Arrowsmith Big Band to play Capitol Theatre in Port Alberni

Jazz lovers in Port Alberni will have an opportunity to hear one of Vancouver Island’s finest music ensembles in concert when the Arrowsmith Big Band from Oceanside plays the Capitol Theatre on Thursday, April 12 at 7:30 pm. 

The Arrowsmith Big Band was formed about 30 years ago by well-known former Port Alberni swing trumpeter, Bill Cave. The band continues to meet once a week in Qualicum for rehearsals. Membership includes professional musicians from the communities of Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Qualicum Beach, Parksville, and Courtenay. Some are retired and a number are presently teaching music in the secondary and university education systems.  Keeping with the tradition of having one or two student musicians play with the group, this year the award-winning trombonist Julian Telfer-Wan from Kwalikum Secondary School’s jazz program is a member. 

Selections featured will be by some of the best musical arrangers in the business. Chosen arrangers include Bob Mintzer, Sammy Nestico, Don Menza, Don Sebesky, Bob Florence, and Tom Kubis. The talented Vancouver composer Fred Stride will be represented with two arrangements - Something For Ernie and Missing You and will showcase alto saxophonist Claudio Fantinato who grew up in Port Alberni and now resides in Qualicum.  For those who remember the big band era of the 1940’s, Glenn Miller’s hit In The Mood will open the second half of the program.

Personnel for the Port Alberni concert will be Claudio Fantinato, Dan Craven, Rachel Fuller, Trevor Hooper and Zack Jamieson-Mills (Saxophones); Michael Irving, Dave Stewart, Greg Bush, Susie Craven (trumpets); Paul Nuez, Greg Falls, Julian Telfer-Wan, Andrew Gray, (trombones). Tying it all together is the rhythm section of Barry Miller (piano), Bryan Stovell (bass), Colin Campbell (Guitar) and Michael Wright on drums.

With solos from most of the band members, the concert will be an exciting evening! If you enjoy big band jazz and swing music you will want to get tickets ASAP. Tickets are now on sale (Adult $12 and Senior/Student $10) at Rollin Arts Centre, Echo Centre, Somass Drugs and Salmonberry’s. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Proceeds from the concert are in support of a music scholarship awarded annually by the Port Alberni Orchestra & Chorus Society to an Alberni Valley music student.

The winner last year was Christina Wynans. 

Spring Skiing on Washington


I have an aversion to saying that the recent teacher’s job action had an upside. However, the situation did give me a chance to spend a day skiing on Mount Washington with my grandchildren Nathan and Matthew. They normally ski weekends but I’ve made it a habit for years never to go near the Courtenay hill on weekends. I dislike the extended lift lineups and the extensive profanity uttered by some of the teen boarders I have to share a lift chair with. Also I tend to pick sunny days to ski which means keeping my eye on the weather reports. Since one of the teacher’s strike days landed on a sunny weekday I was on the road to Washington by 8:00 am.

Arriving at the day lodge parking area, I tracked the grandchildren and their parents Dorianne & Cory by texting via my iPhone to find out where on the hill they were. I love today’s technology. It’s so handy. Before cell phones you could ski for hours and not find someone you were to meet on the hill that day.

Earlier this ski season I discovered that Mount Washington had made a huge change to some of the lift technology. Their novice Green Zone area had all the traditional lifts removed and replaced with something called Magic Carpets. (See photos below).  The total project, which included extensive slope recontouring, cost $3 million. The mountain is now being promoted as one of the easiest places to learn to ski and snowboard in North America. 

In January I tried out the new lifts that resemble a moving sidewalk. They are similar to those one encounters in major airports except the conveyor is encased within a view-through plastic tube. Although I found the tunnel-like tubes somewhat claustrophobic, they certainly make it easy for beginners to access the ski runs without the problems associated boarding a chair lift when not in control of a pair of skis or snowboard.

My day with the grandchildren was great although they’re getting hard to keep up with, and it’s only their second year skiing. However, it’s more likely at my age I’m less willing to ski flat out on steep terrain. 

PHOTO: Nathan, Matthew and your blogger atop Mount Washington

PHOTO: Mount Washington’s new Magic Carpet conveyor lifts snake their way up the ski run.

Pat had a Royal Conservatory of Music Pedagogy symposium in Victoria last weekend. Since I always enjoy visiting the capital city I drove her down early in the morning. While the rest of the island north of the Malahat was soaking up several centimeters of H2O, I hoofed around the Inner Harbour in sunny spring-like weather. Japanese cherry trees were already coated in pink blossoms and yellow daffodils had taken centre stage in many gardens. 

