Entertainment

A St. Lawrence College project is taking aim at helping a young local family.

A group of six second year Social Service Worker students from St. Lawrence College in Cornwall is currently working on a community development project which allows them to work within the community in order to work towards a cause of their choice.

Tessa Perry, who is from Morrisburg, made a suggestion that the rest of her project group immediately agreed to.

The project group includes; Tessa Perry from Morrisburg, Sarah Archambault from Long Sault, and Jade Mercier, Kari Brown, Cassandra Bowen, and Channelle Seguin from Cornwall. 

They are organizing and hosting a spaghetti dinner and silent auction to raise funds to help 19 year old Jessica Blok, and her family, husband Dustin and daughter Autumn. 

Jessica is fighting stage four Rhabdomyosarcoma cancer.

Since Jessica and Dustin married in hospital in 2014, the students have decided to raise funds for a honeymoon.

“We are looking to rent Jessica a cottage for a weekend this spring/summer 2015,” explained the students in the project proposal. 

“The money raised will be used for a weekend getaway, all expenses paid.”

“I have known Jessica throughout public and high school in Iroquois,” said Tessa. 

“My group of wonderful ladies were inspired when I told them about Jessica’s situation, as a suggestion for our project, which is meant to have the community work together.”

Although this is a school project, the group hopes their efforts will be met with much community support, to help do something special for the Bloks.

The fundraiser will take place April 11 at the Morrisburg Legion. (4:30-7 p.m.).

Anyone wanting to donate to the auction, can email getaticket@outlook.ca

[…]

“We have welcomed two new members on to our board,” said Sandra Whitworth of the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage, “and we are delighted that Anna and Eric have joined us.” Eric Pietersma and Anna Boisvenue have joined the three current SLAS board members, as the outstanding 2015 season at the Stage continues. “Anna has a background in accounting and Eric has legal expertise and so they expand the skill set on the board in a range of important areas. We started a planning process a year-and-a-half ago to try to begin to move from  an operational board to a more properly governance board,” Whitworth said. With artists like the Young Novelists, Harry Manx, Chick Gamine and Madison Violet coming to the Stage this winter and spring, the volunteer members of the board are hard-working and clearly dedicated to bringing great music to South Dundas. Some of the musicians who perform at the Stage have also led workshops with elementary children at the Akwasasne Mohawk School. One of the SLAS board’s long term goals is to make such outstanding workshops in many types of music available to other students in the South Dundas area. Pictured, l-r, are board members Eric Pietersma, Derek Hunter, Sandra Whitworth, Tony McCadden and Anna Boisvenue. 

[…]

MORRISBURG – “1976. This is the year that Gordie Roberts learned the true meaning of Christmas.”

With those words, Uncle Charlie invites Playhouse audiences to travel back to a time when family Christmas specials, usually featuring performers like Andy Williams, The Osmonds and Perry Como were a staple and welcome part of the television networks’ holiday fare. The Gordie Roberts’ Christmas Special is just such a show, a production that Gordie and his troupe have been performing every December, in pretty much the same fashion, for the last 15 years.

This year, 1976, however, the world is going to change. And if Gordie can’t deal with those changes, Christmas (and the networks) are going to leave him behind.

Playwright and composer Jesse Collins’ Lights, Camera…Christmas! is a nostalgic, music and dance filled homage to those grand old days of television, and to the performers who were once such a familiar part of holiday celebrations in millions of homes. 

As this final production of the Upper Canada Playhouse 2014 season takes to the stage, audiences will find themselves swept into the lives of some very special characters. Throughout that journey, there is plenty of laughter, unforeseen twists and turns in the story, exuberant musical numbers, and, perhaps, one or two little tears to wipe away. 

Director Collins (assisted by an outstanding crew) has assembled a terrific cast of nine for his production. They are all accomplished singers and dancers (something they demonstrate delightfully throughout the play). Liz Gilroy is the choreographer for the show, with Meredith Zwicker handling the music and arrangements. From soft shoe to rock and roll, from tap to disco, the music and dancing in Lights, Camera…Christmas! are dynamite. 

More than this, Christmas is a play with characters that audiences will come to care about. Collins paints them in such a memorable fashion.

