Michael Reinhart is quite the Renaissance man – stage designer, artist, composer, photographer and singer/songwriter.
He shines in the latter role, delivering an eloquent collection of quietly haunting and deeply personal folk. His talented accompanists include Jeff Bird (Cowboy Junkies), Noah Zacharin, Alison Wedding, and noted Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee, whose work adds graceful atmospherics, as does violin and accordion.
Reinhart’s fluent finger-style guitar playing also shines. He is unafraid to stretch out, with many songs pushing six-plus minutes in an hour-plus album. It is all time well-spent.
Reinhart composed the original music score for the award-winning feature film Before Tomorrow. His music was also included in the documentary Kiviak vs Canada, a documentary by renowned director Zacharias Kunuk. Animation film-maker Masoud Raouf has used Reinhart’s music twice now in his films.
Since 1982, Reinhart has collaborated extensively with a variety of other musicians, as well as choreographers, dancers, poets and directors in Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Edmonton, New York and Europe, primarily as a composer/musician, but also as lighting/stage designer, videographer and photographer.
He has released five albums; Woman As Landscape (2000), an instrumental soundtrack for a contemporary dance work; Quaraaluktuq (2003), a collaboration with nine Inuit singers, Cyprus Songs (2011), a collection of 14 improvised, instrumental guitar compositions, recorded in Limassol, Cyprus in 2009; lost&found (2011), 11 original songs and the most recent solo album eCHO (2013), 12 original ‘urban folk’ songs.
The singer/songwriter will play Char’s Landing on Friday, Sept. 22 from 8-10 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door.