I made my traditional walk through the lobby of the stately Empress Hotel, which was sprinkled with Port Angeles refugees from the MV Coho who had embarked for a day in plagiarized London town by enjoying the establishment’s tea, jam-laden crumpets and crustless cucumber sandwiches.

I’ve never partaken in high-tea at the Empress. Must add it to my bucket list. Then again a couple of decades years ago I had lunch in the hotel’s Bengal Room, paid for by the school district superintendent’s expense account. We were on a quest to the halls of government in an attempt to extract some funding for a non-existent band room when I taught music at ADSS. Unfortunately the trip was a failure, the province being in a financial bind (sound familiar?) at the time. However, the buffet in the Bengal Room under the palms was delicious.

Whenever I’m in the capital I check out the film fare showing at the IMAX theatre in the Royal BC Museum. Something titled The Wildest Dream caught my fancy. Extremely interesting and beautifully edited, the 1 hour and 33 minute production (the museum’s normal Imax film run at 45-minutes) centred on George Mallory's final attempt to reach the summit Mount Everest in 1924. Based on the explorer's emotional letters to his wife Ruth, the production used previously unseen photos and film archive from 1924 (restored from the original nitrate) plus a dramatization of a modern-day expedition that retraced the original route taken by Mallory in 1924.  

The modern-day expedition was led by renowned mountaineer Conrad Anker, whose life became inextricably linked with Mallory after he found his body on Everest in 1999. Using replica 1920s-era clothing and equipment, Anker set out to solve the great mystery of whether Mallory succeeded in making it to the summit of Everest before he died. The old film footage showed him just 800 feet from the summit before the clouds closed in and he disappeared into legend. I’ve always accepted that the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Tenzing Norgay were the first to climb Everest in 1953. After seeing this film I’m not quite so sure. However, since Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine never made it down the mountain the world will never know. 

After the film I toddled up Government Street to Munro’s, my favorite bookstore, to browse. I ended up purchasing a 600-page tome about Mallory’s Everest odyssey and a small 225-page book by my second favorite Canadian author and esteemed Vancouver Sun and Maclean’s columnist - Allan Fotheringham. For the record my favorite non-fiction writer is Peter Newman. A confession - I don’t read fiction. I see the movie instead.

Fotheringham has titled his smallish book Boy from Nowhere: A life in ninety-one countries. I started reading it while sitting on a park bench located in the Empress Hotel’s Rose Garden. The quick read is a kaleidoscopic of Fotheringham’s eight decades of writing columns and traveling the globe. Although a teensy bit self-promotional at times due to a substantial amount of name-dropping, I found many chapters absolutely fascinating and at times hilarious. Stories about the powerful and not so powerful in politics and business pepper the pages like willfully scattered IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices).

At the back of the book there is a list called Frothisms to help when reading Fotheringham works. Here are just a few – Pierre Easily Trendeau (PM Trudeau), Sparta of the Tundra or The Town That Fun Forgot (Ottawa), Valium West or Land of the Hot Tub (Vancouver), Da Preem (Prime Minister), The Jaw That Walked Like a Man (Mulroney), Canadian Broadcorping Castration (CBC), The Big Pickle (Toronto), The Granite Curtain (Rocky Mountains), The Excited States of America (USA), Air Arrogance (The Liberal Campaign Jet), The Tweed Curtain (Oak Bay BC), and Jurassic Clark (PM Joe Clark).

PHOTO (Above): Peering out of my living room window a few days ago I spotted one of Canada’s infamous submarines cruising slowly in and out of Nanoose Bay. I learned through the TV news it was the HMCS Victoria doing a torpedo-firing test.

If you follow the news you’re aware that Canada purchased four diesel-electric submarines from the United Kingdom back in 2000 for about $750 million. The purchase was declared to be a bargain-basement deal as the British had mothballed them unused. However, the good deal has not panned out as the bargain boats have so far run up repair costs in the billions of dollars and none have reached operational capability as a weapons-ready submarine.  The Navy is hopeful HMCS Victoria will be the first. The sub’s sister ship is HMCS Corner Brook which had the misfortune last year of hitting the seabed during a training exercise off the BC coast. Repairs will keep her out of service until 2016. 

