Come to the Gravenhurst Opera House

NORTH SEA GAS

2011-10-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

A Scottish National, and Planetary, Treasure

The three multi-talented members of North Sea Gas brought to the Gravenhurst Opera House an exhilerating, toe-tapping, heart-warming experience of authentic Scottish folk music on the evening of 24 September 2011.

The stage was set with an impressive array of instruments. We counted two guitars, two mandola, a bouzouki, a bodhran, at least one banjo, and last, but not least, a fiddle. The harmonica was less easy to spot. All these were picked up and passed glibly from hand to hand by a trio of outstanding musicians: Dave Gilfillan, Ronnie MacDonald and Grant Simpson.

These professionals drew us into the informal ambiance of a céilidh, inviting us to sing along in choruses and to add our clapping to the percussion. Some of us could not restrain the occasional whoop during a rollicking dance tune.

Grant Simpson’s fiddle wove the music into a rich tapestry of charm. Masterfully blended vocal harmonies, with and without accompaniment, held me spellbound. Dave Gilfillan’s arrangements are tasteful, colourful and compelling, ranging from unison to vibrant harmonies.

Here is a live performance from youtube: Broom o' the Cowdenknowes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlVBFeyrWPc&feature=related
Lyrics available at:
http://chivalry.com/cantaria/lyrics/broom-cowdenknowes.html

North Sea Gas attracts the Scottish diaspora wherever they perform, and adds more fans as they roll along, with a repertoire of old and new, tragical and comic songs. This bardic flow of energy brings to life brave history from the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and calls attention to current issues, like the present plight of the Travelling People.

Scotland’s gypsies, tinkers and anyone else accustomed to the nomadic life are now hemmed in by laws that oblige them to live in towns all winter long, just waiting for the broom to bloom yellow and announce the spring when they can go on the road again. As Dave Gilfillan wryly states, “There are only three of us left now.”

For thirty years this band has toured the British Isles, Austria, Canada, the United States, Turkey, Germany and Estonia. They recorded for Chinese television in 2008 with an estimated audience of 800 million. Regular performers at the Ediburgh Festival “Fringe”, they have received Gold and Silver disc awards and recorded 14 albums.

The North Sea Gas version of the story of Willie aka William Taylor prompted me to go googling. That “brisk young sailor” cropped up all over the British Isles and in North America, in many variants of the ballad. He really got around, this bridegroom. The basic story is that he was nabbed by a press gang at the church door just in time to stop his wedding. His bride wasn’t about to let him go that easily. (Did she suspect that the press gang was orchestrated by Willie himself?) Dressed as a man, she went after him, found him engaged to another woman and promptly shot him dead. According to the ending of the North Sea Gas variant, the captain of Willie’s ship appointed this enterprising lady as commander of another vessel in the same fleet.

I would recommend that anyone within range of a concert by North Sea Gas be sure to reserve seats, and buy CDs afterward, as they are easily available after a concert, but less so from a distance.

Apologies for taking more than a week to funnel all the fun and bardic pageantry of the evening of Saturday 24 September into some semblance of a review. This was one of those performances where I just sat back and had a great time, without trying to nail down any details. That came later, as I listened, and danced, to North Sea Gas’s latest CD, “Tak a Dram Before Ye Go” and read the lyrics and comments on the accompanying literature.

Searching on youtube I was delighted to hear the North Sea Gas take on some of the favourites of our local Muldrew Lake Sing Song:

Loch Lomond
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSYlhpdb0eg&feature=related

and Will Ye No Come Back Again?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZvmUaTU81s&feature=relate

and others new to me:
A comic song from their youtube collection:
I Wish They’d Do It Now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39uoY_CLOcA&feature=related

Cam Ye O'er Frae France
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5yECczRsIk&feature=related

Caledonia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvFcBm3AEFM&feature=related

More information is available at the group’s website: http://www.northseagas.co.uk.

And now back to
http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

VALDY - A MAN WITH A THOUSAND FRIENDS

2011-09-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

Valdy

Folk minstrel Valdy returned to a favourite theatre, the Gravenhurst Opera House, on Monday evening 12 September as a freshly minted Member of the Order of Canada. We were honoured and delighted to hear his flexible voice and inimitable guitar celebrating herons, Salt Spring Island Buddhist monks, life on the road and - after intermission - the birthday of Nancy in the audience, who sang along, mystified but enthusiastic. In addition to being a magician disguised as a magnificent musician, Valdy has the gift of friendship.

Nancy and I were blown away by Valdy’s guitar gifts, so much so that it has taken me a couple of days to find a few words to capture the experience. I’m going to have to fumble for them, beginning with impressions of Canadian folk singers heard at the Bohemian Embassy Coffee House on Toronto’s Gerard Street in the sixities.

We had a few headliners like Ian and Sylvia Tyson who could both sing and play the guitar very well indeed. Most performers did better on guitar than on singing, and that was OK. The guitar kept them in tune, basically. The better they played the accompaniment, the less it mattered that the tunes were mainly of the one-note variety because the harmonies carried the song.

Sundays were amateur nights, where a friend of mine found out the hard way that you couldn’t get away with just strumming your guitar; you had to be pretty handy with the strings. Her début as amateur performer at the Bohemian Embassy did not go over well with the blasé audience. She vowed never to bring her guitar again, a difficult resolve for an avid collector of folk music since childhood. But she couldn’t stay away, just left the guitar at home. Folk music was stretching its muscles, at an exciting time to live in.

One evening my friend felt like singing a favourite Irish traditional song and found out something surprising. The MC couldn’t believe her when she apologized for having no accompaniment. His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at the very idea of anyone simply singing. She didn’t even apologize for being a soprano. She was too far gone to turn back. The MC announced in hushed tones that the next number would be unaccompanied. Into the shocked hush that followed she poured “The Lover’s Curse”. A pin drop silence, then warm applause. This old, old song, fiercely anti-war, fitted in with the Sixties’ crucible of new music of the people. For a brief moment, the room reverted to the most basic instrument - the human voice.

Returning to our own exciting times, on Monday 12 September 2011 at the Gravenhurst Opera House, neither Nancy nor I could think of anyone we’d ever heard who could be so at one with a guitar and make it play in surprising keys, and whose voice can float or growl, who is also a poet with a gamut from pathos to unfettered fun. It would appear that Canada had to wait until the seventies before a minstrel came on the scene who had the gift of melody in his compositions, knew exactly what he wanted to do with his voice and made an orchestra out of his guitar. That was Valdy. And still is.

I may be wrong, but my honest impression of Valdy, gathered from hearing him in person for the first time the other night, is that nobody else can play guitar like that, with a voice so at one with the instrument that there were moments when I could have sworn the guitar was singing too. He delights in establishing rhythm patterns in the accompaniment that convey the movement of an 18-wheeler, a train on track, Rick Hanson’s globe-circling wheelchair or a tall dark stranger shambling into town.

As far as I am concerned, this is an artist who could pick up the Muskoka telephone book and make a ballad out of it that would have hearts beating in tune with an earthy sentiment of local and universal significance. There could be some sharp social commentary to hit a nerve and tickle a chuckle as well.

Now that I have managed, more or less, to describe the vibes of this concert, I’ll give the pen to Valdy himself, as found on his richly informative and entertaining website.

http://www.valdy.com

“Valdy, born Valdemar Horsdal in Ottawa, Canada has been part of the fabric of Canadian pop and folk music for over 34 years. A man with a thousand friends, from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island to Texas to New Zealand, he's a singer, guitarist and songwriter who catches the small but telling moments that make up life.

"Remembered for Play Me a Rock and Roll Song, his bitter-sweet memory of finding himself, a relaxed and amiable story-teller, facing a rambunctious audience at the Aldergrove Rock Festival circa 1968, Valdy has sold almost half a million copies of his 13 albums, has two Juno Awards (Folk Singer of the Year and Folk Entertainer of the Year), a total of seven Juno nominations and four Gold albums to his credit.

“There is not enough music in the world. ... Play for the kids, you adults. Play for the adults, you kids."

