Everything you ever wantedf to know about The Sound of Music revealed in newly released book

Last Sunday I toddled off like an excited youngster to see the film version of the iconic Broadway Musical The Sound of Music. This year being the 50^th anniversary of the movie’s release, the Galaxy Theatre in Nanaimo as part of their Classic Film Series scheduled two showings. The previous week I’d stumbled upon an article in the Art’s section of the Victoria Colonist that mentioned a new book by Tom Santopietro about the making of The Sound of Music. Downloading the book from Amazon to my iPad, I couldn’t stop reading.

It was June 4^th, 1964 and Julie Andrews was freezing. “If this is spring weather in the Austrian Alps, what is it like in February?” she thought. The location was a meadow high above Mehlweg in Southern Bavaria and the schedule called for the filming of The Sound of Music’s title song – the scene that opens the story that has Maria cresting a hill at a flat run, throwing herself into a full-bodied twirl with arms outstretched as if to embrace the entire world launching into The hills are alive with … 

The logistics involved a rental helicopter that would swoop down from above to film the scene. Helicopter rentals were enormously expensive and the 20^th Century-Fox front office back in Hollywood was pleading with director Robert Wise to rein in the escalating costs affecting a studio that was just emerging from bankruptcy.  There was no money for even one more day’s helicopter rental. Seeing the scene replayed on the big screen last Sunday, I’d forgotten how spectacular the sequence was.

The Sound of Music soundtrack has proved to be the most successful soundtrack ever released, but aside from Julie Andrews, no one who sang on the soundtrack ever received any money from it.  

Reading Santopietro’s book before attending the film added so much more enjoyment to the multiple times I’ve seen the film, mostly on video when preparing for one of the live productions I’ve played piano on and conducted over the years. Santopietro’s tome is loaded with so much detail about the filming that the data was continuously spooling through my brain as every scene played out. Apparently the helicopter’s downdraft proved so strong that Andrews found herself constantly knocked over and trying to avoid the meadow’s muddy sections during multiple morning takes. The regular Hollywood cameraman had refused to dangle himself from the aircraft’s doorway so a fearless German operator had to be hired for this part of the shoot.

The overriding question for 20^th Century-Fox during three months of filming was would the movie-going public buy into a story about a nun bursting with song. Audiences were starting to expect more reality from their films in the early 60’s. Marked relaxation of production code taboos had changed the very nature of moviegoing. Religious epics were no longer in vogue and musicals had fallen out of favor. I recall seeing the Academy Award winning film version of West Side Story by the same director Robert Wise in 1961 at a movie theatre in Port Alberni. Most of the audience had left the theatre before the end, unable to accept the premise of street gang hoodlums who sang and danced their way across the screen.

However, as we all know, The Sound of Music turned out to be a worldwide film phenomenon that continues to resonate with audiences some five decades after the film’s initial release. This, was in spite of the critical scorn heaped upon the film when it opened. Santopietro’s book devotes a number of pages regarding movie critics in this pre-Internet age. He states critics in the mid-sixties simply grew mean, as if the more vicious the attacks, the more firmly they established their importance.

Some examples - the New Yorker’s Brendan Gill wrote “the film’s handful of authentic location shots have a hokey studio sheen. The acting of Andrews, Plummer, and Parker are well under ordinary high school level.” Wow! As author Santopietro points out, “It’s safe to say that there was not a high schooler alive in 1965 or 2015 who possessed anywhere near the acting skills of these three award-winning actors.” McCall’s magazine critic Pauline Kael found the movie phony. She struck the pose of a world-weary upholder of artistic standards writing The Sound of Music makes it “even more difficult for anyone to try to do anything worth doing, anything relevant to the modern world, anything inventive or expressive.” Pressing her attack further she declared that a film of such “luxuriant falseness” was “probably going to be the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies for the next few years.” She blamed the American public for foolishly buying into a film that promoted the “big lie, the sugarcoated lies that people seem to want to eat.” Incidentally, the review cost her her job as the magazine’s film critic. I assume too many McCall’s magazine readers cancelled or threatened to cancel their subscriptions.
 

Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the children. Plummer thought the film beneath him and worried how the movie could affect his career as a classical actor. In one interview he called the film “The Sound of Mucus.” However, over time he finally came to understand and appreciate how much the film meant to people.

 The hills are alive with ...

What seemed to particularly confound the critics was the fact that The Sound of Music represented a return to old-fashioned “saccharine” fare they thought had finally disappeared. Films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, others that depicted nuclear destruction like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove were the fare of the day.  Yet here was The Sound of Music, old-fashioned to the core, rising to be the most popular film on the planet. The most severe critics continued to assert the question: “had audiences all around the world lost their collective minds?”

When the Oscar nominations were announced early in 1966, The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago had each garnered a total of ten nominations. When the dust settled on Oscar night, The Sound of Music triumphed, marking two years in a row that a musical had won the Academy Award as Best Film. The previous year was My Fair Lady. Critics once more rolled their eyes. Although nominated, Julie Andrews didn’t win best actress. The Hollywood scuttle-buck was Andrews had already been well rewarded for winning the Oscar in 1964 for her role in Mary Poppins.

Country by country, continent by continent, The Sound of Music juggernaut rolled on setting box office records, except in Germany and Austria. The cold hard fact in these two countries was the film flopped outright – big time. Santopietro poses the reason for this was that the Nazi-era setting of the movie seemed to remind the population of an era that they would rather totally forget. The movie’s depiction of Captain von Trapp’s principled refusal to serve in the Reich’s Navy only served to remind Austrians that masses of their fellow citizens had eagerly welcomed Hitler. The first run of the film in Salzburg lasted only three days. Only those who had acted as extras showed up.

  However the passage of time does heal. Today Austrians are grateful for the decades’ long boon to tourism fostered by the film’s worldwide appeal. As Austrian minister of arts and culture once stated, “Salzburg may be the home of Mozart, but The Sound of Music locations appear to have surpassed Wolfgang Amadeus’s birthplace as the ‘go to’ Salzburg destinations.” Today at the height of the summer season one tour company claims their Sound of Music location tours still attract over two hundred paying customers per day. Tourists also attend the Salzburg Marionettes production of The Sound of Music. It appears the company turned down an offer by 20^th Century-Fox to stage the famous marionette scene that appears in the film. They judged being in a Hollywood movie undignified - beneath their legendary performance standards.

  
The famous Marionette scene from the film.




 

Today the Sixteen Going on Seventeen gazebo sits in a city park. Across from the Salzburg Sheraton Hotel, the manager claims that guests don’t ask for their room number when checking in – they only want to make a beeline for the iconic steps of the Mirabell Gardens across the street where the finale of Do-Re-Mi was filmed. Here tourists flock to re-create the stair-hopping climax of the tune that featured Maria and the children on a summertime outing.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the quantity of information packed into this new book by Tom Santopietro. If you’re at all interested in film musicals, The Sound of Music Story is a must read.

Piano in family since 1939

The past month I’ve been going through stacks of cardboard boxes bursting with old photos, sheet music, letters, clothing and other paraphernalia stored in our garage. Many containers hadn’t been cracked open since we moved from Port Alberni to Nanaimo 14 years ago. One box containing correspondence belonging to my parents and written in the 1930’s I found to be of significant interest, a link I felt to be my prelude connection to the world of music. 

Photo: Our Grandchildren Nathan and Matthew play a duet on the Mason & Risch Grand Piano that my parents purchased in the summer of 1939.

