Rita Chiarelli

Rita Chiarelli

http://www.ritachiarelli.com/

Rita Chiarelli, Canada's most highly acclaimed female roots and blues artist, has just released the soundtrack for her award winning documentary, Music From The Big House, her 9th recording. With a Juno award and 4 subsequent Juno nominations, she is known across Canada as the "Goddess of the Blues".

Chiarelli is a gifted songwriter and an entertaining performer, but it is her soaring 3 octave voice that sets her apart from her peers, inspires awe and often tears in her audiences, and causes critics to gush.

The one thing Chiarelli is not; is predictable. Over the past five years she has released Cuore, a recording of traditional Italian folk songs, which won the World music category at the prestigious Canadian Folk Music Awards; Uptown Goes Downtown Tonight, a highly acclaimed collaboration with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra; and Music From the Big House, a documentary movie filmed in Louisiana, at Angola prison, which premiered in New York and L.A. Her CD Sweet Paradise, heralds a return to Chiarelli's blues roots, and is her first album of all original tunes since 2001's JUNO nominated Breakfast at Midnight.

Chiarelli’s documentary Music from the Big House will kick off the festival at a screening held at the Rainbow Cinemas, the evening of Thursday September 8th, 2011.