We loved Valdy at the Gravenhurst Opera House as they will on his tour to Kinkardine, Toronto, Brampton, Port Hope, Goderich in Ontario and Amherst, Shelbourne, Annapolis Royal and Middle Musquodoboit in Nova Scotia, Riverview, Ford Mills, St. Andrew's in New Brunswick, Okanagan Valley, Sicamous in BC, and back to Ontario: Newburgh,Toronto, London, Alliston and the Holiday Train, Montreal to Vancouver, Nov. 26 to Dec. 17. And other places too numerous to list here. This shortened list of engagements gives a general idea of the energy generated by this outstanding Canadian troubadour.

Here he is on Youtube singing, “Play me a rock and roll song”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtNSljYgDe8

And now back to
http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

LORNE ELLIOTT'S UPSIDE OF THE DOWNSIDE

2011-08-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

JACK WOULD HAVE ENJOYED THIS SHOW. WE DID.

Writer, composer, actor, musician Lorne Elliott has been meandering all over Canada and gathering comic gems about us for nearly 30 years. His performance on the historic stage of the Gravenhurst Opera House Tuesday 23 August 2011 happened one day after the death of a former schoolmate of his in Hudson, Quebec.

Like many, if not all, of the audience at the Opera House that evening, and millions across Canada, I was mourning the rapid decline and sudden passing of Jack Layton, leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and an inspiration within and beyond his political affiliation with the NDP. It seemed somehow quite appropriate to carry on with life as usual, and attend a show that I am sure Jack would have enjoyed.

In fact, as we learned with the last sentence from the stage, that whole evening was dedicated to the late Mr. Layton. “This one’s for you, Jack!” Subtly, Lorne Elliott, a consummate master of searching and gentlemanly humour, had been working up to that quiet ending all evening as he tickled us into gales of laughter.

An evening with this quintessential Canadian comedian is a whirlwind journey “Madly Off in All Directions”, like his former Saturday afternoon broadcasts on CBC Radio. Eager to catch his current show on stage, I had no idea how much more fun it would be to see that rubbery face in action, and the trademark shocked hairdo and baggy trousers.

In fact I just barely caught this live show. Try to sneak inconspicuously into our venerable Opera House from its updated elevator entrance, just below stage right, in a colourful Ghanian print outfit.

Up on stage Lorne was mercilessly wrangling a microphone on a heavy stand, and regaling an already appreciative house with wildly graphic self-deprecations on a home renovation disaster. Next thing we knew it, we were sharing an off-shore breeze off Prince Edward Island in a home-crafted boat that was the epitome of ineptitude.

A typical effect of a stage performance by Lorne Elliott seems to be a certain infectiousness. We have just seen an example of this, as I got embroiled in excessive vocabularizations, as characterized by Lorne’s CBC icon, Rex Murphy.

Thorough enjoyment of an Elliott gig would imply that the audience is familiar with the CBC and its personalities. His contagious flippancy rubs off on his audiences, who come out of his performances feeling funny and quipping merrily. Warmed up by successively more hilarious misadventures in home renovation, landscaping and boat-building, we easily swallowed passing comments like, “Canadian - it’s a wonder we manage to breathe.”

Part of the Elliott mandate is to add the audience’s home town to his itinerary and litany. He kept us neatly skewered in Gravenhurst, and seemed to know intuitively that we are inclined to be “weird”. Funny he should notice that. Other reviewers have noticed his noticing, and reported him as an astute observer of Canadian wildlife, including the humans and super-humans like David Suzuki.

Undoubtedly noting a predominance of grey heads among us, Lorne made sure anyone the least bit hard of hearing was able to capture the rich subtleties of moose, a language he speaks fluently in his alter ego of Morris, the Moose. The guy next to me was joining quite effectively in the chorus of that song.

I idly wonder if Lorne Elliott happened to know that here in Gravenhurst we don’t need to go into the woods, with or without warning bells, but may casually meet a bear strolling around the Opera House or up a tree by the Salvation Army church. At any rate, his comments tend to hit close to home.

In the artist’s own words: “The one-man show I'm performing now is called "THE UPSIDE OF THE DOWNTURN". ... The way the One-man show works is by not staying in one place too long. It's harder to hit a moving target.”

Here is a sample of Lorne Elliott in action, using some of the ideas that we heard in Gravenhurst. One of two clips from a show at Stephensville, Newfoundland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3EcO8dSJQY&feature=related

His own website is fun to browse and most informative.
http://www.lorne-elliott.com

Off and on during the writing of this review I was watching CBC television’s coverage of Jack Layton’s lying in state at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, and interviews with his close friends and associates. Jian Ghomeshi, a personal friend of Jack and his family, made a shiver go down my spine as he reported NDP Caucus Members vowing “not to go madly off in all directions” but to work together toward their late leader’s visions and goals for Canada.

I didn’t happen to vote NDP in the recent election, and I’m not a member of any party, but I am so sad to see a great leader leave us just after bringing Quebec into the federal fold and taking his place as the first NDP leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. This one is for you, Jack, for Olivia and your family, and for all of us who have appreciated your decency, responsibility, music and fun in politics and in our lives.

And now back to
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Dragonfly Theatre Presents "Beyond a Joke"

2011-08-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

“Just think. If there were no television and no church, none of this would have happened.”

“This” is an escalating series of pseudo disasters visiting the characters of the British farce, “Beyond a Joke”. Popular playwright Derek Benfield is not Shakespeare, but knows how to whip up a light cocktail of summer theatre fun set in the décor of an English country house and garden. Ladders, wheelbarrows and rubber boots lend a rustic air to the action, peppered by dialogue that gathers momentum and wit as it moves along.

As one of the audience on opening night, I can assure you that the set is pleasant and expansive, and the acting and direction excellent, ably overcoming Benfield’s rather stodgy first act and gathering glib momentum in the second. As characters are added the tempo accelerates.

The macabre theme is, as the title forebodes, not the least funny in itself. And that’s the whole point of the exercise. “After all,” says a central character, “It can happen to anyone.”

Beyond this very sketchy review I cannot go, without letting too many bodies, I mean cats, out of bags, closets or wheelbarrows. The lily pond is almost like a character in the play, gathering sinister overtones as it is pointed at from the stage, off in the invisible distance. As for the summer house ...

I hope I have intrigued anyone who has not seen the play yet, sufficiently to consider investing in a summer evening with the inimitable Dragonfly Theatre Company in the Trillium Court at the Gravenhurst Opera House.

There is still time to join the audience. “Beyond a Joke” completes its run on 13th August. Dinner is served.

AMY DODINGTON’S “OLD TIMES’ SAKE”

2011-07-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

A Diva’s Green Travelogue in Time and Space

The Gravenhurst Opera House felt rather like a Victorian parlor on Friday evening, 22 July, 2011, lending its warm acoustics to the sunny voice and presence of Amy Dodington, soprano. Her program, “Old Times’ Sake”, is a delightful, eclectic, array of gems from opera, music hall, classics, traditional folk music, operetta, musical comedy and parlor songs, encompassing not only hundreds, but thousands of years.

The program began with the lute of the legendary Orpheus, and proceeded smoothly and surely through different styles and periods. The magic carpet comes to mind as a perfect vehicle for all this traveling in time. Lift-offs were impeccable, and landings airy on a variety of musical terrains. Amy Dodington’s flexible voice is equally at home in the lyric, dramatic, and - perhaps even more equally - the coloratura repertoire. This much was evident in the first half of the program. Then in the second half, she revealed an affinity with the Celtic tradition as if she’d been born to sing the Irish “My Lagan Love” and the Welsh, “David of the White Rock”. Without a doubt in my mind, she was.

Amy Dodington’s gifts extend beyond her musicianship to the knack of drawing an audience into the charmed world of a carefully crafted program inspired from the heart, where “pin drop” after “pin drop” silences descend between the final note of a song and the applause. I’ve never heard so many such hushed moments in any one concert by anybody.

The more than 100-year-old stage of the Gravenhurst Opera House lent itself to dressing like the diva that Amy Dodington is for the first half of a concert, then stepping out in costume of the early 1900s in the second half. In a few well chosen phrases she shared a family background of her father’s classical records and a tuneful mother with a lovely voice - the latter now silenced forever. When Nora Dodington passed on in 2009 at the age of 65, the Cellar Singers dedicated their performance of the Bach B Minor Mass to her. The second part of her daughter’s concert begins with Dvořák’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, beautifully shaped and textured.

