In less than nine months, Cornwall singer and songwriter Melanie Brulée has launched a new career in Toronto.
In between trips to Kingston and her hometown (where she’s arranged concerts in unusual venues including art galleries and a yoga studio), she’s toured in Northern Ontario, snagged a job as a music publicist, and bartends part-time at Gate 403 on Roncesvalles Avenue (where she also sings from time to time). She also sings with a gritty country band, Ole Fashion — her next dates with the band are at Opera Bob’s a small club on Dundas St. W., on Sept. 16 and 30.
Brulée is also part of a collective of songwriters called Ladies in Waiting, has purchased her first electric guitar, and finally formed her own band to perform her original material — a quirky mix of image-filled pop-cabaret material (in both French and English, too)
She’s just spent five days making her debut record – a six-track EP she’ll launch at the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals convention in October, where she’ll organize a showcase room to feature herself and more than half a dozen other singers.
And from September 20-22 and 26-29, Brulée has a role as a singing busker in Mr. Baxter, a new play written by Kate Fenton and directed by Adam Seybold.
The play, from The Quickening Theatre, debuted at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, and is being remounted at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Mainspace as part of the Bring the Buzz Festival.
Three different stories collide in the play, set in a Toronto subway station; Brulée wrote the original music she’ll perform during the 10-day run.
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