 Character Gordie (Derek Marshall) is a crooner and a traditionalist. He’s done his Christmas special a certain way for 15 years, and he means to keep on doing things his way. Unfortunately, his finances and television contracts are in a mess. Corporate sponsors are pressuring him hourly. Even his faithful cast is getting restive. And then there is his failure to listen to, sometimes to even notice, his long time girlfriend, Marilyn (Liz Gilroy), who has loved and supported him for years. Despite his loud protestation that “There’s a lot more to Gordie Roberts than just a hit song!” he’s in trouble.

There is nervous Morty (Duff MacDonald) who keeps proclaiming “I was just supposed to be the warm up act, not the manager.” And Rick (Geoffrey Tyler), who is desperate for a chance to finally showcase his dance and vocal skills. There’s Rhonda (Meredith Zwicker) who has embraced the whole disco scene and dancer Denise (Miranda MacDonald), a woman of few words but big smiles. Who will forget Uncle Charlie (Rod Campbell) whose understanding heart makes a difference in the lives of everyone? And there is Zach Council, whose wide-eyed Vince brings the house down with his puppets, magic and reindeer suit. Even Butch, the corporate hatchet man, played with Scrooge like nastiness by Brian Young, while delivering lines like “I don’t like you. I don’t like this show. And I’ll can this hunk of junk! There’s a new sheriff in town!” is a memorable villain. 

Will the Gordie Roberts Christmas special survive? Will jive talk, disco Santa and the evil Fairbanks 2000 replace the traditions of Christmas? Will the members of Gordie’s troupe rediscover the joys of Christmas in time? Will this be the year that Gordie Roberts really does learn the true meaning of Christmas?

Lights, Camera…Christmas! is a magical journey of song, dance and story. Go and warm your heart.

Lights, Camera…Christmas! runs at Upper Canada Playhouse until December 14. Contact the theatre at 1-613-543-3713 for information and tickets.

[…]

All a person has to do is just mention the name of guitarist Adrian Legg. 

Immediately music lovers explode into rapturous descriptions of his multi genre style, his extraordinary and original compositions, his legendary showmanship, his infectious joie de vivre. In short, they love this transplanted Englishman and artist, who will be lighting up the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage in concert on Saturday, November 15, at 7 p.m.

“I have been fortunate enough to have seen Adrian Legg in concert twice – and would gladly see him nightly…” said Eric Thom (a former Morrisburg resident who writes music reviews for Maverick, Sing Out, Roots Music Canada among others). “(Legg’s) standalone style combines with elements of classical, jazz, folk, rock and even country, to create something altogether other-worldly and completely captivating.” 

Adrian Legg has built an international reputation based on his completely unique finger style approach to the guitar. Recipient of numerous musical awards, and consistently on top of musical polls, Legg performs on a custom guitar that is a hybrid of electronic and acoustic. I asked him about “inventing” his instrument.

“The guitar wouldn’t do what I wanted,” he said, “so I changed it. For me, the American guitar goes from Elizabeth Cotten to Lonnie Mack, taking in banjo and steel guitar. While others devotedly tend individual trees, I just love the whole wood. I need an instrument that can come close to reflecting that.” 

A teacher and mentor to other artists, Legg has just released his 12th album, Dead Bankers, to great acclaim. I asked him where the inspirational ideas for his music come from. “Tunes have a technical vehicle and an emotional idea. Sometimes they meet and work, sometimes they don’t…sometimes the music just arrives. I don’t really see music as a business. I keep learning. I have to, I keep writing things I can’t play,” he laughed. “We have to learn new words sometimes to say more clearly what we want to communicate, and so it is with music.”

His on stage versatility is the stuff of legend. “(My heart) lies in the moment…Sometimes music is very simple. A good piece of pop can tell a human story very quickly and simply. Sometimes the story is more complex and there are more layers to discover and understand. How can anyone lose a passion for music? That must be a kind of death.”

Live performance is Legg’s forte. He loves an audience. As he once wrote, “Playing live is the whole point. Everyone makes a journey:..we all come together to share this wonderful, universal, human emotional interaction. This is where music lives.”

