday, the Hargrove opens at 4:00 pm for DJ sets and an art exhibition featuring art by Sarah Nash Wong (sibling of drummer Miles), Joy Mullen, Travis Kirton, XEL (who makes music later), & Gordy Li (interactive Instagram feed? TBD).

Sunday, March 29th

Earlier on Sunday, Unwritten has a listening session with Moumneh at the Hargrove as well as an improvised music workshop with Amadou at Red Gate.

5:00 PM - The Hargrove, Bahar Khazei & XEL + Mauricio Pauly. Experimental electronic composer-improvisers unite. Khazei is a core 8EAST musician and is one of the co-runners of Improv Karaoke. XEL performed an ambient electronic duo last year with Noah Franche-Nolan, who went under the name corbeau. And I heard Pauly, on faculty at SFU, through writing about his duo album Hopeful Monsters with Eve Egoyan.

8:00 PM - The Hargrove, LETTR OPENR + Mustafa Rafiq / Cat Toren / Tommy Babin / Dan Gaucher + Erin Leigh comedy set. LETTR OPENR is Cole Schmidt, Feven Kidane, Nebyu Yohannes, and Kevin Romain; I wrote about them last year when they outshone the folk-rock band Aerialists. The other quartet for this improv-forward night features musicians we can claim as 'Vancouver' even though they live varying degrees of far away. Rafiq, joining them on guitar from Edmonton, was last back here in March 2025 to play at 8EAST and (with a fellow experimental/ambient artist, saxophonist Jairus Sharif) at the Western Front.

Finally, you could instead hear some swinging music on Sunday, featuring a Seattle-based Canadian pianist who comes up here regularly to play with fine locals: 8:00 PM - Frankie's, Russ Botten, Tony Foster, & Joe Poole play Ray Brown. ($23.49+)