Back to Amy Dodington’s musicianship, she delivers each song from the inside out; she is the song, while cloaked in its vintage and style. We may have heard “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady” adorably sung by a galaxy of great sopranos from Julie Andrews to Audra McDonald. Amy from Port Carling also makes it hers. I suspect that she has more than one feeling for interpreting any song afresh every performance.

The accompanist for this concert was the multi-talented Geoffrey Conquer, who also treated us to four glittering solos that reflected his own personal assimilation of the Russian schools of piano. He has studied with internationally renowned masters like Marina Mdivani, a pupil of the great Emil Gilels. Keep an eye and ear open for the name Geoffrey Conquer.

Thankfully, this review is not an adjudication, but merely an appreciation intended to re-create at least in part a delightful experience. Still, I have to give excellent German and Italian pronunciation its due recognition. When it is as authentic as Amy Dodington’s it could easily go unrecognized, seamless with the song. German can be a lovely language when lovingly pronounced. In this concert it was easy for the fussiest germanophile to stay entirely enchanted by Wolf’s setting of Goethe’s exquisite poem, “Anakreons Grab”.

I wish I could go on about each tasty morsel of the whole program, “Old Times’ Sake”, and gush about that gorgeous gown the colour of ruby red wine, but rather than get completely carried away, I have one more thing to say before ending this review. Pause for me to get up on a soap box.

More than 20 years ago I put together a list of songs about green growing things like trees, the water and sun that nourish them and the creatures that live in them. Only recently did I begin a blog to suggest to artists that they include “green” pieces in their programs. Something to that effect must be capturing the attention of many who aspire to keeping our planet green.

Amy Dodington begins with a song about Orpheus playing his lute to the trees, the mountains, plants, flowers, the sun, showers, the sea. “Anakreons Grab” depicts a poet’s last resting place, sweet with the scent of roses and the sound of turtle doves, planted with laurels and green bushes and under the care of the gods. The second-last piece is Oscar Rasbach’s “Trees”. The concert ends with a song by "Annie Laurie" composer, Alicia Scott, evoking the sweet perfume of jasmine.

When a graduate from Zoology, Anthropology and Environmental Sciences puts together a program called “Old Times’ Sake”, no wonder it’s green. Thank you, Amy, for a refreshing, reflective evening sparkling with your unique sense of humour.

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

ASARO AND HUTTON MAKE MASTERFUL STRIDES ON TWO PIANOS

2011-07-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

Jack Hutton can’t get over stride piano player Paul Asaro’s left hand. That’s the hand that can play “Tea for Two” while the right hand tinkles out “Indian Love Song” or whatever other tune takes Asaro’s fancy. Together, Asaro’s gifted hands and equally flexible voice dazzled and delighted an appreciative audience crowding the Gravenhurst Opera House on the evening of Saturday 9 July 2011.

Once again an artist of the ragtime persuasion has triumphed over the Steinway on that venerable stage. Occasional high and mighty visiting pianists may have been overheard complaining about the keys being “stiff”. Yet, magically, the ragtime guys and gals who come to Gravenhurst year after year, thanks to Jack Hutton, manage to electrify the staid Steinway with sheer joy and boundless enthusiasm.

The great Mimi Blais, “Ragtime” Bob Darch and Dick Hyman love to play “stride”, but seemed only to mention it in passing, as if we all knew what it was. To my recollection, they never stopped long enough to spell out exactly what stride is. It sounded big, very masculine like a cowboy marching toward a bull to ride. I was poised with flashlight and notebook for heroic, loud sounds to be diligently analyzed. Those were there, all right, but only when called for. The dynamics were subtle and varied as were the rhythms. I relaxed, entranced.

“Carolina Shout” has a robust and tuneful bass, with a delicate treble accompaniment that occasionally picks up the melody, then throws it back to the left hand. This piece by “The Father of Stride”, James P. Johnson was “a major rite of passage for aspiring Harlem stride piano players” according to Ted Gioia.

Johnson himself can be heard on youtube playing “Carolina Shout” recorded from a piano roll - hence no scratchy 1920’s recording sounds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSFGyipsNsg

And so I gathered, at last, that stride is an intricate and sophisticated school of music that arose in the 1920’s when ragtime met jazz. The blending of these two streams opened out new freedom to improvise, new demands for virtuosity and oceans of fun. The stride style demands more of the left hand than ragtime ever did. The bass no longer thumps out an oom-pa-pa tuba part derived from military marches, as in early ragtime - around the 1860’s and the American Civil War. The left hand of a stride pianist ranges widely up and down the bass register, with the little finger sometimes assigned to a melody of its own. For an example of this, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68c6XrIT0_w&feature=related

No doubt about it, Paul Asaro is, as one reviewer called him, a “one man band”. In fact that’s what a ragtime piano player is, all the more so when s/he moves into stride. You can hear the brass band in the bass, while clarinets, trumpets, flutes and violins warble in the treble. As it happens, Asaro’s is possibly the most colourful piano playing I’ve ever heard, from the classics onward.

Inspired by “Professor” Ragtime Bob Darch, young Paul put on a playful professorial hat to give us a crash course in What Ragtime Is All About. We heard Scot Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” played first in ragtime, and then in stride. After “Riffs” by Johnson we were treated to Willie “The Lion” Smith’s delicate, almost Chopin-like “Echoes of Spring”.

The upright piano on centre stage was all set for Asaro/Hutton duos beginning with “Ain’t Misbehavin’” by Fats Waller. There hadn’t been time for a rehearsal, but it was easy to guess the spontaneity on stage sprang from long experience and pure improvisation. As Jack wrote following the show: “Paul and I have played together twice at Alexandria Bay, N.Y., and have developed a pretty good sense of what the other one is going to play. We fit together very well because we have both been listening for many years to the same recordings.”
Clip from duo above on 9 July 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuJf1wgO4Lo

All this listening to legacy recordings must be part of the training for ragtime and stride piano players. The first time Jack heard Paul playing in another room, he wondered momentarily whether Fats Waller had come back to life. And no, this was not Jelly Roll Morton either, fitting his fingers into the keys of a player piano at full speed.

After intermission an exuberant Paul Asaro treated us to Jelly Roll Morton’s beginnings in New Orleans, when Mamie, the lady next door, used to play the blues every morning with eight fingers - she was missing two. Mamie’s blues evolved into Morton’s. We heard “The Jelly Roll Blues”, “Mr. Jelly Lord”, the tango-like “Crave”, “Animule Dance” and a roaring “Tiger Rag”. (First time I heard that piece with such a ROAR in the bass.)

Jack returned for a duo “China Boy”, lots of fun for both players, and for us.

Then it was “Aloysius, Do The Dishes”, a haunting tune that you can hear Paul Asaro perform at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8TXge1OKgQ

“Handful of Keys” was a foretaste of the final piece, and “The Blind Pig Blues” is an Asaro composition.

The grand finale was Paul Asaro’s interpretation of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Fingerbreaker”, which Jack Hutton classifies as “an incredibly difficult piece that I will NEVER be able to play. Paul Asaro makes it sound easy. Our audience heard one of the best stride piano players on this planet last night -- and he is only 43!”

Notes from Jack Hutton about winding down in the Trillium Court:

Downstairs, Paul and I played together until close to 11 p.m. That included “Honeysuckle Rose” by Fats Waller, “Echo of Spring” by Willie “the Lion” Smith and “I’ve Got My Fingers Crossed”, which Fats Waller played in the Lena Horne movie, “Stormy Weather”. That last tune was our best of the whole night -- very close to the way Fats played it!

We did Willie the Lion’s signature tune, “Relaxing”, before we finished. I started playing it after Paul got up to leave and he rushed back to join me. Willie used to play it late at night and play it differently with every chorus. Paul and I had great fun doing the same thing. Have you noticed that many of my concerts last longer downstairs than they do upstairs!

Dale Peacock wrote asking what is stride piano, and I’ve tried to incorporate some notion of this while writing a review, which is something like playing two different pieces with each hand.