Such appalling waste. The machinery of war sickens my psychic. Would it not be more prudent to spend such vast sums on expanding our modest fleet of icebreakers? That way protecting Canada’s sovereignty in our northern climes could be properly addressed with the bonus of some serious job expansion to build them. Adding insult to injury - apparently the British built subs were not designed to operate in Arctic waters. 

Chaperone musical far from drowsy

Last Saturday I drove down to Victoria to take in a musical theatre production called The Drowsy Chaperone. Leaving home in a thick fog, it wasn’t until Ladysmith that I broke through the haze into gorgeous blue sky and sunshine. It was a stunning February day in the Capital City. No daffodils in bloom thus far but scads of snowdrops flourishing in local gardens.  

Parking in a downtown lot, I toured around the waterfront for a few hours before walking two kilometers from the city centre to the Rockland neighborhood of Victoria. 

Rockland is a historic district of Victoria developed in the early 1880s that overlooks Juan de Fuca Strait and the Olympic Mountains. Designed to be a prestigious neighborhood the area became known as Victoria’s ‘Nob Hill’. Wealthy entrepreneurs, bankers, and politicians commissioned architects to design ornate mansions that would symbolize their station in life. 

In the 1940s, a housing shortage brought on by the war led to many mansion properties being sub-divided into apartment buildings, a trend which has continued to this day although condominiums are now the norm.

I was in the Rockland neighborhood looking for a live performance venue called the Langham Court Theatre where The Drowsy Chaperone was advertised as being staged. Using the GPS on my iPhone, I finally located the theatre tucked into a property at the end of a narrow oak-treed lane. The wooden structure was originally the carriage house and barn for an estate called The Laurels that had been built in 1889 for the Robert Ward family. 

In 1938-40, the wooden buildings were reconfigured into a fully functioning theatre known as the Victoria Little Theatre and Dramatic School. In 1950 the theatre group changed its name to the Victoria Theatre Guild and Dramatic School and renamed the building The Langham Court Theatre. 

I’ve attended many concerts and plays in Victoria over the years and surprisingly this was my first visit to this theatre. I’ve learned from posted information on the group’s website that since 1929, over 2,800 performances have been staged in the venue “using over 4,000 actors, more than 3,200 set builders, 3,000 lighting technicians and over 500 directors and stage managers. Over a quarter of a million patrons have been greeted by more than 11,000 ushers and front-of-house volunteers.” An amazing record!

And how was The Drowsy Chaperone? Its success speaks for itself. Before the musical’s first curtain the run was extended due to exceptionally strong ticket sales. I was fortunate to purchase a ticket months in advance on a tip from colleagues in the Bard 2 Broadway organization.  

The Drowsy Chaperone is a Canadian success story.  Starting its life in 1999 as a mere bachelor party skit, it was then expanded into a show for the Toronto Fringe Festival. Further development led to a main-stage production at Toronto’s Winter Garden Theatre in 2001. Interest from New York producers led to a short run in Los Angeles before moving on to Broadway and London's West End. The New York production was nominated for 13 Tony Awards, and won five including Best Book and Best Original Score.

Settling into my second row seat at the Langham, the lights came up on a character called Man in a Chair. Played by veteran Victoria actor Kyle Kushner, we soon discovered that he lives alone and is feeling a little blue. Chatting with the audience he asks if we’d like to hear a vinyl recording of his favourite 1920’s Broadway musical. Suddenly we become part of a transformation into his imagined world of old-time musical theatre as the stage erupts into a rollicking opening number. 

Running for 90-minutes flat without intermission, The Drowsy Chaperone was an afternoon of wonderful songs, dance and comic sketches. The action never stopped. Tap-dancing, a character roller-skating blindfolded across the stage, confusing sub plots, all added to the show’s hilarity. 

However, being a musician my ears tend to listen acutely to the accompanying band backing a show. In this case a trio of piano, bass and drums substituted for the written score of 7-players. Stephanie Sartore was rock-solid as the pianist. However, her two accompanying musicians I found wanting, supplying virtually no drive at all to the score. At times they played so timidly they may as well not have been there. However, the cast itself was energetic and polished at every level. Alf Small as the Latin lover Aldolpho was a standout.

Of course being a musical, everything worked out in the end. I left the theatre on a natural high! Absolutely a fun afternoon, and worth the trepidation of threading my way back home through the Malahat mad-cap rush hour.

