Music Runs Through It and The Tipsy Muse Café partnered to present the Cold Snap Music Series – a live music series that aims to introduce vibrancy and intimacy to Fredericton.
Emma Chevarie, music organizer of Music Runs Through It, said the event unites the Fredericton community in multi-faceted ways — encouraging the public to experience different styles of live music, helping to establish the Muse’s patron-of-the-arts reputation outside Fredericton and prioritizing the growth of local artists.
“We’re so excited to bring people together,” said Chevarie.
She said the Tipsy Muse had a funding opportunity through Factor Canada that had to be used up before March, igniting the idea for the festival. The funding allowed them to dream big.
The series aims to appeal to a variety of music-lovers, featuring pop, rock, jazz, opera, neoclassical and francophone music.
The lineup will feature Joel Plaskett, Measha Brueggergosman and Chloé Breault. Their performances will be opened by Jason Anderson, Pallmer and Les Chanterelles, respectively.
“The intimacy is unparalleled,” said Rob Pinnock, co-owner of the Tipsy Muse Café.
With the pause in live performances that came with the pandemic, musicians came to a renewed appreciation for the audience-performer chemistry of live music.
Emily Kennedy, cellist and vocalist of Pallmer, said there’s more of an intimacy and casualness to live performances.
“It really does shift things [to] see the audience. You feel so surrounded by everyone,” said Kennedy. “It feels less like you’re presenting and more like you’re sharing.”
One of the main acts, Breault, said she thinks the wait between performances will create a nice chemistry between musicians and artists. Since COVID-19 disrupted the flow of live performances, Breault said she now treats every performance like it’s her last.
“Music doesn’t have a language,” said Breault.
She still sings in French at anglophone events and noticed that English-speaking attendees still appreciate the music.
At first, Breault was worried about being the only francophone among the two anglophones mainstage acts at Cold Snap, but now she’s embraced the title.
“I think it’s cool that the [Cold Snap] event decided to [have] cultural and linguistic diversity,” she said. “It’s super cool to finally be going in that direction.”
