This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
The Orillia Concert Association starts their annual concert series October 27 with a 2:30 p.m. concert at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. The featured performers are the Stratton Soloists.
The group is named for the late conductor and broadcaster Kerry Stratton. His orchestra, the Toronto Concert Orchestra made regular appearances in Orillia for the concert association. He also waved his arms in front of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Camerata, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.
If you listened to Classical 96.3 FM, he was the afternoon drive time host.
He once appeared in Orillia leading the Czech Symphony during their tour of Canada, and he organized their visits to Canada several times. His promotion of Czech music in North America was so great he was awarded the Gratias Agit Award by the Czech government on 2007
He started his conducting career with the International Symphony Orchestra (Sarnia, Ontario/ Port Huron, Michigan) back in the late 70s. He was one of the finest conductors I have personally watched.
Having played in front of a few really good conductors, and watch many others closely, I can imagine the members of his orchetras obviously had high regard for him. Enough for this group with this group to take his name for their 9–piece ensemble. They carry on his attitude for playing the best of classical music to exacting standards.
You can get season tickets at the door and you can get season passes by emailing orilliaconcert@gmail.com or calling 705-325-3532. They are only $90 (and have remained at that price for more than a decade). You can pay by cash or cheque. If you want to use plastic you can get season tickets, or tickets for individual concerts at the Opera House box office.
The rest of the season lineup is Elmer Iseler Singers in January, the comedy team of Bridge and Wolak (they are musicians too) in March, and Lance Anderson in May.
Lightfoot Days Festival
It’s happening again later this coming week. Everything begins October 31 with a concert at the Opera House by the Lightfoot Band. This is Gord’s band, no substitutes, except for the guy doing the singing. That person is Andy Mauck who joined the band last fall and SUNonline/Orillia was first to publish the news.
They made their first public appearance in January at the El Macombo with two sold out shows and by springtime their tour schedule was filled out. They have been appearing across Canada and the United States with excellent reviews since.
There are about 100 tickets left, most in the balcony.
November 1 there is a special event at Creative Nomad Studios called Memories of Gordon Lightfoot: Stories and Music, which is exactly what the title says; people telling stories and people singing his songs.
The list of storytellers includes Steve Eyers, Ronnie Hawkins’s wife, Wanda, and me. The committee was excited when they got Rick Haynes (Gord’s bassist) and Barry Keane (Gord’s drummer) to agree to stay over a night and be part of the event. Well, since then the entire band has committed to staying and being part of a panel discussion along with Gord’s agent, Bernie Fiedler. The emcee for the event is Linda Leatherdale. It starts at 7 p.m. and admission is free.
Oh and Kim Lightfoot is going to be speaking too. That’s not a oh yeah kind of thing. The committee knew she was going to be there, but they weren’t sure if she would get up to speak and they weren’t going to pressure her to do so.
The music part of the night will be provided by Steve McEown and Steve Porter
Earlier in the day, at 1 and 2:30 p.m. the band will hold workshops at Creative Nomad. They’ll be demonstrating how the music was put together and giving insights into Gord’s music. You can get tickets ($30) by etransfer to orillialightfootdaysfestival@gmail.com
There are a number of venues to enjoy music at as well. Starting Thursday night Mark Stewart will be at the Grape and Olive. Friday night Even Steven will be at Couchiching Craft Brewing (9:30 p.m. after the Memories gig they’ll both be at). Saturday Don James will be at Mariposa Market at noon; Michael Brown plays at Apple Annie’s at noon; There is an open mic at Alleycats Music at 1 p.m. James Gray will be at Couchiching Craft Brewing at 2 p.m.; Chris Scott plays at Brewery Bay Food Co. at 2 and again at 8 p.m.; at 8 p..m. see Geoff Booth at the Sunken Ship, Sean Patrick at the Lone Wolf Café, and Even Steven at Lake Country Grill.
Sunday the closing ceremony is at Mariposa Market. Last year there was cake; they’re at Mariposa, I’m bringing a fork. Steve Porter will be performing and it’s at 12:30 p..m. at 1:30 p.m. Ian and Jennifer North play at Couchiching Craft Brewing and the High Steppin’ Strutters are at Picnic.