Dick Hyman’s demonstration “from ragtime to stride” can be found on youtube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo_365T1B2o&feature=related

And finally, here is Paul Asaro playing "Fingerbreaker":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf3ozxMjsLU&feature=related

Thank you, Paul and Jack for a wonderful melodic, rhythmic evening.

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

How to Review the Cottage Country Comedy Festival Without being a Spoiler

2011-06-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

At last! The Cottage Country Comedy Festival made it to the Gravenhurst Opera House in 2011 on the evening of 23 June for the Gala Opening of its fourth summer season. In the deeply Muskokan atmosphere of a seemingly simple set, the comedians are encouraged to get their words flowing, with the well-timed silences and human and non-human sounds that are all part of the process. The CBC was filming and recording, and so picked up the boisterous enthusiasm of an audience more than ready for an evening that was clearly beyond their high expectations.

As Bracebridge native Tyler Morrison, Creative Director, and multi-award winner, writes on the CCCF website, the festival brings “comedians together from all over the world for a great weekend filled with laughs and a true Muskokan experience”. The intention here is, “to build shows with a dynamic all killer no filler appeal... the energy is very tangible, something that the audience can feel through the performances.”

Last night that energy bounced back and forth between audience and comedians as I have rarely seen happen at the Gravenhurst Opera House since Dave Broadfoot's First Final Tour in 2001. When we delighted in Dave, we were witnessing the mature talent of a Canadian icon, ever fresh and youthful.

On 23 June 2011, we heard a performer shout how thrilled he was to crown his career by making it to the stage of the Gravenhurst Opera House. Part of the laugh there included our knowledge that, like all his buddies on stage that evening, he has much to look forward to. And so have we. This is a young show, which perhaps partly explains the thread of pre-occupation with aging.

Unknown to the team, near the back of the hall was an 80-year-old reviewer-blogger who had decided to leave her notebook at home and just enjoy the show. The Cottage Country Comedy Festival with comic after comic prancing onto the stage did not seem an occasion to crouch in the dark making frantic notes in invisible writing.

The CCCF rampage continues at The Rosseau on 24 June and Port Carling Community Centre on 25 June. Bracebridge’s Griffin Pub on 12 August and the Rene M. Caisse Theatre on 13 August, as can be seen and heard on the CCCF website http://www.cottagecomedy.com/

They are updating it as I type. It’s a very generous, entertaining and informative site, with video samplings, also letting us glimpse part of the set, to whet appetites.

Click to return to the Gravenhurst Opera House website.

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

Velvet on the Soul

2010-08-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

AN ENTHUSIASTIC AUDIENCE WELCOMES JACK HUTTON AND FRIENDS

“Velvet on the soul” were the words that occurred to me, at the Gravenhurst Opera House on Friday evening, 27 August 2010, hearing a smooth and vibrant blend of saxophone, string bass, piano, trombone and banjo by Jack Hutton and Friends. The warm acoustics of the Opera House were perfect for bringing to life music of the twenties, thirties and forties.

The grey-haired, multi-talented quintette played for a mainly grey-haired audience buzzing with renewed energies from their teen-aged years. The musicians evoked memories of Dunn’s Pavillion, where Duke Ellington played six engagements and lapped up ice cream in between numbers. Now follows the line-up of artists and the pieces they played, with notes by Jack Hutton.

Ric Giorgi, string bass and violin, Toronto

Bob Livingston, trombone, Midland

Brian Bauer, clarinet and every saxophone known to man, Buffalo

Jack Hutton, piano and leader, Bala

FIRST HALF

Black Bottom (E flat)

Written by Perry Bradford, a black ragtime pianist and composer around 1909. It set off the Black Bottom dance craze after being featured in a New York variety show in 1927. We usually play it exactly the way it was originally recorded, but Brian finished with a Charleston ending that came from a recording that none of the rest of us had ever heard. That’s what makes playing with this group so interesting (and unexpected).

Clarinet Marmalade (F)

The cutting piece which aspiring jazz clarinet musicians had to be able to play in the 1920s and 1930s

Crazy Words and Crazy Tunes, 1927, as performed by the Varsity Collegians at Gerry Dunn’s first dance hall in Bala in the 1930s. In the piano chorus, I put Fats Waller’s stride classic "Handful of Keys" on top of the tune.

Everything I Have Is Yours 1933, performed at the first and second Dunn’s Pavilions. Brian Bauer played it in the style of Frankie Trumbauer.

I’ll Never Smile Again (F)

Bob Livingston solo of the Canadian tune written by Ruth Lowe in 1939 and recorded by Tommy Dorsey in 1941 with a skinny new singer, Frank Sinatra (his first recording).

Mood Indigo (B flat)

Recalling Duke Ellington’s six appearances at Dunn’s Pavilion

Songs of the Golden Era

Ain’t Cha Glad, written by Fats Waller G (Willie sings). Piano tried to evoke the way that Fats would have played it (he never recorded it, to our knowledge) (Helen cuts in here: And, Jack, the Waller style came across clearly.)

Georgia Cabin (E flat)

Composed by Sidney Bechet (Ric sings)

Nuages (Clouds) Django Rheinhardt

Beautifully rendered by Will Wilson on the guitar.

SECOND HALF

Tribute to Richard Rodgers

If They Asked Me I Could Write A Book

Will Wilson vocal and also Jack vocal (not scheduled)

Manhattan

Tune that launched career for Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

You Took Advantage of Me (E flat)

I’m Getting Sentimental Over You (B flat)

Audience request. Bob Livingston plays signature piece of Tommy Dorsey as played at Dunn’s Pavilion.

Michelle sung by Will Wilson

Embraceable You

Gershwin tune played at request of audience member

Body and Soul (D flat)

Tribute to Hart Wheeler

(Note from Helen: anybody who plays anything in five flats has my awed admiration!)

The Sheik of Araby

Request of audience member, with audience participation in refrains like “Without no pants on”

Struttin’ With Some BBQ (E flat)

Lady is a Tramp (Rodgers Hart) FINALE

ENCORE: Lady Be Good (Gershwin) at request of audience member

Thanks to Jack Hutton emailing the playlist and the fascinating background material. Jack also writes: “We had so many requests over the intermission that we could have played till dawn if we had played them all.

“There were a couple more in the second half that were unexpected ones, bowing to audience requests, but I would have to listen to cassette recordings to remember what they were! I am pretty sure that one of them was "Nothing Could Be Finer Than To Be In Carolina" by Walter Donaldson, one of the greatest composers in the 1920s.

“As you probably gathered, there is quite a love relationship between the band and that special audience, some of whom have not missed one of the seven or eight concerts at the Opera House since our first one. Also, a number of jazz scholars drive up from the GTA and New York State every time they hear that we are playing anywhere. They know we play tunes that you will not hear anywhere else, played as faithfully as we can possibly do it from long-lost old 78 rpm records.”

Again, thank you Jack!

Here is Helen to wind up this accolade with, “A grand old time was had by all.”

Scroll down to see more reviews of the 2010 Summer, and earlier Seasons

Click on the link below to view the new Gravenhurst Opera House website.

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

Traveling Back in Time

2010-08-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

“ENGLISH ROSE” GASSED OUT ON ITS FIRST NIGHT, A GAS ON THE SECOND

From accounts by Helen Heubi in "The Muskoka Times"

Friday 28 September, 2001, was to be the first night of two for Peter Scott’s well-knit play, “English Rose”, starring Muskoka’s own Robin Clipsham. By showtime, 8 pm, the Gravenhurst Opera House was comfortably full, the audience primed for an evening of inspired comedy and the artist ready to prance onto the stage and liven it up as if she were a whole troupe of players. That Friday evening performance, however, simply didn’t take place. Seconds before curtain time the Opera House had to be evacuated because of a gas leak.

“I was all set to step out on the stage,” said Robin Clipsham, “When I peeped through a chink and saw people getting up and leaving.” At first she thought that someone must have fallen ill and had to be taken out. Then the whole hall emptied - in less than two minutes. Robin groped her way in the blacked out stage to the headset to try to find out what was going on, couldn’t see what button to press, so pressed them all. After what seemed like a very long time, but was only a few minutes, she learned why the Opera House was being evacuated. Imagine being about to perform, only to see your audience quietly evaporate. And they didn’t have to scramble out of costume and makeup and into street clothes.