Flight delays & bitter cold all part of Regina trip

Two weeks ago I was constantly checking the weather reports, as Pat and I had to fly out of the Nanaimo Regional Airport. Pat was scheduled to adjudicate piano exams in Regina for 10 days plus single days in Yorkton and Moose Jaw. In the early morning hours of the day we were to leave, I peeked outside our living room window and was pleased I was able to see the twinkling lights of the town of Gibsons across Georgia Strait without any problem – a positive sign for clear weather. Great, I reasoned, the reported snowstorm hadn’t materialized. 

I few hours later I awoke and as we were readying ourselves to leave, to my dismay snowflakes began to fall. My brother Terry arrived at 7:30 am to give us a ride to the airport. Checking the Air Canada website on my iPhone as we rolled down the highway, the screen flashed that the first two morning flights scheduled ahead of us were delayed because of the increasing snow. Our flight, the third one set for the morning was posted in bold red as cancelled. However, we pushed on through the snowstorm to Cassidy.

The airport was in chaos as people needing to make connections (including us), hounded the beleaguered staff on what to do. Some bailed the terminal and headed for BC ferries. However, we decided to stay and thankfully about 10 am the snow eased up and the ground crew came out of hibernation and began digging out the two Dash aircraft sitting on the tarmac. The first delayed flight from 6 am finally got into the air around 11:00 am. 

Fortunately we were able to obtain seats on the delayed second aircraft, which got away around noon. We missed our direct connection to Regina but did manage (after being placed on standby) to get on board a 3:15 pm flight to Calgary. After spending several hours in Cow Town, another flight put us into Regina about 10 pm local time, albeit minus my luggage.

(Photo above) De-icing in Nanaimo consists of one ground crew employee hanging from a bucket lift, pushing the snow off the aircraft with something that resembles a rubber rake. He then squirts some gel-like liquid completely over the aircraft from a heavy hose. The laborious process took several hours and we got off the runway about 3 hours behind our scheduled departure time.

Due to our late arrival in Regina the Enterprise rental car company had given away our car so we had to switch to Avis. The Prairie Provinces had been suffering through a deep freeze for a number of days and getting our rental vehicle from the airport parking lot was a lesson in survival. It was 38 below zero as I pried the frozen car doors open and had to kick at the trunk to spring it loose. Unplugging the extension cord from the block heater, I fired up the engine. After scraping layers of ice from both the outside and inside windows, we patiently waited for the car to warm up. It was so cold it took almost a half hour before there was any discernible heat coming from the air ducts. Using my GPS for directions we headed downtown.

Pat’s original itinerary had called for her to make a 2.5-hour drive to Yorkton upon arrival to adjudicate for one day before returning to Regina for an extended week. With our late arrival we decided to stay in Regina overnight and drive north to Yorkton the following morning. I’d phoned ahead from Calgary for a reservation at the Hotel Saskatchewan, Regina’s unmatched heritage hostelry built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1927. We hadn’t had any sustenance since breakfast except Air Canada Pretzels so the clubhouse sandwiches we ordered in the hotel’s high cedar-beamed 30’s styled decorative lounge were welcomed beyond words. Our warm bedroom was pure paradise. 

Hotel Saskatchewan in Regina

Arriving in Yorkton the following morning, I drove around the city while Pat carried out her adjudication sessions. One doesn’t go walkabout with a temperature reading of minus 30 driven even lower by a bone-chilling prairie wind, so I headed for that temple of modern day distractions, the local mall. I soon noticed that I was one of the few people who actually shut off their car engine in the parking lot. The prairie winter custom it seems is to leave your car running while one runs inside to shop, keeping your vehicle nice and toasty for your return. I wondered about the area’s car theft statistics considering many owners didn’t seem to lock their vehicles. 

Overnighting in Yorkton it was back to Regina, stopping for lunch at the tiny lake cottage community of Fort Qu’Appelle. 

  (Above) Photo of the Hudson Bay Store in 

Fort Qu’Appelle. Built in 1897,  it was constructed entirely from stone.

Arriving in Regina we re-checked into the Hotel Saskatchewan and returned the rental car to the airport. It was wonderful to be back to the comfort of the opulent Hotel Saskatchewan. We enjoyed a superb evening meal of Diefenbaker Trout (albeit expensive) in the hotel’s luxurious dining room. 

The following day I took a cab to a local music store and rented a Korg electronic keyboard. I wanted to use it to feed piano parts into my laptop computer so I could begin arranging the orchestra parts for the Hello Dolly musical I’m accompanying as musical director this coming summer. Taking a break from the computer work, I used my iPhone’s map App to find my way to the correct bus stop in order to travel to a theatre in South Regina that was showing the movie “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” A great flick but I think I’m going to need to see it a second time, as there are so many flashbacks in the plot line I found it tricky to follow. 

