This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
Saturday night’s Orillia Concert Band performance at St. Paul’s Centre is a celebration of the formation of the band 40 years ago. It’s also a farewell gig for Ross Arnold and Jacquie Dancyger Arnold who are retiring from the band after 40 years of playing in the band.
The band started following a Park Street Collegiate reunion when former students played a concert and many of them thought they should not quit playing. Stan Passfield, who taught music at Park Street at the time, organized the formation of the band and got Bob Plunkett, a Toronto music teacher who had just retired and took up permanent residence on Bass Lake to be the conductor.
Coincidentally, around the same time Suds Sutherland had recruited Ross to come up part time to help teach the Twin Lakes Secondary stage band and help out with music festivals, so both Ross and Jacquie were recruited in to OCB.
Both area piano players. Piano players have skills that make playing mallet instruments (marimba, vibraphone, timpani, etc.) as easy adjacent move.
“She played percussion under duress. She only played because I make her, because I help her out when she does her concerts. “I’m a piano player, I can’t play.”” Ross said. When Jacquie is playing piano concerts, he’s often sharing the bench flipping pages of music for her.
This is every percussion lead’s great discovery, finding a pianist who wants to be in the group and convincing them to take up mallet instruments. This writer has used the tactic in the past.
“That’s how we got her,” Ross said.
“I wasn’t going to the band to play piano, I knew I was going to play mallets. I played everything. I even had to fill in once to play tympani,” Jacquie added.
Soon after Suds saw Ross’s keyboard lab at the school Ross was teaching at (George S. Henry Academy) and wanted one too. This was Ross’s entrée to teaching full time at Twin Lakes until he retired in 2003 (plus another 20 years as a substitute/itinerant teacher).
“50 years of teaching, it was lots of fun,” Ross said.
Ross also plays percussion in the Orillia Silver Band. Both are having health issues that are contributing to their decision to retire. Jacquie is losing her hearing, and Ross has a bad back.
“My doctor said,’ pick one of those bands, you shouldn’t be doing twice a week,’” Ross said.
Ross is easy to spot at OCB concerts, he’s at the tympani most of the time and mostly all of the time. This writer noted many years ago he was an accomplished player, being able to change notes (pitches) on the fly and be in tune. He also is pretty busy back there where the people hitting things hang out on stage. He plays quite a lot too. If one ever looked at a score for concert band or a part sheet for tympani, one more often than not will find 87 bars of rest and one bar of notes to play. That’s not what Ross does.
“Composers would write a lot more for tympani if someone in musical school hadn’t said, “remember tympani can only play two notes,”” Ross said.
So Ross steals from the tuba parts and doubles what they are playing. Anyone paying attention will notice the lines he does play often involve different notes on the same drum. Ross said the pedal to change the pitch makes it easy to play different notes on the same drum. He said he learned to find the correct note by foot pressure instead of by ear like most other timpanists. In short he’s got skills many timpanists don’t have.
Jacquie, on the other hand doesn’t stay in the same place for long. She is usually covering parts for several instruments.
“You’re constantly running around,” Jacquie said.
She figured out it was easier to just make one copy of her sheet music with all the different instrument’s notes on one page rather than have a different sheet for each instrument like publishers like to do. It’s much easier to find your place when moving to a different instrument when the page in front of you is the same as the one at the instrument you just moved from.
Each has favourite pieces. Ross mentioned he liked some of the Christmas tunes the band played and the pieces Howard Cable wrote for the OCB.
“Some of his stuff was really good,” Ross said.
“I liked playing Phantom (of the Opera),” Jacquie said. “The most memorable things was when I did the Rhapsody in Blue and when I did the Rachmaninoff, but that’s piano.” Jacquie said of her feature slots with the OCB.
Then they both recalled the time they were the featured performers together.
“We did (Serenade for a) Picket Fence. We did a duet. I was playing xylophone and Ross marimba,” Jacquie said.
The concert menu starts with Passfield’s Parade, a tune written by Suds Sutherland to honour Stan Passfield.
Then Randy Hoover will give the baton to Stan who will conduct the next piece, Amparita Roca. The next two pieces, A Trumpeter’s Lullaby and Stranger on the Shore feature Mark Smith on trumpet, and Hugh Coleman on clarinet respectively. Other pieces in the first half include The Magnificent Seven and Finlandia.
In the second half former conductor James Hiltz will open conducting La La Land and Roy Menagh will conduct English Folk Song Suite. Christina Bosco will sing I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis with James Campbell accompanying on piano.
You can get tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert online, or at the door (if you want to take that chance).
That Was Different
The Mariposa House Hospice fundraiser last Saturday at St. Paul’s Centre played out similar to a Mariposa Folk Festival workshop, with each performer taking a turn to do a song. Well almost each performer, Michael Martyn did a short set to start the night because he also had another gig with his band at the Hog ‘N Penny later in the evening.