Without waste of time my friend and I had joined the orderly audience gently streaming down the stairs by the elevator and out the south entrance. As I look back I am reminded of one of those dreamlike slow motion sequences in a film, with a slight blurring and little or no sound.Outside, we saw three fire engines strategically positioned. Firemen were shrugging on their coats and heading toward the entrances. Later I asked the fire chief if the sirens had been on, and indeed they had, although we inside did not hear them. My friend and I joined the crowd on the pavements around the Opera House, and waited about half an hour until someone strolled over and said, “Robin’s gone home.”

Two teams of firefighters were sent into the Opera House to discover the source of the strong smell of gas, and found it in the basement under the Trillium Court. They also found three or four people backstage who were not aware of the evacuation, and joined us rapidly outside. Within the hour the gas people had removed the offending boiler and turned off the furnace until repairs could be completed. For the rest of the night, however, no one was allowed back in the building.

Meanwhile, across the street at the Rickshaw for a late supper I reminisced about the Saturday afternoon back in the 1940s when cottagers at Muldrew Lake decided to celebrate our annual regatta by going to the show in town, only to find the movie theatre closed for a death in the manager’s family. The town was full of Norweigian airmen, tourists, cottagers and town residents at loose ends. The younger and wilder of us crashed a dance in the town hall - now the Opera House. Other more sedate members of our party ended up in that very same Chinese restaurant for a coffee and milkshake to fortify us for the three-mile walk back to Indian Landing.

My friend couldn't join me when I saw the full performance of "English Rose". I enjoyed it enough for two people. A full review follows in a later post.

Scroll down to see more reviews of the 2010 Summer, and earlier Seasons

Click on the link below to view future shows.

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

Three Standing Ovations for Victoria Banks

2010-08-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

by Helen Heubi

Thunderous applause and a standing ovation welcomed Victoria Banks to the stage of the Gravenhurst Opera House on Saturday 7 August, 2010. The dazzling evening began with a cymbal salute from the band, introducing “The Wheel”, Victoria’s award-winning single, and ended on an intimate note with “The Other Side”, interpreted by no other instrument than her expressive voice. A final standing ovation had brought on this moving encore, and another followed it.

Victoria couldn’t help repeating from time to time that she always loves to return to Gravenhurst to perform in her native Muskoka. It’s been a long way from Port Carling, where she was born, to Toronto University for a BA in zoology, to Nashville, the “City of Dreams”, where she has worked for the past ten years. Pursuing her greatest passion, song writing, has not been easy. “Nashville gives you a roller-coaster ride of emotions,” she says.

Powerful words and music roll out of Victoria’s life experiences. In between songs, she shared some of these with us. Her songs tell it like it is. What to do with a wedding ring that would not go away by itself, years after the joyous marriage, the painful awakening and the inevitable divorce? The answer came in a song.

Victoria’s gifts for writing lyrics and music had been discovered not long after she came to Nashville. She tailors her songs to the singers who request them. One artist she collaborated with is Jessica Simpson, whose rendering of “Come on Over” was rated highest charting debut country artist's single in Billboard history. Victoria knew her career had moved up a vital notch when, driving along a country road near Nashville, she heard one of her own compositions on the air for the first time. Her car radio was broadcasting Sara Evans singing “Saints and Angels”.

While flying to flooded Nashville in May of this year, after being away during the worst of its disaster, Victoria wrote a song of courage and survival, inspired by emails from her friends there. Some had lost everything. Beneath her plane, where she expected to see downtown lights, she saw only darkness. The Grand Old Opry sat in ten feet of water. Other musicians rallied to produce her song, “City of Dreams”, as a video, now available on the Red Cross site www.CityOfDreamsNashville.com. All proceeds from the video downloads on this site go to the Red Cross for victims of the Tennessee flood.

You are now reading a review written by someone who grew up steeped in traditional folk music, and plenty of classical, has heard a lot of jazz and kind of gets it, but is basically unfamiliar with Country. Like Victoria's Dad, mine had a large collection of music by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and many others whose names are not all easy to spell. Unlike her, I did not have a rock-and-roll epiphany in high school. On this sketchy background are based my perceptions of her powerful 2010 Saturday night concert at the Gravenhurst Opera House.

Despite differences in genre and generation, every song has roots. Listening to Victoria’s compositions arising from her own life, I realized that they come to her from a variety of sources like the blues, rock-and-roll, the simplest of folk melodies and more, all subtly grounded in the classics of her childhood. She speaks many languages of music, has made them her own and invented more, setting herself free to fly into new dimensions. In “Saints and Angels” the melody seems to have upward motions like wings.

In July Victoria Banks was nominated by the CCMA for the categories “Female Artist of the Year” and “Songwriter of the year”. The CCMA Awards show will be broadcast from Edmonton, Alberta, on Sunday 12 September on CBC and CMT. According to the tour destinations on her website, she will be performing in Edmonton on the previous day.

Now I share with you what Victoria and an audience member wrote in Facebook about Saturday’s concert. First Victoria:

“Wow, what an amazing show tonight at the Gravenhurst Opera House! Thanks to my hometown crowd for making me feel so welcome!”

And now Susan Penwarden from the audience:

“Thanks for the amazing concert tonight. You now officially have one more true fan my husband. You blew him away with your very last song. We both believe a true test of a singer’s ability is to sing with no back up and you passed with flying colours. We will definitely will be seeing you again! Thanks again. You made our hearts happy.

Les and Sue

P.S. best of luck at the CCMA's”

Victoria Banks has an informative, user-friendly website, where you can find her music, tour details, journal, store for CDs and t-shirts, and her biography in written and video form. This video really drew me in with its warmth and brilliance. Hers is an attractive, tuneful site to enjoy, and to keep in touch with her and her career path as it gathers more and more glitter overlaying the gold of her life story.

http://www.victoriabanks.net

Scroll down to see more reviews of the 2010 Summer, and earlier Seasons

Click on the link below to view future shows.

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

Celebrating Dave Broadfoot, Nine Years Later

2010-07-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

DAVE BROADFOOT’S “FIRST FAREWELL TOUR” OF 2001

from the archives of “The Muskoka Times”

by Helen Heubi

“Dave Broadfoot’s First Farewell Tour” stopped for three sold-out performances August 30 and 31 at the Gravenhurst Opera House near the end of the Straw Hat Festival of 2001.

This was not the first time that the Dean of Canadian comedy has trod our boards, and we may hope it is not the last. I have muzzy memories of him in earlier Straw Hat days, about the era of the Davis family, Barbara Hamilton and Charmion King, to mention a sparkle of the outstanding theatre folk steeped in the Muskoka tradition.

Oddly enough there was a moment when a lock of my hair near the back of my crown lifted, as if some other personality were also haunting the place, the better to see how Dave is working the audience in 2001, some fifty years after first appearing here.

“He sneaks up on you,” remarked one fan. A master of timing, Dave also manages to be always a heartbeat ahead, still checking our reflexes. “Am I speaking too quickly?”

Another signature jibe, in the middle of a diatribe, “Am I touching a nerve?”

That’s the whole idea. Dave’s got an irreverent finger on the pulse of Canada and of an audience. This “old dog”, as he calls himself at 75, is always teaching himself, and us, new tricks. For half a century he has been constantly refining his unique vision of our country and its world.

“I think of Gravenhurst as the gateway to -- Bala!” may touch a nerve -- the one on the funny-bone.

A ticket to a Broadfoot show entitles us to what amounts to a three-ringed circus. At centre stage: one spry commentator on our life and times, who has us laughing before we know it at very unamusing topics, like pollution.

Stage right: a parade of real-life animals, notably our politicians, expertly caricatured.

State left: Dave’s own creations -- characters so numerous that he can afford to be selective in customizing each show, and fine-tuning to each audience. The line-up in the current show includes the fuzzy-minded hockey player, Big Bobby Clobber; the sharp TV evangelist who’ll made sure of your credit card number; the memory expert who plaintively inquires of us, the audience, whether we’ve seen a set of keys. Heroic Sergeant-Major Renfrew of the Mounties copes with California, while, back home, homeless Bartholomew X can’t wait to get deported so he can see the world.

