This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
As I was sitting in my usual spot (last one before the great outdoors, it’s about as far as they let me go into St. Paul’s Centre) Saturday afternoon listening to the Orillia Vocal Ensemble’s Christmas concert I looked over the program for the 12th time.
It occurred to me listening to their guests, the Orillia Community Children’s Choir, sing A Celtic Christmas there may just be more songs about Christmas than for any other occasion.
Other tunes on the menu were the opener, Sir Christmas, Star Carol and Winter Lullaby, none of which I knew of previously. The OVE is pretty good at finding songs for their concerts which originate on the African continent, of which Rise Up Shepherd Follow was one.
The weekend before the Orillia Silver Band have couple as well, The Holly and the Ivy, and City of David (which was a brand new arrangement), I wasn’t familiar with.
I was snowed in for the Christmas Prelude and without looking, using my memory of the menu I looked at weeks ago, I’m sure there was a tune or two I’d not heard before.
None of this counts for the tunes with unfamiliar titles that are really just medleys of things out ears have been subjected to countless times. Or original titles used when we know the songs by shorthand titles like Carol of the Christmas Bells (Carol of the Bells). Interestingly, earlier in the day I came across a history of this song and it originally had nothing to do with Christmas, but as usual with the church, when a good thing drops into your hands – co-opt.
And the theft – for Christmas. How many songs share the same music? A lot. It’s not just Greensleeves masquerading as What Child Is This either. And it’s not just stealing the music from secular sources. People have been rewriting lyrics already set to Christmas tunes like it’s a career move.
There are some Christmas tunes I do want to hear, mainly for their compositional value (I’m not ready to jump into the whole Christmas thing with both left feet; I have the spirit, but it’s more a mickey than a fifth). I don’t hear those ones played live here in Orillia too often, and if it wasn’t for some loudmouth sitting near me at the Orillia Silver Band concert December 15 at the Opera House, I wouldn’t have heard Sleigh Ride this year (OK, it was someone sitting in my seat).
That was during the sing-a-long part of the program where the band miraculously plays very well any tune requested from the audience. I commented to Neil Barlow, who waves his arms around – for the whole concert – the band must have rehearsed Sleigh Ride just in case I asked for it – again, because it’s not the kind of tune 40 people just sight read in performance in front of a paying audience. It turns out they did ‘run through it’ a couple weeks ago, but according to Neil only because their sheet music had a lot of repeats in it and he wanted to remind the band how they were doing them.
Then someone piped up asking why I didn’t get up to sing like all the other people who got their request honoured. To which I replied, “there are no lyrics to that one.” The fellow then showed me lyrics on his phone, which I recognized so I said, “you don’t’ want to hear me sing anyway.”
And I was right. The original composition by Leroy Anderson was an instrumental. Lyrics were written by someone else four years later after the song became popular.
Since Neil was party to that conversation I suspect he’ll insist I go to the front and sing it with the band next year. Be warned, I heard a version of it sung by Yoko Ono last week. I can’t unhear it (I was going to link it, but I must have encountered it on Facebook because It’s not on Youtube – lucky you). So Neil, that’s the version I‘m running with, or the band can carry on doing the tune in its original form – without lyrics.
All this is to say this year there was more new (so to speak, some of it was hundreds of years old) music played at Christmas concerts than any previous year in all the year’s I’ve been going to these things.
The OVE concert, as with all their concerts was a fundraiser. This time it was for the Orillia Central Preschool who left with a cheque for $5,057.
Bored Already
Fear not. I have some things you can put from Youtube to watch or just have as background.
The Orillia Concert Band’s Christmas Prelude, which you may also have missed, is on their page.
Rick Stephenson, who performed with the OCB last spring made a Christmas album and it’s on Youtube.
Rick used to live here and at the time had a big band with which he performed music from the Frank Sinatra songbook (a little Buddy Rich too). He has the good fortune to sound like Sinatra and sing like him. As I was saying to a friend the other day, ‘have you eve experienced someone trying to do Elvis who maybe has the voice but no idea how Elvis sang the tunes?’ It’s painful. Well, there are those who do Sinatra, but no one touches Rick’s renditions for accuracy.
Anyway Rick got a hold of the backing tracks to Franks’ songs, the original ones, and along with his recording engineer son made his own versions of Frank’s tunes.
In this case some of the arrangements are exactly the ones Frank used, some are not. There is also a duet with Christina Bosco of Nothing In Common you can hear and just for good measure Rick covered If You Could Read My Mind on his album of tunes he thought Frank would have done if he had the chance. Oh, and that concert he did with the OCB last spring, it’s here.
The Lightfoot Days Festival last month spawned some videos that are on the St. Paul’s Youtube page. One is Jim Lewis telling stories (he was at OD when Gord was there). Liona Boyd recorded greetings for the Lightfoot Church service. The whole service is online too.
Samantha Windover has been making some career moves lately. She has some songs you can listen to. She’s also going to be in the spring Mariposa Arts Theatre play, A Streetecar Named Desire.
The Bob Hawkins Band put a new disc, Perfect Simplicity, in October. Though his music is not necessarily Christmas fare, it never the less is religious in nature. The band members are all good musicians and Bob is a good songwriter; I find most of the songs stand up as good music. You can find all his music here.
And don’t forget Zachary Lucky’s new album, The Wind. It’s really gentle listening, well recorded too. From that link you can also find Zachary’s previous albums.
Christmas Balls (Not That Kind)
I popped in to the Streets Alive annual Christmas ornament giveaway, which was held at Hibernation Arts this time. I got there about an hour into it and there were a few left. Leslie Fournier, who stickhandles and cajoles the artists to make them said there were about 40 people lined up before the noon start to get one for their tree.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I hope you get something you didn’t know you needed. I want to have a talk with that kid who wanted snow for Christmas.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: The Orillia Vocal Ensemble Christmas concert at St. Paul’s Centre