Later in the week on another respite from computer work I visited the Regina Science Centre to view an exhibition of artifacts from the 1912 sinking of the infamous Titanic passenger ship. I found the visit somewhat ominous considering it was the same week that the top news story was the sinking of the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia off Italy’s west coast. 

(Above) Regina skyline as seen from Victoria Park

Wrapping up the piano exams in Regina we picked up another rental car for a 1-hour drive to Moose Jaw where Pat had an afternoon examination session. 

                     

(Above) The piano examinations were held in Moose Jaw’s Zion United Church, a stunning heritage building that had been constructed in 1907. 

While Pat was adjudicating in Moose Jaw I took a walk around the downtown. The prairie deep freeze had finally fled, driven out by some warmer air spilling over the Rockies from BC. I was actually able to sit on a park bench, remove my heavy parka and enjoy the sunshine.  

Holding a prominent position in Moose Jaw is a luxury hotel called Temple Gardens Mineral Spa. The hotel, which was built by municipal taxpayers to enhance the local economy, features huge indoor and outdoor pools which source their Geo-Thermal water from a well deep beneath the city. The water was accidentally found in 1910 when a deep well was bored in an effort to locate natural gas. Despite efforts between 1932 and 1971 to make use of its water, the original well was finally plugged in 1971. However in 1980 the City of Moose Jaw decided to access the well and develop a unique downtown resort that has become a must-visit destination in the province. 

Built between 1920-22, Moose Jaw’s old CPR station (above) is a designated heritage property. The station features a six-story clock tower and a two-story waiting hall. The building is clad with Tyndall stone. In order to save the building from being destroyed, in 1998 the Government of Saskatchewan took over the station and relocated the city’s government liquor store into the premises.  

(Above) Pat awaits piano exam students in the sanctuary at Zion United Church in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan 

After staying overnight in Moose Jaw, we drove to the Regina Airport to catch a morning flight to Calgary. From Calgary Pat & I were scheduled for different flights. Pat’s plane got away on time and made her connection through Vancouver to Nanaimo without a problem. However my flight from Calgary was delayed and I missed the connection to Vancouver Island. Unfortunately for Pat she couldn’t leave the Nanaimo Airport for home. She had to wait in the airport for three hours for me to catch up. We had forgotten I had the only keys to the house that we’d brought with us in my pocket.

                   

 Biting into Apple

Yesterday it was time to face reality, another holiday season was a wrap and it was time to dismantle all my colourful Christmas displays. I’ve always found the job depressing. However, the December memories will linger, prolonged by dozens of downloaded photos programmed to alternate on my computer screensaver.

Today, technological gear is a huge part of seasonal gift giving. Although the odd toy still appears under the tree for our grandchildren, electronic wonders like the e-reader are quickly replacing physical books.

I confess I find computer technology irresistible. Last Christmas Pat and I switched to the world of Mac. Although our first computer had been an Apple II back in the late 1970’s, like much of the world we’d succumbed to the lower priced competitors embracing Microsoft products and Windows 95. 

However, with the urging of our sons and my brother Terry, when it came to updating our aging computers, we decided to take the leap back to Apple. It’s been a stimulating experience. We now use Apple MacBook Pro Laptops when travelling and have replaced our laboring eMachine desktop with an Apple iMac sporting a 27” screen. Sitting before it feels like being on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. For transporting and listening to music I use the Apple iTouch, an amazing pocket-popping digital recorder about the size of a half deck of cards. 

This Christmas we replaced one of our cell phones that was obsolete due to discontinued batteries, adding the iPhone 4S to our arsenal of Apples. It’s a truly remarkable device. In fact I’m writing part of this blog using an application built into the phone that enables me to talk to it and have what I say printed as text. However, the real killer application on the phone is Sira, a program that lets my voice - commands, send messages and place phone calls. I can ask Sira questions and it understands what I say, knows what I mean, and even talks back. Other applications (Apps) allow me to read newspapers, check the weather reports, listen to music, and scan my emails from anywhere I am at that moment. I’m still discovering new Apps daily.

Pictured above is my computer work area. I use the piano to play musical scores into the computer and then print out the music for the individual musicians. On screen is the Overture to Hello Dolly, which I’m currently working on for accompanying Bard 2 Broadway’s summer theatre production. The musical is earmarked to open at the Village Theatre in Qualicum Beach the first week in July. Alongside is my Apple MacBook Pro Laptop, an iTouch and the iPhone. 

