All posts by Jeremy Thomas Gilmer

Writing

The Hush Sisters: Gerard Collins’ New Novel Takes Us Into a Deeper Dark

From the rocky shorelines of Newfoundland, a troubled pair of sisters find themselves searching through old wounds and fresh scars while running the gauntlet of what could be ghosts in their family home. These ideas were enough to make me want to read on, but I was unprepared for the real horrors that awaited these characters, and how much I cared about them, and their story, along the way.

Gerard Collins has played quite a trick with his new novel, The Hush Sisters. By luring the reader into his ghost riddled family mansion, he has left us open and unsuspecting of the pain and heartbreak that we live with these characters, and the histories that intertwine in these dark halls and creaking attics, could be our own. Continue reading The Hush Sisters: Gerard Collins’ New Novel Takes Us Into a Deeper Dark →

Music

New Music: Sounds in Silence — grej’s ‘Quarantine Variations Vol. 1’

Fredericton native Greg Harrison has dropped a short but beautiful release under his artist name grej, and the results are an elegant EP that speaks not only to the isolation we are all going through, but to the beauty to be found in these in-between times, as we seem to shift from one world to the next. Continue reading New Music: Sounds in Silence — grej’s ‘Quarantine Variations Vol. 1’ →

Writing

Searching for Pieces on a Rocky Shore — Christy Ann Conlin’s ‘Watermark’

Watermark, the story collection from Christy Ann Conlin, is striking in many ways, but I was not prepared for the emotional resonance that sprung forth from its pages.

The collection is made up of eleven stories, many taking the reader into the Annapolis Valley, but it is not the place many of us may feel familiar with. This is a stark and sometimes dark place, hiding mysteries and threats that we may only be mildly aware of until it is too late.

It is a place of family legend, misty shores and family homes and secrets abandoned in the forest. Continue reading Searching for Pieces on a Rocky Shore — Christy Ann Conlin’s ‘Watermark’ →

Sculpture

Alanna Baird: From Sea to Air — The Evolution of a Fish

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, where it sits in its beautiful location along the Saint John River, is a natural spot to host an artist in residence. An artist here can draw not only from the wonderful collection and interaction with the staff, but from the very place itself. It is not often, however, that an artist’s body of work, mind, and process are as open and available as that of ceramic artist and sculptor Alanna Baird of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Continue reading Alanna Baird: From Sea to Air — The Evolution of a Fish →

Music

New Music: Mark Fewer & Hank Knox Revive Vivaldi’s Lost ‘Manchester Sonatas’

When Cardinal Ottoboni died in Rome in 1740, he was in possession of a huge library of music for which he was the Patron. Part of these works were twelve sonatas that had not seen much play save by a few associates of the composer. The bulk of the music was bought by the English musical scholar Edward Holdsworth.

Over the next nearly two centuries the works passed from owner to owner, until, at a Sotheby’s auction in 1918 they were purchased by the renowned musicologist of the time, Newman Flower. Now, Flower was a Handel scholar and spent most of his illustrious career studying and promoting Handel’s work, so many other arrangements in his possession were left by the way-side to wither in obscurity. Following Flower’s death, much of his collection was passed on to the Manchester Library. It was there in 1973 that another musicologist, Michael Talbot, came across the twelve sonatas in question, and he was struck by the name on the sheets:

Antonio Vivaldi. Continue reading New Music: Mark Fewer & Hank Knox Revive Vivaldi’s Lost ‘Manchester Sonatas’ →