And, as Eric Thom puts it, Adrian Legg’s sense of humour is as infectious as his music. “This warm, completely affable Brit…generously provides hilarious banter along the way. (Concert-goers) are in for one unforgettable experience.” 

Opening for Adrian Legg on Saturday evening will be a young guitarist who is just beginning to make his mark on the Canadian music scene. Chris Thompson first appeared on the Stage in an Intimate Acoustics show case in 2011. A finger style guitarist himself, Thompson said that he is “excited and honoured to be sharing a stage with a musician as talented and decorated as Adrian. He’s a true genius and a guitar master.”

Thompson has two albums to his name now, and is a composer who “tries to write songs that meet a balance between catchy and melodic, while still being musically and visually exciting.” About two years ago, he went back to basics, focusing more on “building a strong melody and recognizable cohesiveness to my music.” He’s been working on improvisation, blues and jazz. Like Adrian Legg, Chris Thompson loves live performance. 

“I really feel strongly that music should always be genuine and from the heart. Part of what makes music performance so powerful is its power to connect you with people. When you’re singing or playing a song that really hits home to an audience member, that’s when the magic happens. The fact that you can tell a story, evoke emotion, and share a connection with someone over some sounds on a guitar is beautifully fascinating to me.”

Tickets for Adrian Legg in concert at the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage on Saturday, November 15 at 7 p.m. are $18 in advance or $20 at the door. Contact the Stage website at www.st-lawrencestage.com/shows.

[…]

 By the end of Upper Canada Playhouse’s exuberant, foot-tapping tribute to the music of rock ‘n’ roll, the audience was on its feet, cheering, singing along, demanding more.

Memories of Rock & Roll, the Chris McHarge and Colin Stewart show currently running at Upper Canada Playhouse, is that kind of show. It gets your blood rushing and your hands and feet moving.

The show is built around the life and times of the legendary “Moondog”, the on air name of Alan Freed, a Cleveland/New York radio personality who first coined the phrase, rock ‘n’ roll. Freed almost single-handedly launched the mainstream  careers of black artists like Little Richard and Chuck Berry, and white artists like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. 

Derek Marshall assumes the role of Freed, charming and enlightening the audience. In the course of the show, Marshall/Freed takes the audience from the disc jockey’s early years at WJW in Cleveland, playing controversial new beat records to a burgeoning youth audience, to Freed’s phenomenal success in the Big Apple. He “never played a record  on air that I didn’t love myself.” What mattered to him, always, was the music. Was it good? Did it have the rhythm that “got to the kids?” Freed shrugged off the hate mail and threats as he mixed “black and white” music on air, and on the concert stage. The music, the show makes clear, was everything.

And it’s the music in this McHarge/Stewart production that wows the audience.

The back up, on-stage band made up of Brian Asselin, Robin Pitre, Mike Ray, Don Reid and Colin Stewart himself (on bass), is incredible. The singers they pay tribute to would be honoured that such stand out artists are “playing their music.”

What can one say about Aaron Solomon, who carries all the vocals in the show on his own shoulders?

What a voice. What a showman. Is there anything that man can’t sing?

When Solomon sings, you’d swear that it was Johnny Cash standing up there, or Buddy Holly, or Richie Valens, or even the King himself. Solomon’s voice is a phenomenon, with a range you have to hear to believe. His energy  appears boundless. It’s little wonder that the audience was on its feet cheering at the end of Memories of Rock & Roll. 

If you don’t already have tickets to Upper Canada Playhouse’s production of Memories of Rock & Roll, the show is sold out. However there is a waiting list: contact the Playhouse at 613-543-3713 to check. 

Upper Canada Playhouse has another great show opening on November 27: the world premiere of Lights, Camera…Christmas! a holiday family production by renowned  author/actor/director, Jesse Collins. 

Heart-warming, funny, full of outstanding music and dance, this show might just remind everyone (as it does for tv host Gordie Roberts, played by the terrific Derek Marshall) that there just might be more to the Christmas season than “making a buck.”

Tickets for Lights, Camera…Christmas! will go quickly. Contact the Playhouse for information about this next production coming in November.

