Seasonal song Six White Boomers sparks memories

Playing piano for two 2-hour shows a day as I’m currently doing at the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular can be daunting. If you take your mind off what you’re doing for a millisecond you could find yourself scrambling to refocus. This is the sixth year I’ve been a member of the band backing the production and it’s been made additionally enjoyable using a newly acquired digital piano. 

Last month my wife Pat and I were in the Long & McQuade music store in Nanaimo. Pat needed to purchase some Christmas music for some of her piano students. While waiting for her to dig through the bins of sheet music, I kept entertained by noodling my way through the piano department. 

Trying out a number of the digital pianos on display, I came across a Roland FP-7F keyboard and after playing just a few chords I instantly fell in love with the instrument. No digital I’d played before sounded and felt so close to an acoustic piano as this one did. Later at home I couldn’t get the instrument’s superior sound out of my mind and thought I’d check for reviews of the piano on the Internet. I soon learned the sampled sound chip in the unit had been prepared using a Hamburg Steinway D Grand piano. Sound sampling is a way of converting real sounds into a form that a computer can store and replay.

Pat could see how taken I was with the piano and the following day said to me that if I liked that much, she’d give it to me for Christmas. I was of course delighted. However, the piano had been listed in the music store as used so I needed to know its history. It turned out the instrument had been rented to the Chemainus Festival Theatre for one of their musicals. The result was a substantial discount off the list price. Picking up the piano just a day after first playing it, I’ve had an incredible time performing on the instrument from the Yellowpoint show’s very first rehearsal.  

(Above) - The Roland FP-7F keyboard - my Christmas present from Pat.

This year the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular has over 50 songs programmed. Playing through the production, many of the tunes have sparked personal memories of Christmases past. One song in particular called Six White Boomers took me back to a seasonal show I performed over 40 years ago with an entertainer by the name of Rolf Harris. 

Rolf Harris was an Australian entertainer who showed up in Vancouver on the maiden voyage of the cruise ship Oriana in the spring of 1961 to play a short gig at a venue called the Arctic Club on Pender Street. His big hit in Australia was an infectious tune called Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport that had caught on worldwide. Harris was such a smash hit in Vancouver that he ended up playing two shows a night, six days a week for 31 straight weeks before the Arctic Club burned to the ground on New Year’s Eve 1961. He was so popular the legendary Cave Theatre Restaurant on Hornby Street extended his stay. 

Rolf Harris ultimately built a secure career in England but still continued to make regular visits to Vancouver. It was one of these periodic visits during the Christmas season that a local Alberni Valley radio station (CJAV) booked Harris to do some concerts on Vancouver Island. Somehow his Vancouver booking agent got my name and phoned to ask if I could put together a trio to back the entertainer up. 

Photo above: My jazz trio is seen backing up Rolf Harris at the old Athletic Hall in Port Alberni. Rolf is shown with his wobble board singing his principal hit, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. Ernie De Montigny played bass and my brother-in-law Dave Auld (unseen at right) was on drums.

The first show was to be a matinee in Port Alberni and a rehearsal was arranged for my band to learn the music. However, when Harris showed up after travelling over from the mainland he apologized that the airline had lost all his musical arrangements in transit. Even his mammoth didgeridoo (a long, wooden wind instrument used traditionally by the aboriginal people of Northern Australia) had gone astray. However, Rolf was happy to learn that I could read chord symbol shorthand as he’d spent his travel time on the ferry scribbling out the chord structure of his compositions on sheets of hotel stationary. 

And that’s what we ended up doing, playing the entire show from these scrap pieces of paper scotch-taped to the piano. To imitate the strange sounds of a didgeridoo, Rolf blew into one end of a cardboard centre core used to wrap newsprint at the local paper mill. However, eventually his backup band scores did arrive and later shows were definitely superior. 

Over time, Rolf Harris became one of Britain's best-loved entertainers. A very talented artist, a large segment of his act on stage incorporated sketching cartoons and portraits on huge sheets of paper. In 2005 Harris was commissioned to paint a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II for her 80th birthday. Harris was appointed an MBE in 1968 and an OBE in 1977and received a CBE from the Princess Royal in 2006.

(Photo above): Rolf Harris painting a portrait of the Queen for her 80^th birthday celebration at a sitting in Buckingham Palace.

(Photo above): Dancers at the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular. The production plays out its final week starting tonight with six performances through Saturday. Tickets available through the Port Theatre in Nanaimo at www.porttheatre.com.

A busy concert weekend

On the west side of the hump in Port Alberni my wife Patricia is conducting the Timbre! Choir for its annual Christmas presentation. Soloists will be Michelle Weckesser and Elizabeth Grenon. Vancouver pianist Sarah Hagen is the accompanist. Performances - Sat, Dec 15 at 7:30 pm & Sun, Dec 26 at 2:30 pm.

On the east side of the hump I continue my gig at the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular this weekend with six performances thru Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets can be purchased online from the Nanaimo’s Port Theatre website at www.porttheatre.com. The production has just returned from a one-night performance at the Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay with a sellout of 500 seats.

Seating configuration in ADSS Theatre in Port Alberni 

will be new to valley audiences

The design of the new ADSS theatre in Port Alberni is very different from the community’s old auditorium on Burde Street with its rows of plywood seats, and like driving a new car or installing a modern HDTV set in your home, there will be an adjustment for some patrons attending events in the new facility. 

