Maybe sunshine is overrated. Maybe deep down, beach-loving Vancouverites pine for the long, gloomy nights, when daylight brings only a slightly less oppressive shade of grey, and the rain-slicked concrete perfectly matches the colourless sky.

The Polaris Music Prize has released its “long list” of records being considered for the prestigious Canadian award, and several high-profile B.C. artists have made the cut.

It’s been seven weeks since cyclone Nargis ravaged the country of Myanmar, also known as Burma. According to government estimates, 78,000 people were killed and 56,000 went missing. More than a million still need help, most of them in remote areas of the Irrawaddy delta.

Vancouver punk band the Black Halos had a decidedly black day on March 17. On tour with their new album, We Are Not Alone, the group parked outside a downtown Montreal hotel. When singer Billy Hopeless went out to feed the meter the following morning, he found their van and trailer—which contained all of their gear and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise—had been stolen.

Musical rover Luke Doucet has been on the road since he was a kid, but his internal compass always points him back to Canada.

Choreographer Lar Lubovitch immersed himself in Brubeck's Time Changes album to create his San Francisco Ballet commission Elemental Brubeck

The outrageuos Tiger Lillies plumb the subconscious mind and show us that morbid thoughts are, well, just thoughts.

Maiwa’s Charllotte Kwon sees a rich future in the abandoned cash boxes, shipping containers, and factory floors of India.

Chris Botti is not feeling smooth. Although the Portland-born trumpeter is known for a sound so polished you could almost skate on it, that's not how things are sounding inside his head.

Single women have become a force to be reckoned with in the real-estate market, but they can still use a little help come purchase time. It took a moment for Sheila to register what the real-estate agent had said. The native Vancouverite and producer for a national broadcaster, was standing inside a Kitsilano duplex, looking out at the postage-stamp-size yard near the busy intersection of 16th and Macdonald, when the agent chirped, "So, what do you think?"

It's been six months since TV on the Radio released its stunning latest album, Return to Cookie Mountain, in North America. The praise was both instantaneous and rapturous, and before long, the Brooklyn quintet's pulsating, guitar-heavy sound propelled it to the top of Spin magazine's list of best albums of 2006, as well as scores of others.

Prosperity (Independent)

Success is finally starting to catch up with Shane Nelken, the Awkward Stage's talented underdog.

Top concerts

Once the sticker shock had passed, its close companion, size shock, quickly followed. After a lifetime of renting, I had decided to step into the scorchingly hot Vancouver real-estate market; and like most first-time buyers these days, I was faced with two options: win the lottery or live in a place the size of a postage stamp.

Like many parents, Juan de Marcos González’s father—a famed Cuban singer of the 1950s—wanted his son to do as he said (become a doctor, lawyer, or scientist), not as he did. The younger González heeded those wishes, got his doctorate in engineering, and became a university professor. He taught; he studied Russian and English; he designed dams, hydroelectric plants, and irrigation systems. But eventually the passion for Cuban music he had inherited from his father won out.

How They Fly (Northern Electric)

There are lots of people who play in a band. There are slightly fewer who play in two bands. In three? Hardly any. So at any given point, how many people might be on tour with all three of their bands? Chances are that number maxes out at one: Josh Wells.

At the Lamplighter on Friday, November 25

When you walk into Salsbury Garden, the first thing you notice is the quiet. Surrounded by trees-cypress, Norwegian maple, and mountain ash, to name a few-some a century old, the property is buffered against the buzz of Commercial Drive, a block to the west. This time of year, there's an earthy smell to the space as the scent of the garden's jasmine, forsythias, camellias, and rose bushes gives way to one of fallen leaves and damp evergreen boughs.

At first glance, the artworks that line the shelves in Marty Levenson's office look like they were made by little kids. There are small clay figures, some of them painted, some still in their natural grey. Some are clear representations of things or people-one is a rough figure of a man resting in a large armchair; another is an apple core-while others are abstract shapes.

There are plenty of specialized programs out there for youth these days. Problem is, many of them are organized by adults and don't allow for much input from the young people they're geared toward. That's not the case with this weekend's Earth(ling) a Festival-Youth, Arts, Activism, an event that's being produced by Judith Marcuse Projects at the Great Northern Way Campus on Friday evening and all day Saturday (October 21 and 22).

When writer Rebecca Godfrey walked into the Victoria Youth Custody Centre in winter 1997, all she was looking for was a description of the jail for her debut novel, The Torn Skirt-certainly not for an experience that would change the course of her life for years to come.

Like many parents, Jill Daum and Deborah Williams thought they had it all figured out. They survived the sleepless nights and the diaper changes, the colic and the teething, the terrible twos and the first days at school. Along with four cocreators, they also found the time to write and perform Mom's the Word, a long- running comedy about motherhood that became, and still is, a huge international success.

if there's such a thing as an accidental ceramist, Laura McKibbon is it. After several years spent studying everything from science to printmaking, she enrolled herself in the jewellery art and design program at Vancouver Community College. At the same time, she began working for a ceramics artist who allowed McKibbon to make use of the studio in the evenings if she felt like playing around with the form.