The Jazz Festival
The Orillia Jazz Festival happened last Saturday. It was a one day affair and Arts Orillia is working on turning it back into the long-weekend event it used to be for next year
The first concert was in the afternoon at the Opera House. It featured the Orillia Brassworks band, Autorickshaw and the Orillia All-Star Jazz Band and the All-Star Vocal Ensemble. The latter two are made up a selection of students from each of Orillia’s high schools.
Brassworks opened the show with 4 tunes and they were great. Autotrickshaw was next and they were fantastic. But the stars of the concert were the high school groups.
Holy cow was the jazz band good. They opened up with a the saxes playing an intro section that was so tightly blended I couldn’t pick out individual player’s sound from my 3rd row seat.
The trumpets must have had a talking to because they only jumped out of the sonic mix when they were supposed to, and then only as much as needed. The whole band was tight and they had two drummers, one for each of the tunes they played, who kept things chugging along like they are supposed to.
The most impressive thing was how the band members articulated their parts. This is the expressive quality of the notes played. It’s jazz, there’s always tons of nuance for every musical phrase and these kids clearly understood how to play the music properly.
There were three soloists, a trumpet, trombone and sax. I’ve been saying our high school bands have been getting better each year since the pandemic – and they came out of the pandemic better than they went in. The usual sticking point is soloists. It’s expected they aren’t going to play like Parker, Severinson, or Evans, but again, holy cow, those three were so expressive and so confident in their playing, it’s almost scary.
In the evening, the concert at the Opera House started with Caity Gyorgy. I spoke with her in the Green Room after the show and such a big voice for such a tiny person.. She covered some standards and her own material. She’s young too, but with two Juno Awards to her credit, and her interpretation of the music is not unlike those who have been at it for decades.
Thompson Egbo-Egbo returned to the festival and this time the PA sound was right. Last year it was embarrassingly bad. What I like about jazz is how arrangers can take pop tunes and turn them into something a lot more substantial. He was well into Smells Like Teen Spirit before I recognized what he was playing at the chorus. When he returned to the verse passage it was more noticeable how he disguised the melody leading us down the garden path to – ‘Oh, that tune.”
Later he fused Kenny Garret’s Sing a Song of Song with Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. I actually thought Thompson was noodling around on themes from Captian of Her Heart until he hit the 50 Ways. It wasn’t Steve Gadd’s famous drum part that made the change from one song to the other. Thompson’s drummer, Jeff Halischuk, made up something new and it worked.
A troupe of dancers from Toronto Metropolitan University, choreographed by Vicki St. Denys spent a good portion of the set adding visuals to Thompson’s music. This is a combo that really works well.
A new Vietnamese restaurant, Toronto Pho, is opening in the West Ridge and Paul Baxter was commissioned to paint a mural running along most of the wall in the dining area. He worked in various Orillia Landmarks into the Asian styled work. When you are in, see if you can spot them all. When I was there I didn’t catch any of them until Paul pointed them out – then of course, I couldn’t unsee them.
Cellar Singers
The Cellars kicked off their concert season with Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace. This is a minimalist piece of music. The organ accompaniment is thin, and Jenkins used a traditional Muslim Call to Prayer in one section. That was a recorded bit, but it was not intended to be. The Cellars’s conductor, Mitchell Pady, said they originally had a soloist lined up to do it, but he had to cancel to close to the concert date to get another. SO he went searching for a recorded one and found – they’re all different, so then it was process of picking the one that fit.
It kind of follows a mass template, but not strictly. The music accompaniment reminded me of something Pink Floyd might have composed, which makes sense because Jenkins emerged as a musician in the early 70s and travelled in that crowd of bands who were trying to emulated Pink Floyd, even though this piece wasn’t composed until 1999.
The choir sounded strong and it was nice to hear music from off the beaten path.
Another Passing
Gay Gutherie died two weeks ago. She was diagnosed with cancer only one month prior.
Gay was the first director of the Sir Sam Steel Art Gallery and was so as it joined forces with the Orillia Historical Society to become the Orillia Museum of Art and History.
She also was on the boards of (and chair in each case) the Orillia Public Library, Orillia Community Non-Profit Housing, the Municipal Heritage Committee, the Downtown Orillia Management Board, Friends of the Orillia Public Library, Information Orillia (at a critical time of its history) and the Orillia LACAC. She was also published widely on art, antiques and collecting.
There will not be a funeral at her request. It’s a shame someone who served the community as she did won’t have a public recognition for her work.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia and Images Supplied) Main: The Stratton Soloists