Probably by popular request (or did I strike a nerve complaining that the MP from Kicking Horse Pass was missing from the 2000 show?) the cowboy-hatted parliamentarian was back. You’d never know he’d been in mothballs.

After the warm standing ovation of Dave’s opening performance, a few of us matinée types trickled down to the Trillium Room in hopes of the artist coming out to sign videos, which he graciously did. After a short old home week with a long-time fan from the Beaches and earlier days, Dave was on to preparations for the night’s performance.

And I was out into the sunlight, wondering how I would recreate this delightful afternoon beyond writing, “Wunnerful!” all over the page -- shades of this Canadian icon’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1955.

“We grew up with him,” said one of a group lingering outside. “His timing was always impeccable,” she added. “I thought it couldn’t be improved, but in this show it’s the best ever.”

“But does anyone else know him besides our generation?” piped up an anxious voice. I rather thought so, according to my impromptu survey at the hair stylist’s the day before.

“Hang on a moment, and we’ll see,” I said, and asked two passers-by to help us out. The teenager admitted ignorance, then looked toward her mother as to an oracle. Mother, who didn’t look old enough to have a teenaged daughter, had been waiting with an indulgent smile to settle the matter beyond all doubt.

“Dave Broadfoot,” she pronounced slowly and clearly for us all to hear, “Is the quintessential Canadian comedian.”

Posted in "The Muskoka Times" Sept. 7, 2001

Scroll down to see more reviews of the 2010 Summer, and earlier Seasons

Click on the link below to view future shows.

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Dinner Theatre with "Pools Paradise"

2010-07-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

POOLS PARADISE IS A MERRY MIXUP

“Every bell in my belfry is cracked,” complains the Rev. Mr. Lionel Toop early in Act One of “Pools Paradise”, and the stage is set for whacky doings in the vicarage. The same vicarage was the scene of Philip King’s 1945 hit play, “See How They Run”, also inhabited by the same couple - Lionel and Penelope, and occasionally dusted by the same excitable maid, Ida.

The vicar makes his first entrance with all the dignity that he can summon up, while surrounded by levity and silliness. His wife, a former actress, cannot curb her gift for barbed repartee and her sense of the ridiculous. The maid keeps popping in and out, babbling excitedly about ships coming in. The vicar, exasperated by the frivolity around him, welcomes with temporary relief the arrival of a humourless pillar of the church - the inevitable local spinster. All too soon it is the vicar who will embody the ridiculous - but that is enough from me. Too many further hints of the action to come would spoil the suspense. I can give only a few pencil strokes.

Expect to hear a creative clutch of sound effects - telephones and alarm clocks being mistaken for each other by the characters, with comic effect, and every degree of decibels from a genteel doorbell buzz to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Afficionados of the British vicarage farce will not be surprised to see people disappearing into closets, rushing madly in and out, chasing and evading each other and appearing in all kinds of disguises, in a complicated plot that you really don’t need to fathom very deeply.

Not to worry. In Act Three, Mrs. Toop’s uncle, the Bishop of Lax, appears when everything has gone totally out of control. It is time for this august and kindly figure to save the day, like the British cavalry or the American Marines. He has to go through some amazing new experiences for a bishop before the rescue is complete.

The audience is just along for the comedic ride, having fun, as the actors of the Dragonfly Theatre Company do, under the direction of Pru Davidson.

The show opened on Tuesday 27 July in the Trillium Court of the Gravenhurst Opera House, continues for two more evenings this week, and returns August 3-5 and 10-14. Doors open at 5.30 pm and a mouth-watering dinner is served from 6 pm. Either the beef or the salmon by Riverwalk have been highly recommended by more than satisfied audience members. The show follows the meal.

Scroll down to read reviews of earlier shows.
To see future attractions, click below
on the Gravenhurst Opera House Site:

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

Dick Hyman and Peter Appleyard

2010-07-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

TWO SPELLBINDERS ON VIBRAPHONE AND PIANO

by Helen Heubi

with Sharon Acker

We filled the Gravenhurst Opera House on the evening of Monday 26 July 2010 to hear Peter Appleyard and Dick Hyman weave their magic from piano and vibraphone. Overhead a full moon shone, as in the film “Moonstruck” scored by Hyman.

Inside, the 109-year-old rafters rang as never before to splendiferous, expansive sound, and we were moonstruck all over again. Two octojazzarian legends held us in their hands, from the moment “Ragtime Jack” Hutton strolled out on the stage to introduce them, right through to the final two standing ovations.

The air was euphoric, as airs floated, flowed and strode, igniting places of memory in each one of us. Every piece felt personal. We were embraced, enticed and awed from moment to moment.

Peter Appleyard spells out a myriad of notes from two mallets. Dick Hyman has an orchestra in his fingers on the Steinway keyboard. There were moments when I almost imagined hearing brasses, and others when I heard woodwinds in behind the piano sound.

Delighted, my companion said, “They’re like boys jumping big stones across a stream, then skipping little ones, having such fun.” The distinguished, silver-crowned and dapper duo exude energy and charm in their elegant navy blazers with camel slacks. Dick’s tie was red, while Peter’s was yellow. Even more charming were the anecdotes between numbers, delicious memories of meeting the Beatles and Fats Waller. We were drawn in by shared stories.

The combination of piano and vibraphone was beyond belief. Imagine, if you will, two galaxies merging, interweaving, sparking off each other, from intimate meetings of small ornaments to broad creations of near cosmic grandeur. We enjoyed the heritage of two lifetimes and beyond, for our great musicians of today stand on the mighty shoulders of other past and living legends.

The program opened with Oscar Peterson’s “On Green Dolphin Street”, then his “Cool Walk”, followed by three of Cole Porter’s greatest: “Love for Sale”, “You are Everything” and “Heat Wave”.

“Tico Tico”, à la Carmen Miranda, followed “Something” by the Beatles. Then came three gems from Fats Waller: “Ain’t Misbehavin”, Honeysuckle Rose and the glittering “Jitterbug Waltz”, with puckish punctuation as the musicians added well-tuned “blips” to each others’ solos. Waller’s compositions had the occasional Chopin-like moment, I noticed.

The landscape of Scot Joplin is all his own, from delicate femininity in “Heliotrope” (a Hyman solo) to manly stride sequences. After “Solace” we heard a Slow March, which sounded like a lazy march powered by barely contained energy, and seemed to be telling one of those Joplin stories.

Peter Appleyard brought out four mallets for his solo tribute to “Twilight World” by another jazz legend, Marian McPartland. If our two performers that night have been called Octojazzarians, then she is a Nonojazzarian, still active.

Then came the strong duo manifesto of Peterson’s magnificent “Hymn to Freedom”, and we knew the concert was coiling its energies to wind them up.

Peter Appleyard announced what was to be the final number as an arrangement for twelve fingers - “Dick’s ten and my two”, whereupon he moved over from the vibraphone to the treble end of the Steinway. I muttered to my companion that “Sweet Georgia Brown” and the “Flight of the Bumblebee” seemed to have joined forces. “Yes, she’s got a bee in her bonnet,” said Sharon.

After the standing ovation, we were treated to Benny Goodman’s “Airmail Special”. Another standing O was inevitable.

Usually when I review a memorable concert, I start out wondering how I’m going to find the words for this experience. I could simply write “Wonderful” a thousand times on a blank page, but that wouldn’t be fair to my readers. All the same, to honour properly last night’s event, I’m allowing three of these words to spill over.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful.

The performers' links:
http://www.peterappleyardvibes.com/
http://www.dickhyman.com/

To see what's to come at the Gravenhurst Opera House:
http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

Alfie Zappacosta, Contemporary Minstrel

2010-07-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

ZAPPACOSTA AND FRIENDS PERFORM ZAPPACOSTA HITS

by Helen Heubi

Hear singer song-writer Alfie Zappacosta once, and chances are you’ll want to chance more of his romance. This was evident at the Gravenhurst Opera House on the evening of Wednesday 14 July. From the opening chords on Alfie’s guitar, audience members recognized songs they knew, and applauded in warm anticipation. They had experienced this music and artist before, and so they already knew that you never know what nuances, colours and fireworks he will invest in any particular composition of his, any time. On Wednesday evening, the mood, announced by Alfie at the beginning, was romantic.