In the meantime, as Memories of Rock & Roll continues its run at UCP, a final word from the late Alan “Moondog” Freed. “Let’s face it – rock ‘n’ roll is bigger than all of us.”

[…]

The Great Lake Swimmers like to do things a little differently. 

While other artists spend most of their time recording in closed, high tech studios, where the sound is strenuously manipulated, this innovative five man band chooses to record in some unusual settings. They put an album together in an empty grain silo. They taped deep in the woods. They’ve even recorded in an abandoned subway station. 

“To me, playing and recording in unusual sites harnesses a certain energy and draws special performances from the musicians,” explained Tony Dekker, lead guitar and vocalist with the Swimmers. “When we first began recording like this I was surprised at the environmental sounds we picked up, the wind, crickets, and, instead of erasing them, we began to embrace them in our music. Our music became a kind of document about a certain place and time.”

Audiences at the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage, the Morrisburg Meeting Centre, will have the opportunity to experience first hand the critically acclaimed Great Lake Swimmers when they kick off the SLAS season on Saturday, September 20, at 7 p.m. With the multi-talented Musettes opening for them, one thing is certain: this is going to be quite a concert, and a great start to the 2014-15 year at the Stage. 

The Great Lake Swimmers is composed of Tony Dekker, Erik Arnesen, Bret Higgins Joshua Van Tassel and Miranda Mulholland.

“We’ve been a band now for about 11 years,” said Dekker, “with the cast evolving a bit over the years. But this group is, I guess you could say, the final cut. What draws us together is the music itself, and wanting to bring that music to life.” 

The Swimmers are generating growing interest among fans and critics alike. Nominated for two Junos and other musical awards, their latest album (not yet named) is being developed right now, for release in early 2015.

The group resists being conveniently labelled.

“We come at some elements of folk in our work, but ours is, I think, a younger approach to that music. We have an acute respect for the folk tradition, but I believe we come at it with an “Indie” feel, maybe even a “neo-folk” approach, What we really create,” Dekker laughed, “is a unique Swimmers sound.”

Their bold, exciting melodies and vocal strengths have a deep appeal to audiences. They have performed everywhere from Massey Hall, to venues like a small night club in Gravenhurst. The intimacy of the St. Lawerence Stage setting is one they are looking forward to.

Tony Dekker is the chief lyricist of the group. 

“The idea for songs can come from a melody, or a phrase or a rhythm which comes to me. But there has to be a good combination of words there. I go in to the band with a finished thought and we work together on the musical arrangements that make the finished piece.”

Not surprisingly (he was raised on a farm, and has strong rural roots) Dekker finds themes for his writing in the “natural world. Finding spirituality in nature inspires music. I like to draw metaphors from the environment: just feeling the silence of a forest can give me a unique perspective which I can bring to the lyrics I write.” The mythology of the Great Lakes (which inspired the band’s name) fascinates him as well.

He is pleased at the steady rise in the band’s career. “People are still learning about us, but that’s alright. We’d rather be a slow burn than a brief flash in the pan,” he laughed.

Opening for Great Lake Swimmers is a trio of young artists who literally exploded on to the stage during an Intimate Acoustics concert last season. The Musettes, made up of Meaghan LaGrandeur, Rachel Harrison and Brigit O’Reagan (sitting in for regular Lora Bidner, who is currently on a solo project) have a sound and a range that will astound audiences. 

“Our songs are very eclectic, and all are quite different,” said Meaghan LaGrandeur. “We all write, although Rachel, who is a brilliant song writer, can create songs that range from Sea Shanties to love to high adventure. I tend more to story telling and history. I think we take my songs and ‘folksy/popify’ them,” she laughed.

Accomplished artists all, who have been singing together since they met at Ottawa’s Canterbury High School, they, like the Swimmers, don’t really label their musical style. “We love music old and new from Judy Garland to the Andrews Sisters, to modern folk singers,” LaGrandeur explained. “If I did pick an umbrella genre, it would be folk, with pop influences.”

The Musettes just had a huge CD launch party in June filling St. Luke’s Church in Ottawa. Their new album Wanderlust is garnering praise and a lot of fan attention. They have an extensive touring schedule arranged for next year.

