While you need a B.S. detector set at maximum sensitivity when talking to Matthew Holden, aka, Sonis McAllister, about Sonis McAllister and the Barracuda Orchestre, one thing he is honestly excited about is performing for the grand -re-opening of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG), Sept. 17.

He’s the type of cat who makes you wish you could read minds, just to see what is going on in his head. So who are Sonis McAllister and the Barracuda Orchestre?

“We’re just a bunch of musicians who like to play music on home made instruments,” Holden/ McAllister says.

The Barracuda Orchestre are his eight person performance art, jazz influenced, percussion powered, spoken word group/ religious/ agriculture cult who may or may not include former members of the Polyphonic Spree and who may or may not have just received a letter of support and a new amplifier from actor Morgan Freeman, who Holden calls their prophet.

Right now their numbers include Jana MacKenzie from the Allied Arts Council and local artists Dan Wong and Mary-Ann-McTrowe among others.

They are gathered together on a rainy, dreary, Sunday evening, in the depths of Lethbridge’s desolate Chinatown, actually in McTrowe’s and Wong’s cluttered art studio, rehearsing for the grand opening. They hope to brighten up the night —  after all, happiness is the theme of  their upcoming show.

To illustrate that point, they begin their rehearsal with a perfectly timed 20 seconds of belly laughter.

“We’re all numbers 1-8. I’m number 8,” says McAllister  leading his group, all dressed in white, through rehearsals of seven new poems/ songs all related to the emotion of happiness. But first he has the members recite what he calls the four uncontrollables — smile, heart, laughter and emotion.

“We’re restructuring out DNA to be more joyful, he says before humming a line for fiddle player Kelsey Jespersen to pick up on, which the others follow and he sings “If you go around with a  droopy frown…”  and it carries on through there.

He pauses to write how the song will go on a big white board in an erasable marker
While Wong taps out the melody on an xylophone,  McTrowe raps out percussion on a variety of instruments including several iron bars, an old piece of tin, a small washboard strapped across her chest and a hand full of nut shells.

“We’re happy for a lot of reasons, but mostly we’re happy because of the SAAG’s grand re-opening. We’re playing for a member’s only party with Hippodrome and the lovely Erica Hunt. And a lot of the girls have a crush on Brad Brouwer,” McAllister laughs as Jana MacKenzie arrives, changes into her whites and picks up a pair of cymbals.

There is a lot more to blue jeans than just comfortable, all purpose pants for every occasion. The GWG company has a long and storied history in Alberta.
So, with that in mind, the Galt Museum has a special program lined up for Labour Day, Sept. 6 at 7 p.m.

GWG: Piece By Piece explores the history of Edmonton’s  Great Western Garment Company  with a special free presentation of GWG: Piece By Piece, which includes Juno nominated  folk singer Maria Dunn as well as a multi-media presentation with historian  Catherine C. Cole who is an expert on unions, particularly their effect on women workers in the early twentieth century.

“We’re starting with a  talk from Catherine Cole who will be speaking about the history of the GWG garment factory in Edmonton,” said Leslie Hall,  Community Program Co-ordinator.

“The workers there formed the very first union in Alberta. They helped improve working conditions for a lot of Albertan women and  seamstresses,” Hall continued adding the production has been shown at several Alberta museums.

In honour of their 100th anniversary, Sept. 26, The Galt Museum is looking for the keys to the building, which was formerly the Galt Hospital and they are hoping you can help.
One hundred years ago on Sept. 1, 1910, Sir Wilfrid Laurier attended the grand opening of the Galt Hospital building in Lethbridge where, after some scrambling to locate the misplaced key, he opened the doors to the brick structure with the deserving fanfare.

 So in honour of that fascinating tidbit of Lethbridge history, Galt Museum staff are trying to recreate that moment by hiding the “key” to the museum, somewhere in Lethbridge city limits. The lucky person who finds it officially gets to open the museum  on Sept. 26, for their centennial celebrations.
“It was never written about in the Lethbridge Herald because we read all of the articles, but oral history tells us they misplaced the key,” said Galt Museum special projects co-ordinator Lori Harasem, adding to help, they will be issuing one clue per week, every Tuesday through Facebook, Twitter, their website and local media.

The first person to find the key will be the person to open the doors to the Galt Hospital building in a recreation of the 1910 event on Sunday, Sept. 26 at 11 a.m.  
“It’s quite a large old fashioned key. It’s not the actual key because we can’t do that. There will be a note explaining what to do and contact us. It could be anywhere, under a bench, a rock, anywhere,” she said.
 The first clue is: “Trees! Water! Go there, you'll see!  Walk or race, you set the pace. Peek around Lethbridge's beautiful gathering space.”

Would be “secret agents”  age 8-12 can get an early start in their training, and learn a few things about history  in the process thanks to an innovative new online video game called “Seek Your Own Proof,” which includes a Galt Museum component.
“It’s aimed at audiences aged 8-12 to  get the kids excited about  science and history. They try to  act like secret agents,” said Jason Suriano, president and executive producer of his Edmonton based company Seek Your Own Proof.

The University of Lethbridge graduate has been working on this project for the past three years and struck partnerships with the Discovery Channel and  museums in Times Square, New York,  as well as the Galt.

They are also putting the final touches on programs with Edmonton and Seattle as well.

In addition to a variety of cases the agents can solve online, there are also “field missions”— King Tut NYC, at the Times Square Exposition,” and “Night at the Galt Museum” at  the Galt Museum in Lethbridge which was officially launched , Aug. 20 with numerous members of  the University of Lethbridge’s LUMACS summer science/computer science program.

“We really wanted the Galt Museum to  be the first Canadian program,” Suriano said before distributing worksheets  to the bidding agents, who were to go through the exhibit with a fine toothed comb, looking at  the pieces in the main exhibit, reading the information accompanying them and writing down clue words. Afterwards they go to the site www.seekyourownproof.com, sign up and enter the resulting code to redeem  “secret agent” badges as well as tokens which can be redeemed at the gift shops of the participating museums for things like  Discovery Channel videos and souvenirs.