Colour comes first to mind as I revisit last night’s performance, from the subtlest tones of guitar, viola, accordion, keyboards and voice to rich tapestries of melody interwoven by rhythm, to rhapsodic explosions of high intensity. Half the time I didn’t know where the three musicians on stage were going with their improvisations, and even then, it didn’t matter. That, according to keyboard virtuoso Ross Wooldrige, is Alfie’s intention - to send spirits floating on a plane of infinite possibilities.

Claudio Vena’s viola was a perfect voice to work intricate patterns with Alfie Zappacosta’s amazing instrument - his flexible voice with its wide range in pitch and flavours.

The Zappacosta voice is probably what singing teachers have in mind when they try to get pupils to realize. “Your voice isn’t just a voice; it’s your instrument.” Alfie Zappacosta’s 1984 Juno award recognized him as “Most Promising Male Vocalist”. Another Juno in 1988 was for the "Album of The Year".

During a career of more than 30 years, and still going strong, Zappacosta has been known as “rock to some, smooth to others, AC to many. Alfie is established enough that he's just Alfie - an incredibly gifted talent beyond any genre tag”, to quote his website, which continues: “In 1995, Zappacosta left his pop stardom behind to pursue a more intimate style of writing and performing.

“The roots of his new sound started when Zappacosta began playing solo before crowds at a Toronto club. Playing only guitar, he explored new harmonies and melodies, later combining rootsy elements such as harmonica and accordion, which eventually manifested itself in a contemporary Jazz/AC sound.”

Zappacosta derives his own creations from a deep well of invention that is as personal as it is universal. The concert in Gravenhurst was one of many based entirely on his own compositions, like “Passion”, “When I Fall in Love Again” and my personal favourite “Adelina”. Some of his hits are collaborations. “Nothing Could Stand in Your Way”, which he sang last night, was written with David Foster.

His American Music Award is for contribuing “Overload” to “Dirty Dancing”. He has played the lead in “Jesus Christ Superstar” and Che Guevara in “Evita” and the lead in “Hair”. He has several films to his credit, has performed for troops in Afghanistan and added his voice to the African famine relief project “Tears Are Not Enough”. Even this brief list cannot encapsulate the Alfie who appeared on the Gravenhurst Opera House Stage.

The poet, composer, musician and singer has written, “I wanted to get back into a form of music that I knew I was not only capable of doing but also a style of music that would fulfill me both artistically and spiritually. I realized that chasing down fads is really a losing proposition.”

This courageous manifesto works for Alfie Zappacosta, and worked on stage and for the audience of the Gravenhurst Opera House on Wednesday evening. I want him back, so that I and my friends can experience anew the magic that he and his colleagues weave out of the air together.

For more on this artist, with list of his CD’s, see his website:

http://iamzappacosta.com

A reminder of the Gravenhurst Opera House link:

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

HAY FEVER 2001

2010-07-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

Since the Staw Hat Players' 1949 production of Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" no other performance has compared with it for me - until the summer of 2001, when former members of the troupe returned to the Gravenhurst Opera House with the same play. For me, the acid test of any performance of "Hay Fever" is the final few second of Act One. It's all about tea cups.

Here is my review of the 2001 show, ably edited by the late Doug Specht, and published in "The Muskoka Times". Click once to reveal the link that will take you to a scanned copy from the online edition :
http://tinyurl.com/297htp3
Just in case that doesn't work, here is my re-typed copy:

THEY DID “THE TEACUP THING”, BLESS THEM

The opening of the 2001 Straw Hat Festival on Tuesday was a special event in the life of the 100-year-old Gravenhurst Opera House. Former Straw Hat Player Ted Follows has returned, along with seven other members of his own theatrically gifted family, plus Robin Craig, in a freshly reminiscent revival of Noel Coward’s 1924 comedy, “Hay Fever”.

Fifty-two years after performing the part of the very juvenile Simon Bliss on our stage, Ted Follows plays the novel-writing Bliss family patriarch, David.

Lawrence Follows takes his father’s earlier role of Simon Bliss.

The project originated with Lawrence’s inspiration to “pay tribute to the Straw Hat Players, Canada’s very first professional summer theatre”. Despite their busy schedules in film, on stage and at home, the Follows family pronounced themselves thrilled to assemble for this historic even, co-produced by Lawrence follows and Robert Missen.

An appreciative and elegant audience established the tone of the evening the moment the curtains parted, by warmly applauding the set, with opening actors Samantha and Lawrence Follows fetchingly draped about it. Stage right: French doors open to the unseen garden with a punt moored on the river. Upstage right: the front door, whose translucent glass allows us to see the silhouette of each arrival. Ivy trails above both doorways, with effects of light and shadow on the leaves.

The sizeable hall of the Bliss’s house in Cookham breathes lived-in, pastel charm. A sturdy stairway with halfway landing leads upstage centre to the novelist’s study, and an unspecified number of bedrooms. “The Japanese Room” -- full of offstage character, is reserved for guests of honour, of whom, this June weekend, there are to be four.

When I first saw the Straw Hat Players do “Hay Fever” here in 1949, I didn’t particularly notice the plot -- having too much fun, I guess. I suspect it was the playwright’s intention to conceal with apparent frothiness how well-woven is the story line.

The plot is simple, neatly squared off. Four members of the Bliss family, bored by country life, invite four guests for a quiet weekend in the country, the complication being that nobody bothered to inform anyone else about the chosen guest until it was too late.

Once the theme is established, the play seems to romp along, heedless of convention. Actually, the pace does vary, giving actors and audience a respite from time to time, and preparing them for the next escalation.

Quiet moments alternate with bright, busy or downright noisy scenes, depending how many characters are present. The dialogue varies from softly intimate, briskly witty, or becomes a simultaneous family quatralogue, all in full cry.

The guests arrive during the first act - the dashing American in his automobile, the “femme fatale” by the only local taxi from the train station. After a suitable interval, the diplomat and shy young lady are deposited at the Bliss home by the same taxi. They are respectively welcomed, ignored or insulted by Bliss family members. Shortly before the first act curtain, all assemble around the tea tray except Clara, the servant, who prepared it, brought it in and plunked it down without ceremony.

For the, the acid test for any performance of “Hay Fever” comes just before the curtain falls on Act One, as the cast do, or do not, lift their cups in unison. If they don’t, I feel something vital is missing. “The teacup thing” is all I remember of the Straw Hat Players’ 1949 production. The synchronization of teacups here is not only pure comedy; it can also mean resignation, rebellion and a host of other feelings boiling beneath the surface, as four desperate hosts and four disparate guests face a weekend together.

The second act opens with muted lighting on a tableau of everyone dressed for dinner, frozen in place as in a snapshot. When the stage lighting comes on full, animation kicks in. Dinner is over, apparently to everyone’s relief, but the drinks go on.

The family is determined all shall join in their favourite guessing game, one that happens to require histrionic ability natural to a Bliss, but excruciatingly painful to the guests. After muddling through this ordeal, people scatter, escaping in surprising couples to engage in mild flirtations. Judith Bliss, mother and retired actress, escalates her own and everyone else’s romantic gestures -- offstage and on -- into high drama.

Scenes from her meatiest roles in past plays somehow work their way into the dialogue, to confuse everybody but her own family, “acting up to Mother” as usual.

The third and final act shows the guests sneaking down one by one the following morning to the tune of rattling rain and thunder, to snatch a bite of toast or scrambled egg and a gulp of coffee. Agreeing that the family is quite mad, they feverishly plot a group getaway, than steal upstairs to pack.

The family replaces them at the deserted breakfast table. Soon absorbed in vigorous criticism of the patriarch’s latest chapter, they do not notice the four guests filtering down the stairs and out the door, until it slams.

Each character is a perfect foil for all the others, and has its own section of the human psyche to prowl or march around in. Robin Craig as Clara, the theatrical dresser turned maid, steals the scene every time she stalks on stage, and nobody minds a bit. Her character is supposed to steal the scene anyway, as are all the dramatic personae in this cleverly crafted play.