With The Musettes as the opener, and the Great Lake Swimmers on stage, September 20, 7 p.m., is going to be a memorable opening concert at the Stage. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Contact www.st-lawrencestage.com 

[…]

Four strong women. One 18-hole golf course. The wit of Norm Foster. The directing talents of Jesse Collins. 

It’s a mixture made in theatrical heaven. 

The Ladies Foursome, which had its world premiere at Upper Canada Playhouse July 3, is a fun-filled, fast-paced, thoroughly joyful celebration of the special bonds of friendship which link together four utterly unique women. 

Playwright Norm Foster was asked for years to do a female version of his enormously popular play, The Foursome. However, it was not until about a year ago that he finally sat down and created Connie, Margot, Tate and Dory, telling their story against a setting that Foster loves: a golf course. 

“I wanted the characters of the women in this play to ring true,” said Foster, during an earlier press conference. In the course of re-writes and rehearsals, while the play took its final shape at Upper Canada Playhouse, the writer was able to “step into (the characters’) shoes, to ask the actresses, would a woman really say something like this? And each woman does have a darker, an edgier side.”

Director Jesse Collins and his cast, with the playwright himself on site for the final rehearsals, were able to really explore the essential nature of the four lead characters. “We could gather our clues from the script…discover new things as we went. This play was not a sequel to the Foursome, but a fresh piece which shares some of the original’s inspiration.” 

Foster’s ear for actual conversations, for capturing on stage the way people really speak to each other, allows Margot, Connie, Tate and Dory to draw audiences fully into their lives. It is a delight to follow them in the course of their ‘regular’ golf game.

We have the pleasure of getting  to know them well. 

These four unforgettable women can make us roar with laughter one moment, then heave a sigh of understanding the next. 

Margot, Connie and Tate (splendidly played by Sharon Heldt, Melanie Janzen and Leah Oster) are on the golf course the day after the funeral of their fourth, for some 14 years, the late Catherine. They have decided to play this game in her honour, although Tate hilariously fusses that playing golf so soon may not be completely “appropriate”, and shouldn’t someone say a few words before they tee off, and if they are going to be religious words should she remove her visor?  

Invited to join them during this pivotal game is Dory, (a wonderful Jane Spence) who says she knew Catherine from the two weeks a year their late friend used to spend at Dory’s Lake Arrowhead Inn, deep in the wilderness.

From the opening tee off to the touching events at the final hole, audiences enjoy some of the funniest, most outrageous, and deeply involving “golf” exchanges in the history of the game. 

Absolutely no topic is off limits with this foursome as they take on the course challenges…and each other. Nothing.

Not television broadcaster Connie’s endless pursuit of men.  (“I don’t worry about getting a reputation. I worry about keeping one.”). Not business woman Margot’s drinking. (She hates golf, “but where else can you drink this early in the morning and people think it’s normal?”) Not Arizona born Dory’s ultimate admission that she loathes running an Inn in the Canadian wilderness. (“I should be grateful we have indoor plumbing or I’d be down at the river beating my kids against rocks to get them clean!”) Not fastidious, conventional stay-at-home Tate’s desperate belief that she may have “frittered away my life. I want more.”

Why, not even God escapes the foursome.

“God’s a man,” Connie flatly states, ending an impassioned debate in theology. “The Bible says he rested on the seventh day. A woman wouldn’t rest on the seventh day. She’d say ‘I need to reorganize that closet’.”

Hilarious, confrontational, opinionated, fascinating, these four friends take life apart during their ‘memorial game’, then find a way to put it all back together again. Secrets are revealed, friendships tested, new friends found.

And throughout the game, the enigmatic Catherine is never far from their thoughts. Indeed, Catherine, in a sense, is the catalyst in this play. Her friends learn, quite to their surprize, who she really was, what she actually meant to each of them, and how she has influenced their lives.

“Out of all of us, Catherine had the biggest heart.”

Norm Foster’s The Ladies Foursome is a celebration of the oh-too-real joys, and pitfalls, of friendship. Along the way, the author slips in the oh-too-real joys and pitfalls of golf as well. (Connie’s ‘Ode to the 18th Hole’ is priceless!).