  

Reading through my ears

This holiday season I’ve discovered a use for technology that adds an entertainment component to the time I spend performing a number of tedious tasks. Such tasks on my list include vacuuming, washing floors and cutting the lawn. My discovery is the Audiobook, something that’s been around since the heyday of the cassette tape. Although I’ve always used recorded music to pass the time while cruising through mundane endeavors, I’ve never bothered to use the entity to read a book.

Audiobooks were originally invented for blind people who want stories in their lives. A person, often an actor or someone with a professionally trained voice, will read and record the entire contents of a book. Appropriately enough it was Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography of Apple co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, that sparked my interest. I received the 600-page tome for Christmas but before I started reading it I discovered a free copy in audiobook format available on the Internet. I downloaded it, transferred it to my iTouch and started listening. It’s been a revelation for my multi-tasking instincts. The earphone buds have been firmly planted in my ears while shopping, riding my bike, and yes, while steering the vacuum around the house. Incidentally, for anyone interested in the history of computers the book is a great read, or should I say in my case, a great listen.

New Year’s Eve

Pat and I with my brother Terry spent New Year’s Eve at the Chemainus Theatre Festival’s presentation of Countryside Christmas. Written by Nicolle Nattrass and Chemainus’ artistic director, Mark DuMez, it was a perfect way to wrap up the holiday season. After grazing the mouthwatering buffet in the dining room we waddled into the theatre just in time for the opening scene. 

Set in a small cabin on Vancouver Island, we were introduced to the Cornwall family who have for many years celebrated Christmas together with many wacky family traditions. Family conflicts ensue - think Chevy Chase in the movie Christmas Vacation. However, it’s the string of musical numbers slotted into the script that keeps the play alive with merriment. My ears naturally gravitated towards the backup musicians in the pit/loft. The Musical Director was Vancouver musician Nico Rhodes who wrote the arrangements and accompanied the show with some superb piano playing. Playing standup and electric bass was talented Nanaimo musician Marisha Devoin who I’ve had the pleasure of playing with on numerous occasions including a Timbre! Choir concert. Once Marisha lays down a tempo the roof caving in wouldn’t force her off the beat. Guitarist Nathan Tinkham was tasteful throughout. 

The cast of six actor/singers covered a wide range of musical styles from traditional carols to country rock tunes, with everyone contributing their own special twist to the wide selection of material.

I’m looking forward to the Festival Theatre’s upcoming 2012 musicals – All Shook Up featuring the music of Elvis Presley (Feb 24 to April 7) and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (June 15 to September 1). The Christmas musical is called The Gifts of the Magi and will run from Nov 30 to Dec 30. Unfortunately it won’t be performed New Year’s Eve. I find it a wonderful overture to welcoming in the New Year. 

Terry Whyte remembered

Sadly Port Alberni lost one its most treasured citizens recently. Last Saturday Pat and I, along with hundreds of others attended a Celebration of Life for Terry Whyte at Echo Centre. 

In a musical theatre production there are the supporting players, and at the top of the pyramid there are the stars. Within a given community you have numerous people that work conscientiously to create a better place to reside. They are the supporting cast that drives a community forward. Within that supporting cast there are citizens who play starring roles. In Port Alberni Terry Whyte was one of those individuals, someone who regularly placed the Alberni Valley in the spotlight both provincially and nationally.

Although Terry in no way would consider himself being the star in any of the roles he played in improving the quality of life in Port Alberni, he truly was a headliner. His dedication to protecting the rights of seniors, his participation in countless community groups, saving part of the old hospital to build Abbeyfield, all will leave their mark on the city’s marquee for years to come.

My wife Pat and myself as volunteer conductors aboard the Alberni Pacific Railway would run into Terry regularly at McLean Mill where he was a strong supporter of the National Historic Site. Between runs we’d share stories about Alberni Valley history and performing arts education. 

The last time I spoke with Terry was at the Timbre! Choir’s fall concert. Pat’s three sisters were in attendance along with her brother Dave who was playing drums in the show, our son Cory with his wife Dorianne, and our grandchildren Nathan and Matthew plus my brother Terry. It was a rare moment when so many of the family were in one location and Terry [Whyte] offered to take numerous photos of us together. 

