Singer Rufus Wainwright speaks to reporters at a news conference Thursday, June 28, 2012 in Montreal. Wainwright will pay tribute to Judy Garland onstage again, this time at the Luminato Festival in Toronto in June.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Toronto's Luminato Festival continued its rollout of show announcements on Monday with the news of a pair of remount whoppers, including Rufus Wainwright's 2006 concert Rufus Does Judy and the contemporary-dance piece monumental, a 2005 tour de force from the envelope-pushing Vancouver troupe the Holy Body Tattoo.
Rufus Does Judy, performed by the Montreal-raised balladeer Wainwright and a full orchestra, is a recreation of singer and gay icon Judy Garland's famed concert of American pop and jazz standards in 1961 at New York's Carnegie Hall. A live recording of Garland's performance earned five Grammy Awards; Wainwright's own Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall album earned him a Grammy nomination as well.
All told, Wainwright has put on the Garland-styled Ritz six times, but never before in Canada. The concert, which will feature his sister Martha Wainwright reprising her guest spot on the blues classic Stormy Weather, happens June 23 and 24 at the Toronto festival's Hearn Generating Station hub.
At the same site (on June 14-15), the Holy Body Tattoo continues its return from a nearly 10-year absence. The current restaging of monumental (a relentless dance drama of urban angst performed with a live score by the potent Montreal drone-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor) began earlier this year at Vancouver's PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and hits Montreal and Quebec City in April.
This year's Luminato runs from June 10 to 26 in Toronto (luminatofestival.com).
Brad Wheeler