This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
If you are going downtown tonight or tomorrow, don’t expect to find a parking spot on the street. Just plan to park in one of the parking lots as a starting point.
Tonight Mississaga and Peter Streets are closed for See You On the Patio. The Arts District will have lots of artists on hand and the restaurants will be busy hustling their food out to the curb and beyond. You can hear music by Postman Dan, Ian Chaplin and Dray Tony. The Farmers’ Market will be operating tonight too with Alex Andrews in to play music. Tomorrow’s market has Bella Francis making music.
Saturday is the annual Classic Car Show. They still expect about 400 cars, despite losing the ability to have classic cars on Matchedash Street between Mississaga and Colborne. There will be music too with the Warren Watson Band, Rob Watts, and the Orillia Big Band.
In the evening, Couchiching Craft Brewing has Cruisin’ playing all afternoon and Jeff Young and the Muskoka Roads Band in for the evening to play some rock and roll music.
Bring your camera.
A Great Instrument Needs To Be Heard
Michael Jones had a beautiful Bosendorfer piano. Oscar Peterson had one too. So did Franz Liszt.
Lance Anderson played two of those. You can do the math and figure out which ones.
Lance will be the MC and one of the performers on Michael’s piano at a concert at St. Paul’s Centre September 10. Judy Archer donated the piano to St. Paul’s.
The other pianists performing are Blair Bailey, Doreen Uren Simmons, Louis Lefaive, and Terry Therien. Some other musicians, Marta Solek. Ray Dillard, Nicole Lefaive, and Cassandra Rutherford will be performing too.
The concert is at 7:30 p.m. You can make a donation to St. Paul’s in lieu of a ticket online, and the concert will be live streamed on Youtube.
Art Stuff
The Orillia and District Arts Council got a Canada Council grant and is creating an art project with Paul Shilling (Dazaunggee), Julie Tian, Xavier Fernandes, and Ted Fullerton. It’s called A Visual Reconciliation and the objective is to make art interpreting the Seven Grandmother Teachings .
There will be several presentations beginning in November. The first will happen at Creative Nomad Studios. Other galleries will host 5 presentations and the final one will be back at Creative Nomad.
OMAH also has new exhibits – Conversations: 150th Anniversary of the Ontario Society of Artists, The History Of Orillia In 50 Artefacts and Summer On The Lake. The Reflections of Ourselves exhibit of Maple Leaves constructed by artists from across the country is still up too.
Peter Street Fine Arts has photography by Mike Bailey featured this month and Hibernation Art has Nicole Ruff’s art featured in August.
I was in to Creative Nomad this week and the gigantic painting Raune-lea Marshall and Anitta Hamming are working on is a lot more developed. I took a pic with my potato (cell phone), but it didn’t turn out well, but here’s what it looked like a couple weeks ago.
Cloud Gallery’s Mark Fletcher told me a few more artists have been added to the roster he represents and that there will be a series of shows in the fall.
Richard Vandermeer has some of his art hanging at Apple Annie’s and I happened to be there this week when he hung up a couple new pieces.
The Shorts
- This year’s Leacock Medal for Humour dinner September 17 will be interesting. One of the nominees Dawn Dumont (Walker) is in a bit of trouble. You may have seen the news about her taking off to Oregon with her son under mysterious circumstances which prompted a large, expensive search for her in Saskatoon. There is her side of why, and her ex-husbands. Either way it will be interesting to see how this is handled at an evening when laughter is the main course because it doesn’t look like she’ll be attending. This year’s other short listed authors, Mark Critch and Rick Mercer, will be there, as will the short listed authors from 2021 and 2020. There are two events, the medal award dinner, and a meet the authors event the night before. You can get tickets online.
- We’re in the final week of the Opera House’s production of Driving Miss Daisy If you haven’t seen it, you’ll find this cast stands on its own compared to more famous portrayals. See my review here. The last performance is tonight and tickets are available online. Next week Norm Foster’s Come Down From Up River starts August 17 and runs to September 2.
- MAT film Nights are returning to the Galaxy Cinema starting September 14. Which movies will be shown haven’t been announced. Mark your calendars for October 12, November 9 and December 7. There will be showtimes at 4 and 7 p.m. each night.
- Mark Goode, The Mortgage Man, is sponsoring an outdoor movie night at the Orillia Public Library August 23 at 9 p.m. The movie is Night At The Museum. Bring your chair and they have the popcorn.
- The annual Roots North fundraising concert for the Orillia Youth Centre is happening September 17 at Fern Resort. This time Ron Hawkins (Lowest of the Low) is headlining and there will be other performers added to the menu soon. As in the past Dapper Depot is a major sponsor of this event and 100% of the proceeds go to the youth center. Get tickets online.
- Congratulations to Lyric Dubee for winning the Male Vocalist of the Year at the ISSA (International Singer-Songwriters Association) Awards in Atlanta earlier this month. Lyric received an ODAC Award as an emerging artist in 2018.
- Anne Walker is having a concert at the Coulson Church August 27 at 7 p.m. and a repeat Sunday August 28 at 2 p.m. Her family built the church in 1881. Tickets are $15 and you can get them by calling 416-988-2951 or by email at ridge4@sympatico.ca.
- Lance Anderson is doing his Mad Dogs and Englishmen show Saturday night with Chuck Jackson, Matt Weidinger, Quisha Wint, Selena Evangeline, Cheryl Lescom – two drummers, Shamakah Ali and Charlie Coolie and a percussionist, Art Avalos (good start, needs more drums, or cowbell) – David Dunlop, Simon Wallis, Terry Blersh, and Collin Barrett. It’s at the Gravenhurst Opera House and you can get tickets online.
- The City of Orillia and the Orillia District Arts Council’s neighbourhood arts program continues August 17 at Walter Henry Park and August 24 at Victoria Park. Participation is free and you can find more details online. And the City’s Music in the Park on Sunday’s at 6:30 p.m. at the Aqua Theatre happens again with the Skyliners on August 14 and the Simcoe County Band August 28.
- Couchiching Craft Brewing has Will Dunlop hosting Vinyl Night on Thursdays… Jamie Drake, along with Jakob Pearce and Alex Golovchenko host a new jam at the Grape and Olive Thursday nights starting at 6 p.m. … Jamie is also playing at Fionn MacCool’s August 12… Quayle’s Brewery has Steph Dunn in August 12; Clifford and Willard play Sunday at 3:30 p.m.; Ron Whitman plays August 18 and Stephan Bernard August 19 … the Kensington has an open mic night hosted by Tim Kehoe on Tuesdays from 8 to 11 p.m. … the Hog N’ Penny has trivia night every Thursday.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia and Images Supplied) Main: 2018 Classic Car Show.