That left Samantha Windover, Ronnie Douglas and Steven Henry to fill the rest of the evening with great musicianship. Oh, and it was all acoustical.
Each played something the audience knew. Ronnie had a couple of tunes from his album many have heard before; Steven never misses a chance to sing Lorraine from his album and Samantha, aside from singing some original tunes, usually can’t get out of a gig without covering Patsy Cline. The audience started hollering when she lit into Sweet Dreams.
I remember thinking, ‘what a nice cover,’ when Steven sang Streets of Shame. It’s such a great tune, but I couldn’t recall who did it originally. So here I sit,, looking it up, shocked to find Steven wrote it.
Everyone loves Ronnie’s Right Between The Eyes, even if they are hearing it for the first time.
Then the concert closed with all of them participating in The Weight, even Dave Hewitt, who was emcee for the night, joined in to add some rhythm on djembe. $10,000 was raised.
Classic
This is the weekend the internet is remembering Gordon Lightfoot, being the third anniversary of his passing May 1. Coincidentally, Classic Lightfoot Live is playing the Opera House Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m.
They have been playing this weekend here for several years, and you won’t find a band paying tribute to an artist with so many people you know in it. Let’s start with Steve Eyers, Gord’s nephew, add in Liz Anderson and Alex Andrews and you’ve got the locals. Then there’s Eric Kidd and Bruce Campbell who have played here often enough the mayor should be dipping into his pocket to give these honourary Orillians City of Orillia lapel pins.
The band also has Bob Doidge who produced a number of Gord’s albums and the guy up front singing the songs, John Stinson, who does a fantastic job replicating Gords’ qualities.
Joining the action tomorrow is Steve McEown (the other half of Even Steven with Eyers) who will be on stage, likely to sing I Used To Be A Country Singer, which he wrote and Gord recorded.
You can get tickets online.
Even more classic, is classical music, which you will get with the Orillia Concert Association’s last concert of their series this year. It’s at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Sunday at 2:30 p.m. The performers are Alex Teske, mezzo-soprano Lillian Brooks, and Anna Ronai on piano. You can get tickets online, or at the door.
The Shorts
- The Youth Centre has found a venue for their fundraising concert June 13. It will happen at the Leacock Museum, in a tent, and/or under the starts (there will be stars that night, read on. The gig is with Weber Brothers, the Ronnie Douglas Blues Band and Andrew Ali/Josh Small. Tickets are on sale now online.
- St. Paul’s is doing The Wizard of Oz May 20 to 24. You can get tickets at the church. There are matinees on the Saturday and Sunday of the run and a preview pay what you can performance on May 20 at 7:30 p.m. They also need volunteers to help with various aspects of the production. Contact howesfamily@sympatico.ca to help in the box office; 123cdavid@gmail.com to be an usher; cmar75111@gmail.com to help with dinner (oh yeah, you can get dinner – limit 50 people- before the shows); cjbrown099@gmail.com to help the kids in the play be where they need to be and put on the right costumes; cjbrown099@gmail.comif you can do makeup; and mcwhinb@rogers.com to help get the programs ready.
- Bleeker has a smoking new tune out, great video too. You can see here.
- OMAH has these exhibits to see, the annual Women’s Day Art Show and Made in Orillia; and Icons and Alter Egos: Heroes, Villains, and Everything In-Between (Twin Lakes and OSS art student show), From Hand to Heirloom: The Art of Craft and the permanent display of artefacts from Gord’s estate. OMAH also has some job openings, permanent and for the summer. You can check out what is available and application criteria online. They are also looking for people who would like to join the board of directors. In particular they are looking for people with these skills: fundraising, legal affairs and governance, human resources, business management, and financial/accounting. You can find out more here… Peter Street Fine Arts has works by Maria Skrypnik up all month.
- Quayle’s Brewery has My Missing Piece playing May 2; Cat Chabot May 3; Leah Leslie May 7; and Brigitte Eve May 8… the Hog ‘N Penny has the Kempencelts playing May 2; and Sunday afternoons they have an open mic lead by Sean Patrick … Kensingtons has an open mic lead by Timmy Kehoe every Tuesday night… The ANAF Club has the Sandra Good Band playing May 2 and Carter Pharaoh in the afternoon May 3 at 2 p.m. and an acoustic jam every Thursday evening. Run With the Kittens are opening for Ace of Wands at Higher Ground (Brewery Bay) (tickets); Dead Root Revival is in May 16 (tickets)… Marc Jordan plays the Opera House June 11 (tickets); and now is a good time to get tickets for The Lightfoot Band’s gig Oct. 29.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia and Images Supplied) Main: Ross Arnold and Jacquie Dancyger Arnold are playing their last concert with the Orillia Concert Band.