At the Celebration of Life on Saturday, speaker after speaker extolled Terry’s tenacious efforts to extract funding from assorted sources for important community projects. The bottom line was he never took no for an answer. My daughter-in-law Dorianne mentioned to me after the service that she had approached Terry, who was the administrator of Fir Park Village at the time, about initiating Music Therapy sessions for the seniors living there. He thought it was a wonderful idea and asked the Board of Directors who turned it down as being unaffordable. Terry told Dorianne not to be concerned. “It’ll happen!” And it did. 

The curtain has fallen on an incredible human being.

Christmastime is Concert Time

Last Sunday evening was the final performance of this year’s version of the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular. I’ve been a member of the band backing up the show since its inception five years ago. The brainchild of Katy Bowen-Roberts, the production has become a must-see for Vancouver Island residents during December. 

The Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular is a fast-paced mixture of song, dance and instrumental features covering a vast array of musical genres. As the piano accompanist within the five piece orchestra I’ve played everything from traditional Christmas carols through to pop standards by the Beatles and ABBA. This year, production numbers included Jerry Lee Lewis and Michael Jackson tributes. Another section featured ballet selections from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, music I’ve never played before. I confess it did take a little extra practice.

The musical director and arranger for the show is talented violinist James Mark who currently plays with the Vancouver Island Symphony and teaches at both the Nanaimo Conservatory of Music and Vancouver Island University. A new member of the backup band this year was Steve Jones who doubled on saxophone and guitar. Steve also teaches at VIU. I first met Steve many years ago when he was the band director at Klitsa Secondary School in Port Alberni. We both performed in a weekend band called The Cavemen led by trumpeter Bill Cave. Bill taught music with me for several years at Eric Dunn School before transferring to Kwalikum Secondary School in Qualicum Beach. Our drummer in the Cavemen was Rick Acres who unexpectedly came knocking at the stage door of the Yellow Point production during one of our matinee intermissions. It was great having a few minutes catching up on some old Cavemen memories. 

Rounding out our Yellow Point band was long time musical associate Michael Wright on drums and a gifted bass player named David Baird. Working together with the energetic young professional cast of singers and dancers (who came from Vancouver, Victoria and Toronto) through two weeks of rehearsals and 17 sellout performances not only contributed to my mental state of feeling young, but is a tremendously rewarding experience musically. Where else can you play Michael Jackson’s Beat-It one moment and Tchaikovsky’s The Sugar Plum Fairy a few minutes later? Unquestionably, the show kick-starts my Christmas Season. 

Christmastime is Nutcracker Time

I don’t in reality keep a bucket list. However, every once in a while I become conscious there are activities I’ve never got around to in my life and feel it’s high time I did something about it. One came about on Monday evening. Triggered through playing excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular show, I became aware that I’d never attended a full-length performance of a professional ballet production - an embarrassing admission to make after having been involved in artistic endeavors for my entire life.

Scanning the movie theatre listings on Monday evening I spotted a trailer promoting a live showing via satellite from Moscow of the Bolshoi Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker. The production I saw starred Nina Kaptsova as Marie and Artem Ovcharenko as The Prince with choreography by Yuri Grigorovich, not that these names meant much to me. However, to the cheering Moscow audience they were obviously big names in Russia.  

Tchaikovsky composed The Nutcracker over a four month period in 1891, a large portion being written at sea on his journey from Europe to the United States. The ballet has become a beloved Christmas standard since its premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1892. Based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's fairy tale, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, the classical ballet is set in a nineteenth century Russian town one Christmas Eve. Uncle Drosselmeyer is seen performing magical tricks for the entire family. He gives his young niece Marie a plain looking doll in a red uniform. The doll, which has an unusual mouth, is actually a mechanical nutcracker.

However, in a jealous rage, Marie's brother breaks the doll and Uncle Drosselmeyer places it under the Christmas tree to recuperate. Marie is seen falling asleep under the tree with the broken doll wrapped in her arms and in the process enters a dream world where the Christmas tree flies up to the sky and all the toys come alive.

Unfortunately Pat was unable to join me as she was teaching some extra lessons to piano students before the Christmas break. I know she would have loved seeing the production. I enjoyed the evening immensely and can now understand why every young female ballet student dreams of dancing the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. More than likely it would be their first involvement in a big, full-length work with elaborate sets and costumes and a live orchestral score, or their first experience of performing with older, professional dancers and the incomparable thrill of taking to the stage before a large audience.