If you type the phrase "things to do in Marpole" into Google, you will get exactly zero results. Actually, once this article runs, you might get one or two.

It was his first week of Grade 4, and already Ryan Gladstone was in serious trouble. He couldn't remember what he had done to raise the teacher's ire, but it was egregious enough to elicit the line that can strike fear into the tiny heart of any student: "Do you think you can do a better job? Would you like to try teaching the class?"

THE NUMBERS WERE GOOD for the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, with media director John Orysik reporting that the 20th edition of the annual event set a number of financial and attendance records. "There's been some significant growth," Orysik reported in a Tuesday (July 5) telephone interview. "We broke $1 million in ticket sales. That was a first.

If anyone ever tells you that DJs aren't musicians, send them to an Amon Tobin show. Unlike other turntablists who just pump out straight, danceable beats, Tobin's compositions feel like soundtracks to exquisite films that have yet to be created. Hiding under a baseball hat, moustache, and goatee at his Saturday-night Commodore show, Tobin had a low-key presence, but his music was the opposite.

Usually,when you see a jazz quartet, you can safely assume that the instruments-if not the musicians-will stay in character. But during its purely improvised set Saturday night at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Hoxha threw all of those presumptions right out the stage door.

"If you ever get close to a human, prepare to be very confused," said Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson before launching into a jazzy interpretation of Björk's "Human Behaviour" at the Commodore Friday night.

One single note changed the course of Maggie Nicols's life for good. Forty years ago, the Scottish-born vocalist was working as a singer in a strip club-she was still in her teens-when she signed up for a music workshop with percussionist and improvised-music pioneer John Stevens. Everyone in the group was told to sing the same note, and to sustain it as long as they could.

Venomous snakes are not something most jazz musicians would include on a list of occupational hazards. But when David Murray travelled to Guadeloupe to immerse himself in gwo-ka music-named after a type of drum that was originally made from huge tins that held salted meat for the island nation's African slaves-the Oakland-born, Paris-based saxophonist got more than a lesson in the politically charged musical form.

Bruce Hemstock doesn't look like the type of guy who dreams of covering urban rooftops with plants and soil instead of tar and gravel. Dressed immaculately in a pressed blue shirt, black pants, shiny shoes, and designer shades, Hemstock looks like he belongs in a boardroom downtown-not here, next to New Brighton Park in East Vancouver, among huge wooden boxes filled with dozens of fledgling plants.

After a day of delayed flights and missed appointments, David Byrne has finally settled into his room at the Holiday Inn in Reading, England. It's 10 p.m. He's tired. Maybe he'll have a shower using complimentary hotel soap. Maybe he'll check to see if there's a bible in the drawer next to the bed. Or maybe he'll stick his head outside and watch particles spinning around a nucleus or planets encircling the sun before flicking on the news.

The ever-touring British band was signed to a major label before it had ever played a note on-stage

It seemed straightforward enough. On Mwata Bowden's first day of high-school music class in early-1960s Chicago, his teacher--a man, nicknamed the Captain, with a reputation for being exacting, stern, and uncompromising--told the new students that they could sit wherever they wanted within the ranks of the school's symphonic band.

Torbjorn Zetterberg's body is pleading for him to go to sleep. It's been nine hours since he stepped off an overseas flight from New York, where he spent the last couple of weeks busily playing gigs and checking out shows. Now the Stockholm-based composer and bassist is back home; but despite the fact that he's leaden with exhaustion, there are more serious concerns demanding his immediate attention.

When Budapest-based Besh o droM was invited to play Hungary's prestigious Sziget festival in 1999, the band had barely been together a month. Saxophonist Gergely Barcza had just returned home after several years spent studying music in Israel, and, along with his brother-in-law, percussionist Adam Pettik, he had amassed an informal group of 10 musicians from a range of backgrounds and disciplines. The problem was that they hadn't yet found the time to rehearse.

My hands are clenched around the sides of my sky-blue board as I push my way into the surf. A trickle of icy Pacific water dances its way inside my wet suit and down my neck as one wave after another tries to shove me back to shore where I belong. Just this morning, I was one of those comfortably bundled people strolling along Tofino's Chesterman Beach, watching the diehard surfers shearing the waves before even the sun had woken up. I want to be one of them, I decided.

Sometimes, the French duo of Nicolas Godin and Benoit Dunckel explains, you feel glad to feel sad

For most people, the mere idea of getting up on a stage and performing original songs to a crowd of complete strangers is enough to send their knees knocking and their palms sweating. It's a fear that even high-profile musicians like Liz Phair and Van Morrison reportedly share. For Young and Sexy's Paul Hixon Pittman, however, recording and playing live aren't a big deal at all.