City of Brandon Celebrates its Place on the Map with 100th Meridian Concert Series

Brandon, MB – The City of Brandon’s Community Development Section is excited to announce the rebranding of its popular Summer Lights concert series and artist workshop program as the City of Brandon 100th Meridian Concerts, a new moniker that pays homage to Brandon’s place on the map and its small, but important place within Canadian rock ‘n’ roll lore.

Formerly dubbed the Summer Lights Concert Series, the newly minted City of Brandon 100th Meridian Concerts program will offer three advance registration artist workshops and two FREE concert performances in the community this summer in collaboration with Brandon Pride and the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. The name change will allow the Summer Lights Music Festival, a one-day music event that takes place annually in September on the grounds of the Keystone Centre, to further establish itself as a separate community not-for-profit event. The concert series and workshop program’s new name also seeks to reflect the fact that the 100th Meridian West line of longitude cuts across the western fringe of Brandon, a geographical location galvanized in Canadian music history by The Tragically Hip.

“What better way to honour Brandon’s Prairie geographical and cultural association for many Canadians than to name our already-popular community concert series after it,” says City of Brandon Community Development Coordinator Richard Greer. “We see the City of Brandon 100th Meridian Concert Series as one that works with different community organizations to present events at all times during the year, not just the summer months, and so we’re excited for its first season and see what future partnerships can look like.”

The first of two 100th Meridian Concert evening events this summer will be held on Thursday, July 12th on the grounds of the East End Community Centre, located at 405 Park Street. A partnership with the Brandon Pride committee, the event will feature headlining act, Yes We Mystic, an indie-alternative band from Winnipeg. They’ll be joined by opening act, The Young Pixels, a husband-and-wife garage pop duo from Western Manitoba.

Plans are also well underway for the second City of Brandon 100th Meridian Concert event on Thursday, August 9th, to be held in downtown Brandon in conjunction with the launch of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba’s continuing Billboard art series. Confirmed as the event’s headliner is Manitoba-born Indigenous singer and recent Juno nominee Iskwé, while opening the concert will be Sonia Eidse, an Indigenous singer-songwriter from Winnipeg.

Staff in the City of Brandon’s Community Development Section is also working hard to plan artist workshops under the 100th Meridian program umbrella in June, July and August. More information on these workshops and the two upcoming concert events can be found at www.brandon.ca/100thmeridian.

“One of the City of Brandon 100th Meridian Concerts program’s main goals is to provide the community with exposure to emerging and ‘on-the-rise’ artists they might not otherwise get the chance to see in their own backyard, and to provide that opportunity at no cost to the public,” added Greer. “We are so excited about the eclectic mix of artists we’ve been able to secure for this year’s programming and know they will put on amazing performances in our community.”