The seating style in the 455-seat theatre is what’s known as Continental Seating. It’s not a new concept, an early example being Wagner’s opera house in Bayreuth, Germany which was built in 1876.  

Today across North America there are scores of theatres using the design. Three in Canada that I’ve attended concerts in are the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Farquhar Auditorium at the University of Victoria and the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg. 

The concept behind not using an aisle to break the rows is to allow for maximum seating in front of the stage. To do this the aisle of the seats is made wider to allow for easier movement. Last week at the official opening my wife Patricia and I sat in the exact centre of the theatre’s second row. Due to an afternoon performance of the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular that I’m playing piano for, we had to leave a few minutes before the ceremony had finished. We had no problem reaching the side aisle. In fact the students seated in our row didn’t even need to stand up to let us pass.  

Another benefit of the new theatre is the generous slope giving from every seat, a direct line of vision to the stage.

The theatre is truly a remarkable achievement for the Alberni Valley considering the economic challenges faced in recent years.  For School District #70 (Alberni), a standing ovation is in order. 

New ADSS Theatre opens in Port Alberni

Friday morning my wife Patricia and myself entered the freshly finished ADSS Theatre in Port Alberni as invited guests at the Official Grand Opening of the community’s new high school. As a retired member of the school’s staff and having been a member of Alberni Valley Performing Arts Committee in 2008, it was an exhilarating moment. 

The performing arts committee was created following the Alberni School District #70’s success, after years of lobbying trying to convince the provincial government that the community’s high school needed to be drastically upgraded or replaced. However, a crisis for the performing arts community ensued when it was decided the new school would be built on property many blocks north of where the old school had stood since the mid-1950s. Attached to the school was a 1000-seat auditorium. The concern being, would it be torn down along with the rest of the old school buildings?

The committee, which was made up of representatives of local performing arts user groups, the city council and the school board, set a mandate to determine if any community agency was willing to take on the responsibility for preserving, upgrading and maintaining the existing auditorium as a stand-alone facility. To the arts community members it wasn’t rocket science to conclude that it would take someone with very deep pockets to upgrade and maintain such a large aging facility. 

The committee’s second mandate was to determine if community support could be generated to construct a new performing arts centre, either as a stand-alone facility or in conjunction with the new ADSS school. With help from theatre consultant Sandra Thompson, who had been involved with the construction of Nanaimo’s 800-seat Port Theatre, it soon became clear that building a similar facility in Port Alberni would cost well in excess of ten million dollars.

The Alberni Valley had, over the years with taxpayer support, constructed wonderful sport facilities. However, with the downturn in the forest industry we realized a city referendum for a performance theatre, akin to one that had seen a new hockey rink recently constructed, would have little chance of success. I recall writing on my blog at the time a quote from Peter Gzowski’s hockey book The Game of Our Lives in which a chapter was dedicated to the unique talents of Wayne Gretsky. Gzowski wrote, “the joy of it all is that we have found him, that the game is so much a part of our lives that when a Wayne Gretzky is born we will find him. The sorrow is that there may also be Wayne Gretzkys of the piano or the paintbrush who, because we expose our young to hockey so much more than to the arts, we will never hear about.” I digress.

I was at this point becoming quite discouraged. It was becoming clear I had to accept the inevitable. The community would lose the old auditorium that had served the valley performing arts so well for over 50-years and likely it would be replaced in the new school with a multi purpose classroom. 

Suddenly a ray of sunshine appeared. At one of the committee meetings the school board representative brought the news that funds expected from the sale of the property on which the old school stood could be earmarked towards a theatre in the new school. Although one or two citizens urged me in letters-to-the-editor to the AV Times not to abandon my original hopes that the ADSS Auditorium be saved, I’d come to the conclusion that the costs of preserving the old structure were obviously prohibitive and with no local arts group willing to own and run the original auditorium independently, a compromise was offered as a way forward. Taking into account available funds and some creative planning by the architect, a 500-seat configuration was affordable. 

Decreasing the number of seats from a 700 or 800 configuration meant it would be unprofitable for a national or international star with high fees to play the theatre. However, the majority of committee members felt that the benefits of having a fitting performance venue for student and community productions plus the potential visiting professional groups who would book a 500-seat theatre, far outweighed not having a proper theatre with a raked floor as part of the new school.

In my opinion supporting a 500-seater under the circumstances was not only the right choice, but, the only choice. Port Alberni now has a state-of-the-art theatre that will serve the school and the local artistic community and their audiences for years to come. For all those involved in pursuing the goal that a proper theatre be part of the new school, I suggest a standing ovation is in order, to celebrate this wonderful achievement.

Unfortunately we had to leave at the end of the ceremony and missed the luncheon. I had to scoot back over the hump to play an afternoon performance of the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular and Pat had a number of piano students waiting for her return. More on our Christmas concerts in my next blog.  

Photos from the Open House:

Photo above: The new ADSS Theatre chamber has comfortable soft seating with wide access to seats, a large stage area with an extensive apron, sizeable dressing rooms plus state-of-the-art lighting and digital sound system. My personal preference would have been an open sound booth at the back as it will be difficult for those running the equipment to hear exactly what the audience is hearing. Currently there is only one sliding window in the booth and consideration will need to be given to, at the very least, getting the other two windows to slide open as well.

The ADSS stage band under the direction of Sarah Falls tunes up before the official opening on Friday. The large screen in front of the band drops down for video and movie presentations. 

The ADSS Dance Team performs “Make You Pop”.