Clara’s brash voice and hearty accent contrast with the flutelike, often querulous, tones of the Bliss children, who keep petulantly ringing for her. Her uncompromising grey print house-dress and beige cardigan or pinny set off the butterfly colours of the fashionable family and guests. And when she sings and dances “Tea for Two” as she clears the table, she brings down the house.

Ted Follows’s lovely former wife Dawn Greenhalgh is superb as Judith Bliss, retired actress and mother. Her timing is particularly effective on a stage where everyone masters that art. When she sings the first verse of “J’attendrai”, you can hear a pin drop. Hers is a pliable, true alto voice capable of doing justice to the piece made famous by Edith Piaff and Charles Trenet. This is, however, no mere imitation. Dawn Greenhalgh’s interpretation comes with her own depth of pathos and wry smile.

Megan Follows slinks gracefully from charming pose to alluring pose as the sophisticated Myra Arundel, she of the subtly seductive cigarette-holder. Her pose of cool detachment beaks down when her host calls her bluff, and the wary woman behind the siren’s mask reveals herself momentarily.

Former child actress and current screen-writer Edwina Follows if Jackie Coryton, bashfully uncertain why David Bliss invited her in the first place. We see her character struggling to deal in a ladylike manner with rejection, rudeness, demands to do a solo dance “after the manner of the word” and, finally, having to face dragons all night. We feel for this girl pitch-forked into what, for a sensitive, shrinking violet, must be at worst a den of demons and at best a social ordeal. There is hope for her stiff upper lip to relax a little, as she tries to cure another visitor of the hiccups.

Lawrence Follows bounds boyishly about as Simon Bliss, while son-in-law Sean O’Bryan makes a divinely sculptured, very American, admirer of Judith Bliss. Stuart Hughes is the stiff-backed British diplomat Richard Greatham who says just the right things in the midst of unabashed bluntness.

The costuming flows with the setting and the play -- ah, those Twenties fashions, for both men and women. Garden hats, fedoras and cloches off to co-ordinators Hilary Corbett and Judy Cooper-Sealy for the clothes, wigs and hair ornaments.

Thank you, Director Follows, for that elegant lifting of teacups, in near perfect unison, that took me back to your 1949 “Hay Fever” with Araby Lockart, Charmion King, Kate Reid and Donald and Murray Davcs. It made your family triumph of 2001 all the more delightful.

(Posted in The Muskoka Times July 6, 2001)

And now, back to the official Gravenhurst Opera House link:

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/

COME TO THE GRAVENHURST OPERA HOUSE

2010-06-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hello from Helen Heubi, a fan of the Gravenhurst Opera House since the forties. Over this latest turn of a century I had the privilege of writing reviews of shows and concerts at the Gravenhurst Opera House for local print and online newspapers - Muskoka Today, the Gravenhurst Banner, the Bracebridge Examiner and last and, in my not very humble opinion, by far the least: the late lamented Muskoka Times. Lately it occurred to me to put these reminders of a golden age together in an anthology as I reach toward my own golden 80th birthday at the end of this year. My working title is Come to the Opera House.

Meanwhile, without waiting for this book to come out in print, I can simply do a blog about the Gravenhurst Opera House, and combine three streams of show business appeal- nostalgia, published reviews and reviews to come.

Nostalgia from earliest memories of the Straw Hat Players of the forties and fifties will surely creep in, from unforgettable summers at Muldrew Lake. We used to drive, or walk, the three and a half miles of then unpaved road from Indian Landing to see our friends on stage - Araby Lockart, Don Harron and their friends. Donald and Murray Davis, Barbara Chilcott, Ted Follows and Charmion King glittered in spite of having to run around outside after exiting stage right in order to re-enter stage left.

Excerpts from previously published reviews will give glimpses of my book in the making. Many of the artists featured there have a delightful habit of returning to the more than century-old stage, now embellished with commodious backstage space for dressing rooms, offices, kitchen.

With new stardust in my eyes, I’ll be in the audience, ready to review many of the upcoming Gravenhurst Opera House events. I look forward to more and more opportunities to find different ways of saying, “Wonderful!” After a performance I used to sit staring at a blank page or computer screen and wondering how to capture the experience in words.

In reviewing a concert or show my personal mandate is to make it come alive so that anyone who had been there would enjoy it once again, perhaps from a somewhat different point of view. In addition, I aim to revisit the experience so that even people who had not been in the audience could enjoy the concert or show in their imaginations.

My mentor is none other than George Bernard Shaw, writing as Corno di Bassetto in London newspapers. Shaw always seemed to enjoy whatever show or concert he saw. He was not there to look for flaws and flaunt his own knowledge of music and theatre, as many Toronto critics seemed to be doing, as I grew up. He made the most of any show, however sublime and whatever shortcomings he may have perceived and conveyed to the reader. He was generous and fair. That has been my standard.

Maybe I have tended to be more generous than necessary in my reviews, piling on the praise, getting a bit purple in my prose. On the whole this makes perfect sense. In Muskoka then as now we live in a rich cultural environment, fortunate in seeing so many fine artists, like Jack Hutton, who will be bringing his friends to the Gravenhurst Opera House on Friday 27 August, 2010.

Helen Heubi

Now follows a review of his Hoagy Carmichael evening with the multi-talented Tracy Hoehner.

A STAR DUST EVENING AT THE GRAVENHURST OPERA HOUSE

by Helen Heubi

On Saturday night, 20 November 1999, at the Gravenhurst Opera House the sunlit voice of Tracy Hoehner and the evocative piano of Jack Hutton celebrated Canada’s only major Hoagy Carmichael Centenary concert - with help from Hoagy himself, on film and on tape.

Hoagy began the programme, playing, singing and whistling “Star Dust”, thanks to a recording in a remarkable state of preservation. “Star Dust” is reportedly the most recorded piece by an American composer. This one never took a music lesson in his life. He wrote in one autobiography that the keyboard offered all the notes for the music that he composed; it took about ten minutes to draw out the germ of a melody out of the piano.

We heard the beginnings of Carmichael’s music, in the Louisiana vein, and its evolution over a varied career. As a youth he played with his own band at the nearby university, which he later attended, graduating out of law school. Law didn’t last long for him; music pulled him back. The tune “Star Dust” came to him in a moment of doubt, answering irrevocably any questions he had about the wisdom of this decision.

We saw three clips of “To Have and Have Not”, with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Hoagy himself in the role of the bar pianist “Cricket”. Carmichael also wrote the score of the 1945 classic film.

Apparently many younger people have never heard of Hoagy Carmichael. He was a man of melody, poetical lyrics and brilliant harmonies that created a rich field for jazz and other musicians. Saturday night was high time for a Carmichael comeback, and the Opera House proved to be the place. Many of us did remember his tunes, and their words, and joined in singing “Georgia”, as well as the Academy Award song of 1951 - “Up a Lazy River”.

During the second “songbook”, after intermission, I was personally thrilled to hear “Skylark”, a Carmichael song that I stumbled across a couple of years ago in sheet music form. I’d never heard it properly sung until that evening, and Tracy and Jack did it proud. I just knew it was special. Just as a great singer called Frances Gumm knew the song “Judy” was special; it decided her to change her name to Judy Garland.

Our finale for the evening was the starlit and stellar performance of “Star Dust” by Hoehner and Hutton, with delightful Hoehner-designed lighting effects. Then, Hoagy Carmichael did an encore that had the last word. For the third time during the evening the huge backdrop screen lit up with a scene from “To Have and Have Not”, where Lauren Bacall’s character, Slim, insisted on saying goodbye to the piano-player. As Hoagy played her and Bogy out of the bar into a happy life together (in real life too, as it turned out), the screen signalled “The End”.

For us at the opera house it was not quite the last hurrah, since a hundredth birthday cake awaited a ceremonial cutting and sharing in the Trillium Court. A video was made of this historical concert, and will be presented to Hoagy Carmichael Jr., who helped Jack Hutton do research for the event celebrating his father’s birth.

Also contributing to the success of the evening were the lighting and sound team of Janice Feist and David Grassby.

***

Link for official information on the Gravenhurst Opera House:

http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com