This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
Sunday afternoon will either be a case of some hard choices, or a good workout for those who like to go to Orillia Silver Band and Orillia Wind Ensemble concerts.
The OSB has their Christmas concert happening at 2 p.m. at the Opera House (tickets) and the OWE has theirs at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Centre. The OWE concerts are not ticketed, but they are fundraisers, so they will be collecting donations. They are supporting the Lighthouse this time. They also have the Orillia Community Children’s Choir along to share the stage.
The OSB will be playing old favourites and some new pieces that were written for instrumental ensembles. One piece I’m looking forward to hearing is Russian Christmas Music. Orillia audiences have heard this before. Both the silver band and the concert band have done it in past years.
Next week Green Haven Shelter for Women has the annual reading of A Christmas Carol December 18 at the Opera House. The performers are Aurora Browne, Christy Bruce, Tereesa Pavlinek, Naomi Snieckus, and Jane van de Graff, with Bruce Pirrie directing. Get tickets online.
The Cellar Singers are doing two pieces, Fantasia on Christmas by Ralph Vaughn Williams and Messe de Minuit pour Noel by Marc-Antoine Charpentier at St. James’ Anglican Church December 20. You can get tickets online.
And the 4th Street Jazz Project has a concert December 21 at the Salvation Army Citadel. The Salvation Army band will also be performing. This concert will include some off-season tunes as well as the jingly kind. Unfortunately the concert time was not forwarded, but will be updated when that info arrives.
Also happening is one event where you are the entertainment. Well, at least your teammates will think so. Derick Lehmann has once again organized the Ugly Sweater Bowling Party. This is the 11th annual time for this fundraiser for the Sharing Place Food Bank. In total, $34K has been raised. There are prizes like, Boots & Hearts Music Festival wristbands, a paddle board from Giant Tiger Orillia and a dryer from Mr. Appliance of Orillia.
It’s December 19 and there are two time slots, 6 to 8 p.m. and 9 to 11. It’s licensed, so only for those over 19. You can register your group of gutter ballers online.
The Orillia Youth Centre has another fundraiser happening Dec. 21 at Creative Nomad Studios. I don’t know this is technically a Christmas concert, but I’d wager one or two tunes will be played. Serena Ryder and Lydia Persaud are performing and you can get tickets online.
Reviews
Not long after I posted last week’s column I realized I had forgotten to write about three concerts which happened recently. So here we go.
The Mariposa Folk Festival had a concert November 29 at St. Paul’s with JD Crosstown opening for Aysanabee. Aysanabee has been making his mark on the Canadian music scene this year, and I think JD has the cap off his marking pen.
JD performed solo, with only his guitar for accompaniment. He’s got a great voice and his writing is better than average. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from him.
Aysanabee should have been great. I only heard his guitar playing, and he’s a very good player, once in the whole show. That was when he switched guitars and played one song without his band.
I heard his drummer and bass player though. It looked like there was a keyboard player on stage, but my ears can’t confirm. Wait, the keyboard player was taking care of the bass lines too – that I heard. Aysanabee has a woman singing backup, I heard her better than I heard Aysanabee’s voice.
Mark Webster worked the sound board for JD and the sound was pretty good. Aysanabee had his own board and operator. I spoke with Mark about the poor sound quality and he said it was because I was sitting in my customary seat in the last row (that’s as far into the church as they’ll let me go) and I was getting too much reflection. However, I was sitting only two rows back on the other side of the aisle for the board operator and the sound would have not been that different.
When things are off I always check in with someone else who plays music just to see if I’m missing something and they also said the bass and drums were too loud and not EQ’d for the room.
Here’s the thing. If I see a person on stage, singing or playing, I figure I should be able to appreciate what they are doing; I should hear them.
It’s not my ears. I was at another concert (review next week) and the sound was crystal clear, I heard every instrument and every one of the 4 voices perfectly. It was like listening to a CD. The PA was substantial, but bigger or smaller speakers (and power to drive them) is not an excuse for a bad mix.
I was so looking forward to seeing Aysanabee and I’m disappointed I can’t say anything about his performance because someone else hid it from me.
This fixation audiences only want to hear big fat, wall vibrating bass lines and pounding drums at the expense of melody and lyrics (not to mention guitar solos buried in the mix when those should be the focus of listening attention when they happen) has to end. Even people who know little of how concert sound works are noticing it’s not good. More performers have to take better control of what they sound like out in the seats. It’s not enough to sound good on the stage and trust your board operator is making you sound good in the room.
Contrast this with the next concert which Mark also worked the board.
