Luminato's music program to include Cockburn, Bela Fleck, John Malkovich

TORONTO - Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn says he isn't one to dwell on the past, but he was hit with a wave of nostalgia when he recently realized he's now into his 40th year in the music business.

"It did seem like a milestone," the Ottawa-born folk-rock legend said Tuesday after it was revealed he'll be feted in a June concert as part of Toronto's Luminato arts festival.

"It's like: 'Yeah, 40 years is something. At 30 years I didn't even notice, but 40 years does feel like something ... I'm not given to retrospection normally. I don't listen to the old albums unless I have to relearn a song or something.

"But once in a while I'm somewhere and somebody puts something on and I hear it and think, 'Ah, that's interesting.' Some stuff you cringe at, some stuff is better than I remembered it."

Cockburn's June 16 concert, called "The Canadian Songbook," will see him performing his catalogue of songs with musicians including Hawksley Workman and Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies.

The show is one of several just added to the fourth edition of the annual multi-disciplinary Luminato festival, running June 11-20.

Two-time Academy Award nominee John Malkovich will star in the North American premiere of "The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer," about Austrian author and murderer Jack Unterweger. The piece, set for June 11, features monologues and operatic arias to the music of the Vienna Academy Orchestra.

Bela Fleck, an American banjo luminary who has won 13 Grammys, will join several artists - including Montreal's Karim Saada - June 12 at the free "Global Music: Rock The Casbah & An African Prom."

And Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, who recently added his opera, "Prima Donna," to the festival, has also decided to play a concert at Luminato to kick off his North American tour.

Cockburn's showcase will also feature singer-songwriter Michel Rivard and guitarists Michael Occhipinti and Colin Linden.

All will perform their interpretations of Cockburn's hits, which include "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" and "If I Had a Rocket Launcher."

"I feel like pretty much the same person as I did 40 years ago, although I feel like I know a lot more and I think I'm nicer," said Cockburn, 64, who released his self-titled debut solo album in 1970.

"I think I was a little bit tense back then."

Cockburn's music has been covered by many artists, including Jimmy Buffett, Jerry Garcia, k.d. lang, Anne Murray and the Barenaked Ladies.

At first it was "weird" hearing different versions of his tunes, "but you get used to it and then you can start appreciating what people do," he said.

Cockburn, who lives in Kingston, Ont., isn't sure what he'll play at the show, but he does have some favourites.

"Just the other day I was in a car with a couple of people and somebody put on 'Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu,' and I hadn't listened to that in a long time and I was like, 'This is a good album!"'

Then there are the songs that are "not much fun to relive" because they're inspired by tragic experiences, he said.

Performing the 1984 single "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," for instance, is tough for him because it's like reliving his trip to Guatemalan refugee camps in Mexico, which were attacked by military helicopters.

"I don't particularly like singing that song because I have to go where I was when I wrote it and it wasn't a good place," he said. "It was a painful thing to be around. Not for my own pain - my pain was second-hand - it was from being next to the people that were suffering the stuff that the song talks about."

Tickets to Luminato events go on sale April 15.