Glenn Buhr is a singer/songwriter/composer and guitarist/pianist; a powerful performer of his own music.
Music lovers will remember him as front man – with conductor Bramwell Tovey – of Winnipeg’s New Music Festival. (Buhr and the Button Factory Band performed with Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in January 2017.) The Button Factory Band is the vehicle for Buhr’s recent music: a collection of original songs full of vivid imagery and inventive sound painting.
Award-winning novelist/playwright/lyricist, Margaret Sweatman and Buhr have created a new collection of songs for the Button Factory Band, and the band will feature this new material in their 2018-19 performances alongside the original Buhr songs that have defined that band since its debut in 2013. Margaret Sweatman is also a beautiful singer and virtuoso harmonica player. She joins the band for their tours and performances in 2018-19.
The Button Factory Band has a unique sound, sometimes defined as jazz oriented industrial folk-rock. But the band is also eclectic, and sometimes hard to define. The new music is an imaginative mix of vintage blues/roots music, lyrical songs, jazz, and sound art. The music also has a tender quality; the songs are catchy and they explore the bluesy enigma of our lives. The new work is sometimes alarmingly simple; other times it's rich and complex, reflecting Buhr's years as a jazz artist.
Buhr is known all over the world for his compositions for classical institutions too (string quartets, ballet companies and symphony orchestras); the music he writes for his own Button Factory Band has the same energy and craft. The band has performed in large concert halls, smaller soft-seat venues, jazz and folk/roots clubs, rock clubs, house concerts, jazz festivals, folk festivals, new music venues, and also cabaret series in classical music festivals.