The Orillia Youth Centre had a fundraiser at a different venue, the 201 Grill and Game Bar in the Quality Inn (formerly the Highwayman Inn) with Sean Kelly and Andy Sheldon (of The Samples) opening for Grate Northern on December 5
I know it’s not been the Highwayman or McCabe’s for awhile, but this is the first time I’ve been out to see any concerts there. The restaurant is quite different. A lot of hard surfaces, marble floors, some kind of large, shiny marble looking, but is probably some kind of plastic, ceiling fixture that would be a sound board operator’s nightmare.
I noticed there was a lot of talking among people in the audience for Kelly and Sheldon and none for Grate Northern. People were not paying attention in the first half. When the music isn’t grabbing you, this happens.
And it was. I really couldn’t tell what Kelly and Sheldon were playing until I moved up in the room near the end of their set. Some of the sound issues were still present, but not as pronounced; the separation of the instruments and voices was better up close, and a gooey mess at the back of the room. Both sang and played guitar, there was a keyboard, which may have been a sampler too, that seemed to me to be contributing a lot to the goo.
Grate Northern plays music by the Grateful Dead and this is music I like to hear live, especially from these guys because they are all really good musicians. I caught most of what they did from a spot about 15 feet from the stage and enjoyed the performance.
Then I thought, I should check this out from the back where I was before. It was a totally different sound mix than the first set and almost as good as what I heard up close. I could hear the different instrument contributions to the overall sound and the vocals were balanced with the instruments. I did not expect that based on the early example.
I suspect the members of Grate Northern, being the experienced players they are and Sean Murray having experience with recording, the band sorted out all the sonic clashes and levels of their own instruments in rehearsal and gave Mark something to work with. Mark basically had to boost the amplification and tweak the general EQ for the room (rather than sort out why instrument voices were clashing each other and the vocals).
Mark generally gets it right, but he can’t make silk purses out of poor signals handed over to him. Across two concerts in different rooms parts of both shows were sounding very good because of his work.
Christmas Prelude
The annual start to Christmas events took place December 6 at St. Paul’s Centre with the Orillia Concert Band and their guests the Orillia Vocal Ensemble doing music for the season.
The concert was one Christmas tune after another, with two exceptions. The OVE did Carol of the Bells, which is as nice to hear sung without a full orchestra or band participating as it is as instrumental work. Interestingly, it’s a New Year’s song, which in Ukraine at the time it was written, New Year’s was April 1. So it’s really intended as a welcome to spring, and in that spirit I declare on January 1 there will be no more show, snow storms, or ice to chip off windshields.
The band played Troika near the end of the concert. It was written by Sergei Prokofiev and is one of five parts of the Lieutenant Kijé Suite, which itself is the score for a movie of the same name.
In the movie the scene where the music occurs shows a cart being pulled by horses on a dusty, then muddy path through a meadow. – not a hint of snow, plus it’s a cart not a sleigh.
However the music does have a wintery, Christmassy feel to it and subsequent depictions over the years show sleighs, people bundled up against the elements, snow everywhere and a team of three horses (Troika) pulling the sleigh. Why three? Because in Russia three can pull ten cases of vodka more easily.
The Shorts
- The annual Mariposa Folk Festival Gospel and Blues concert with Lance Anderson leading the band is Feb. 21 at the Opera House. The band members this time around are: Garnetta Cromwell, Gavin Hope, Wade O. Brown, Mackenzie Jordan, Steve Pelletier and Everton White. You can get tickets online. Also, tickets for the summer festival are on sale at last year’s prices until December 31. Do I need to mention this would be an excellent Christmas gift? See the list of ticket combos here. And it’s time to apply to be an artisan vendor; you can do that online.
- The Orillia Concert Association has season tickets on sale (still only $90) and their lineup is: Terry Lim And Friends Feb. 22, Daniel Vnukowski March 22 and The Brooks, Ronai, Teske Trio May 3. All concerts are at 2:30 p.m. You can get the season tickets online.
- OMAH has the annual Carmichael Landscape Show, Tradition Transformed, up to see (it’s great), they also have John Gould: Travels Of The Mind And Body, and Tracing Places: Advertising In Orillia… Peter Street Fine Arts has the the annual 6×6 Show up all of December. Cloud Gallery has a show of smaller paintings on right now, smaller as in size and price. They also have marked down the prices for the season on many of the larger works.
- Quayle’s Brewery has Darcy Windover playing Dec. 14; Cat Chabot Dec. 18; Ron Whitman is in Dec. 10; and Burke Erwin Dec. 20… the an afternoon jam session every Sunday with Sean Patrick and others.
(Images Supplied) Main: Orillia Vocal Ensemble