Three letters written in June and July of 1939 were related to a Mason & Risch Grand piano that my parents had purchased in Vancouver and were in the process of having shipped to Port Alberni. This was the piano I would ultimately learn to play on. In 1939 I was a year old. The Mason & Risch piano company of Toronto dates back to the late 1800’s. They were among the earliest piano makers in this country and grew to become a giant of the Canadian piano industry, producing more pianos than any other company. In supporting young Canadian musicians my wife Pat won the company's national scholarship in 1960/61 which enabled her to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto.

The first typewritten letter addressed to my father was dated July 20^th, 1939 and signed by the manager of the Vancouver branch office of Mason & Risch. It indicated the Grand piano purchase had left their hands in “lovely condition”, and hoped that it would reach Port Alberni “without mishap.”

It appears from references in the correspondence that my father was apprehensive about assembling the piano when it arrived and wondered if someone from the Vancouver store could be sent over to do the job. The manager acknowledged that he had “made enquiry of our local Dray Company, who handle all our Grands, what it would cost to send their foreman over to Port Alberni to supervise the work to ensure safe installation. The cost of such a trip seems almost prohibitive. The round trip fare would be $6.55, the wages of a man for two days $10.00, and estimated for meals and bed $6.50, a total of, approximately, $23.00.” The reference to a “Dray Company” I found fascinating – harkening back to a time when freight was moved aboard horse-drawn wagons.

The piano arrived by railway express at the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway in Port Alberni the first week of August in 1938. A second letter arrived at the same time explaining in great detail how the piano should be assembled. The “draymen who transport the piano to your home from the Port Alberni railway express warehouse should fasten the Grand on their skid to take it to your living room, where the setting up takes place. Obviously it cannot be set up on its legs outside the house. Inside the Grand is to be lifted bodily by five husky men so as to not put any strain on the legs until the Grand rests on the legs naturally. Let the men get themselves distributed around the Grand for the lifting of it.”

On and on for three-pages the instructions go, the piano company apologizing for repeating sections of the directive so many times, “but we have done our best, in everyday language, to make this clear to you, and it is really not as involved as it would appear, especially as you will see when you have the Grand before you. Please do not be scared over our prolonged description of how to do it.” 

In closing the letter writer states, “realizing your profession (my father was a medical doctor) it is possible that you would anticipate a major operation instead. The writer has enjoyed among his close personal friends several physicians and surgeons, and we feel quite confident that you can handle this situation satisfactory. We will await with considerable interest your letter after the Grand has been installed in your new home.”

The piano occupied a prominent position in the livingroom of our parent’s home for decades. Upon the passing of my mother Evelyn Miller, the piano was placed in my wife Pat’s piano studio after traveling with us when we moved to Nanaimo. Recently the Grand was transported back over the hump to Port Alberni to be used by our two grandchildren, Nathan and Matthew.

Loci ready to move

My blog of Dec 6^th featured photos taken during an exploratory trip I made north to Woss Lake with members of the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society. The trip was to assess the possibility of moving steam locomotive #112 from the Nimkish Valley to the Alberni Valley by highway on board a flat deck truck. Western Forest Products had offered the locomotive, situated in their Beaver Cove rail yard, to the Industrial Heritage Society. It was decided to go ahead with the move and backed with a donation of $10,000 from the BC Railroad Association, society members have been working weekends readying the steam locomotive for the move. Here are some photos taken recently by IHS member David Hooper.

The Nickel Bros Moving Company has been tasked with moving the steam locomotive to Port Alberni. The company is the largest house moving company in the Pacific Northwest, transporting everything from a castle built for Expo 86 to an entire two-story pub. The photos above show the locomotive being jacked up and blocked. 

Arrowsmith Big Band on mid-island tour

The 16-piece Arrowsmith Big Band will be making a 3-concert tour starting next week. The band is comprised of some of the foremost musicians on mid-Vancouver Island who have between them many years of professional experience playing jazz. There are also three talented students in the group, one from Kwalicum Secondary School and two who attend the music program at Vancouver Island University. The adult members hail from several communities on the Island and meet weekly in Parksville to rehearse.

