This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
The Orillia Concert Band is playing Saturday, March 8 at St. Pal’s Centre at 7:30 p.m. Christina Bosco is their guest performer and she will sing When You Wish Upon A Star and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Other tunes on the dance card are Guardians of the Galaxy, The Incredibles, Battle of the Heroes, Stardust, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and a medley of tunes from Beauty and the Beast.
You can get tickets online and if you can’t make it, you can watch it live, or later, on the band’s Youtube channel at 7:30 p.m. If you are watching from home you can go to the ticket link and make a donation to the band.
The Orillia Big Band, which has many OCB members in it, has a dance March 29 at the legion. They obviously do big band era music, which is mostly danceable. Milli Schop will be along to sing a few tunes and she’s worth the price of admission. You can get tickets online.
Other concerts ahead… the Orillia Silver Band has a concert March 22 at St. Paul’s Centre. They are competing in the North American Brass Band Championship in Fort Wayne, Indiana in April. The menu includes Barber’s Adagio for Strings, a tune written by John Miles called Music (the title may not mean much, but you will recognize it), Malcolm Arnold’s Little Suite For Band and they will be performing the music at this concert they will be competing with. You can get tickets at the door.
The Orillia Concert Association has the next of the series happening at 2 p.m., March 23 at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. The show is by comedians Michael Bridge (on accordion) and Kornel Wolak (on clarinet). Yes they are doing classical music. You can get tickets by plastic by calling the Opera House box office, 705-26-8011, or by emailing orilliaconcert@gmail.com.
The Cellar Singes have a fundraising concert (different from their regular fare) with a 60s Yorkville theme April 26 at St. James’ Anglican Church. These things usually feature solo and small group performances, this time in a coffee house setting. Tickets go on sale online on March 19.
Help Children In Ukraine
A lot of people have been agonizing about the turn(coat) of events with the war in Ukraine. None more so than Dmytro Garbovskyi. He’s a Ukrainian refugee currently living with his wife and son on a farm on the top of Blue Mountain in Collingwood. Some of you may recall he sang at the Orillia Silver Band’s Christmas concert in December 23. Actually, I’m sure those who were there will remember.
Dmytro is an opera singer who was in Russia when the invasion happened. He trained at university in Kharkov (Kharkiv National University of Arts) and then sang at the Mariinsky Theatre (Saint Petersburg Russia) in Russia.
He said the Russians in the company quickly turned against Ukrainians and his propensity to set the record straight lead to a visit by government agents who told to shut up. He thought it best to leave while he could.
In Canada for 20 months, he has contact with friends back home and he decided to do some fundraising to help children in Ukraine. To that end he has had 10 concerts (Brampton, Barrie, Collingwood, Southhampton, Ottawa, Toronto and Orillia last April) and raised $10,000.
“For me, it’s very important. I don’t want be just a singer. I want to do something bigger than just music,” Dmytro said. “Every one of my concerts is a charity concert. I’m trying raise some money for the kids, help for the kids who suffer from the war in Ukraine.”
One of the children is named Ivan. His mother was executed by the Russians. He sent money to buy some basic supplies, medication and a laptop for school. Dmytro posts photos of the kids he helps on his Facebook page.
Dmytro is having a concert March 16 at St. Paul’s Centre. He has a soprano, Mary Ferrara, along to sing a duet from La Traviata and accompaniment by pianist Sabatino Vacca. You can watch his video, Give Them Hope, here. It’s a beautiful tune and beautifully shot.
He will sing pieces from the usual suspects, Puccini, Mozart, Handel, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky, along with music by Korngold, Liszt, Gorsky and Polsih composer Stanisław Moniuszko, Ukranian composers Mykola Lysenko, Gregory Alchevsky, Semen Gulak-Artemovsky and Borys Lyatoshynsky.
You can get tickets online. I know a lot of people have been angry by the turn of the war thanks to the malfeasance of the president (I don’t mean Felon Musk, the other guy) and many feel helpless to do anything. Well, this is something you can do, buy a ticket.
Gospel and Blues
Lance Anderson’s 13th version of the Mariposa Folk Festival’s Gospel and Blues concert at the Opera House was fantastic. He had Jim Bowskill and his wife Brittany Brooks, multi-instrumentalist and outstanding singer Andrew Craig, Emily Burgess, who holds down a spot in the Weber Brothers Band, the amazing singer Selena Evangeline, Gary Craig on drums and Roger Williams on bass along for the show.
Lance and Gary started the show in the customary way, with Lance on Hammond B3 and Craig on drums, before bringing on the others as it was their turn to lead a tune. Andrew Craig and Evangeline were next and for those who never heard Andrew play piano before (including me) his extended intro to Take My Hand Precious Lord was some of the most expressive witnessed in the Opera House since Michael Jones played.
Andrew also did a great rendition of Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel singing and playing the organ. Lance told me afterwards that was one of his favourite moments of the concert. Lance also rapped off about half the dance card as his favourite moments, so take that as you will.
There was a gospel tune, Up Above My Head, which as it started kind of made me think of Stevie Wonder’s music. Then right in the middle Evangeline sang the first verse of Higher Ground. Just one verse, but it made me wonder if I was not paying close enough attention to the tune to there.
Bowskill and Burgess got into a guitar solo battle in the middle of You Sure Look Good To Me that left everyone just about breathless. The return of the spiritual Still Waters Run Deep combined with Bridge Over Troubled Water could probably be done every year and the audience wouldn’t get tired of it.
The concert closed with Put A Little Love In Your Heart, leave it to this crew to put new life into the old Jackie DeShannon song.
Speaking of new life, what if a band gave a concert and didn’t know what to do for an encore?
“We didn’t have an encore,” Lance said, until the moment arrived. They had talked at dinner about doing a version of People Get Ready with a segue into One Love. “Nobody really knew the words to either of those songs really well.”
“I had seen a video of Jimmy doing Let The Good Times Roll,” which Jimmy didn’t remember doing with Steve Mariner. Jimmy said he didn’t know if he remembered the words. Lance thought he’d come up with the words. Andrew said he could do one verse. Jimmy thought about it and said he’d do it. They performed it without rehearsing, so they made it up as they played it.
Audience members might recall Lance shouting out, “What key?” just before they started the tune. “That will go down, that’s a very special performance.” The band was not prepared for how well it came off, shocked even.
Two things were also at play no one in the audience would have known. Lance picked something up earlier in the week when catching some rays in Panama. As Lance said, he wasn’t feeling well, not sick and that’s no reason to not do the concert. But, he did have to make a trip to emergency on Sunday.
And, they weren’t playing with a full deck, I mean piano. Before the concert the piano tuner had some bad news, the lowest F# string broke and could not be replaced in time. Lance said if the rest of the piano could be tuned up they would get around it. “We did play that piano with 87 keys that night. You just make do with what you’ve got.”
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia and Images Supplied) Main: Screenshot from Dmytro Garbovskyi’s video, Give Them Hope