Christmastime is Movie Time

During December the major movie studios invariably launch an array of new films. Many are vying for an Academy Award nomination before the year-end deadline. For a movie fan such as myself it’s a virtual film feast. So far I’ve seen The Muppets, Hugo, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol with Tom Cruise. This is the 4^th installment of Mission Impossible done for the big-screen. I love the fact that Lalo Schifrin’s original iconic theme music from the old TV show written in 5/4 time is still being used throughout the score.    

On Wednesday Pat and I with my brother Terry saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Both of them had read the best-selling book so they were tweaked differently to the plot than I was, having not read it. No matter, as I found the movie riveting from start to finish. However be warned, this is not your normal holiday film with an R-rating for “brutal violent content including rape and torture, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, and language”. 

The unseen films I’m looking forward to seeing this holiday season are War Horse, The Artist, My Week with Marilyn, The Iron Lady, The Adventures of Tintin and Midnight In Paris. Two ‘turkeys’ that I’d recommend you skip are New Year’s Eve and The Sitter. Why they even got to the production stage let alone released to theatres is beyond my comprehension. 

Christmastime is Memory Time

I always grow wistful, looking back on a year from the vantage point of December. Recollections of Christmases past flood my mind and nostalgia pervades all. My first snowfall, winter skating at the top of the hump at Loon Lake, hiking a few short blocks from home into the woods to chop down a Christmas tree, prying open crates of mandarins when the easy-peeled oranges travelled via steamship from Japan in wooden boxes, wrapping gifts without scotch tape, community and school Christmas concerts, turkey dinners with family – I cherish every memory.

World War II had just ended and electric trains were once again to be found in toy stores. In the photo above my brother Terry and myself are playing with a model railroad that suddenly appeared on Christmas morning. The layout, set up by our father late on Christmas Eve, consisted of a 4X8 sheet of plywood painted green with an oval of “027" gauge railroad track tacked firmly to its surface. Our father being a medical doctor had even constructed a miniature pedestrian overpass out of wooden tongue depressors. That simple layout expanded over the years into a major model railway operation only to be torn down when my parents moved to a smaller home after I graduated from high school.

Getting married in the 60's didn’t suppress the boy within as I undertook the construction of a model railway layout in the spare bedroom of our first apartment. Whenever we had visitors stay overnight, they got the master bedroom and my wife Pat and I slept on a foamy beneath the sheets of plywood supporting the railroad. Pat mentioned to me in later years just what she was thinking as she lay there looking up at the various trestles criss-crossing above her - “This must be true love. Who else would put up with this?” 

Today my train collection has been boxed away. However, at this time of year I’ll invariably get a box or two out of storage, have a quick look at a few pieces and reflect how that single gift on a December 25^th morning in the mid-1940’s sparked in me a life-long love of trains.

Pictured above is the British built Hornby steam locomotive from my first model train set. It now graces our living room Christmas window display.

Two homes in our neighborhood combined their lighting display with Santa climbing between their roofs via an extended ladder.

My father in the late 1940’s jig-sawed this group of carolers from a 1/4 inch piece of plywood. I still display it every Christmas at my front door.

Thursday evening was cold and clear as Pat and I wheeled our way westward over the hump before hitting the inversion layered fog bank upon entering the Alberni Valley. Happily the outdoor Christmas lights gave a colourful radiance to the blanket of white. The event we’d come for was a carol-sing with Timbre! at the Harbour Quay Farmer’s Market. Not exactly a concert hall setting as you can see by the photos. However weather wise it was a vast improvement over last year’s torrential rainfall that had me fearful I was going to light up like a Christmas tree from the power cords lying amongst the puddles leading to my electric piano and amplifier.

The thermometer was dipping just below zero on Thursday evening as I tinkled the keys with frozen fingers for Timbre!’s carol sing at the Harbour Quay Farmer’s Market in Port Alberni. Note my wool gloves with the fingers cut out.     

It’s Christmas Eve day morning as I finish this blog. Tomorrow morning after opening presents Pat and I will light our Teen Choir Christmas Candle. When we presented our final Candlelight Concert 13 years ago some of our choir parents melted down all the candle stubs that had been saved and left over from several years of rehearsal use. The melt was molded into a handsome candle which we light each Christmas Day. The candle is so large it reminds me of the visionary image of the Wyoming mountain known as Devil’s Tower that Richard Dreyfuss created in his living room in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When we light our own mountain of wax it tends to burn somewhat like a volcanic display, heating up the whole living room in the process but most importantly enveloping us with brilliant memories of our years with the Teen Choir.  

Pat and I wish you all the very best this holiday season. 

Merry Christmas!