Who would not want to have Margot, Tate, Connie and Dory for friends?  

The Ladies Foursome is an hilarious, touching, wonderful play about four pretty wonderful women. Don’t miss the chance to get to know them. 

The Ladies Foursome runs until July 27. Contact Upper Canada Playhouse at 613-543-3713.

[…]

“Music, I think, comes out our pores, and expresses itself in all sorts of ways,” laughed Raven Kanatakta, who, with partner and wife ShoShona Kish, is part of an extraordinary  multi-member musical group, Digging Roots, which will perform at the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage on Saturday, April 12, at 7 p.m. “Music is like food to us,” he added.

Digging Roots, which originally formed in 2004, has garnered extensive critical and popular praise. Nominated for numerous awards, the group won a Juno in 2010 for Best Aboriginal Album of the Year, Best Pop Recording at the 12th annual Native American Awards and Best Blues CD at the Aboriginal People’s Choice Awards.

Bill Carriere, on the board of the SLAS, is simply awed by the musical versatility and talent of the band.

“One number finds you immersed in reggae, the next…the music is clearly blues with vocals and guitar working together. Next up one hears something that might have…been done by the Fifth Dimension. Then you’ll be treated to something that is clearly contemporary hip hop. Terrific voices, amazing harmonies…it all comes together beautifully.” 

I asked Raven about the band’s eclectic approach to music.

“Well, I come from the 70’s generation, a kind of ‘hippy child’ on the Rez,” he explained, laughing. “I was always listening to the Beatles, to rock bands, jug bands, classical music. It was the same for ShoShona, growing up in Toronto. 

I was attracted to a wide variety of music. Listening to music, playing music, and travelling (Digging Roots has toured throughout North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand), all these influences come out in our music.” 

I asked Raven about the themes, the ideas, the group find themselves exploring through their compositions and performances. 

“We spend a lot of time on identity and understanding the world around us. ShoShona and I fell in love in Hawaii, and one Christmas I bought her a ukelele. A uke just seems to lend itself to love songs, and we wrote a whole series of those.”

However, reflecting  their rich heritage, Raven and ShoShona have also begun working on a traditional form of composition called Song Lines.

“The Anishinabe were  nomadic people who often followed the rivers and waterways, camping at night on the beaches. People sang by the water, sometimes just to hand drums. By the waterside, you could look out, right or left, and see the landscape spread before you, mountains, hills, valleys, forests, and the melodies literally followed the contours of the scenery, rising and falling. 

Modern chord progressions allow us to take the same approach, creating songs from the land. We take panoramic photos wherever we go to inspire our melodies. I always say that we are nomadic ourselves in our musical travels.”

Raven and ShoShona are strong advocates of the importance of introducing children to music and the arts. 

On Friday afternoon, April 12, in collaboration with the St. Lawrence Stage, and with the support of the Akwesasne Mohawk School Board, they will be performing with, and for, grades 6-8 students at the Akwesasne Mohawk School.

“Holding workshops with students is vitally important,” Raven said. “This is the next generation, and the education children get dictates the kind of adults they become. I believe that exposure to music, dance, culture is important. We need to bring creativity to our schools.”

Finally, I asked Raven the origin of the band’s name.

“Well, Digging Roots is about understanding where we came from. But it also has a symbolic meaning for us as well.” 

For seven years, despite conventional medical therapies, Raven’s hands caused him serious health issues. Finally he approached a medicine person on a Northern Reservation. “He took me into the bush, and said to bring a shovel.”  Directed to dig up certain roots and plants, (“some in the middle of a bog!”), Raven made a special tea and began drinking it regularly. “In two months, my hands were back to normal and I was playing again. That is also why we chose our name.”

With a new album, For the Light, due to be released in June of 2014, and a cross Canada tour scheduled for the summer, Digging Roots has a very busy schedule. “We are really looking forward to the intimacy of the St. Lawrence Stage, to doing numbers from the new album. It will be fantastic,” said Raven Kanatakta.

Tickets to the Digging Roots concert April 12 are $18 in advance or $20 at the door. Contact www.st-lawrencestage.com

[…]