The concerts will be a rare opportunity for jazz fans to hear the sound produced by the traditional big band instrumentation of four trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones accompanied by a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums. After more than 70 years the configuration continues to be a platform for training young jazz musicians in high school and university music programs world wide.

Some of the arrangements that will be heard during the tour will be Pete Coulman’s Yardbird Suite, Mark Markus’ Med. Basie Swing, John LaBarbera’s A Delicate Balance, Bill Holman’s Aura, Quincy Jones’ Quintessence, Gordon Goodwin’s Hunting Wabbits, Gary Urwin’s My Foolish Heart, Bob Brookmeyer’s Spirit Music, Rob McConnell’s Groovin’ High amongst others. 

Band members include Michael Irving, Dave Stewart, Greg Bush, Susie Craven (trumpets), Paul Nuez, Julian Telfer-Wan, Will Oxland, Jeff Agopsowicz (trombones), Claudio Fantinato, Caleb Boorboom, Dan Craven, Trevor Hooper, Rod Alsop (saxophones), Barry Miller (Piano), Marisha Devoin (bass), and Michael Wright (drums).

Dates:

Thursday February 5 @ Georgia Strait Jazz Club, The Avalanche,  275 Eighth Street Courtenay.

Start time 7.30pm

Sunday February 8 @ Crofton Hotel, 1534 Joan Avenue, Crofton. 

Start time 2pm

Thursday February 12 @ ADSS theatre in Port Alberni - 4000 Roger Street.  Student groups at 7:00pm. Arrowsmith Big Band at 8:00pm. Admission by donation at door  - Proceeds from the concert are in support of a music scholarship awarded annually by the Port Alberni Orchestra & Chorus Society to an ADSS music student.

White Noise app leading to peaceful sleep

I have no trouble falling asleep when first hitting the sack. However, more often than not, around 2am I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. That’s why most of my blogs are written in the middle of the night.

During the Christmas holidays an ad popped up on my computer promoting the website of TV pop-medicine guru Dr. Oz. On the site there was an article about how to attain a restful night’s sleep using white noise. Listening to something referenced as being noisy when one is trying to fall asleep you may think, as I did, to be a rather wacky idea.

Photo: White Noise App - Ocean Waves

What is white noise? Simply put, it’s a type of noise that’s produced when all the imaginable tones that a human can hear are combined together. Because white noise contains all frequencies, it is often used to mask other sounds. For example, the sound of a fan produces a good approximation of white noise and can be used to block the sound of people talking in a hotel room next to you.  

Apparently when a noise wakes you up in the night, it's not the noise itself that wakes you up, but the sudden change or inconsistencies in noise that jar you. White noise creates a masking effect, blocking out those sudden changes that frustrate light sleepers, or people trying to induce sleep. 

I figured I’d give Dr. Oz’s sleep therapy a go and downloaded the linked white noise app onto my iPad. The app incorporates 25 different sounds with a link that enables you to download dozens more – everything from storm waves crashing ashore to birds chirping away in the steamy jungles of the Amazon. 

Over the years my technique to falling asleep has been to think of something pleasant in my life. A visit to the West Coast of Vancouver Island is one always treasured. Whenever staying overnight in the Tofino area, Pat and I will invariably reserve a waterfront suite at Pacific Sands Resort. At night we’ll sleep with the windows wide open and let the sound of the ocean waves engulf the room. Getting back to sleep in that environment I find almost instantaneous. 

Now a downloaded app on my iPad has made it possible to recreate anytime, albeit on a small scale, my West Coast soundscape recollections. All I do is click on a photo of ocean waves in the app, set a volume level and bingo, combined with a little imagination on my part I’m transferred back to Tofino and Cox Bay, minus I admit the smell of beached seaweed. I wonder if there’s an app for that?

Another soundscape I’ve created with the app centers on family camping trips made to Glacier National Park in the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s. During that time we owned a converted Volkswagen Bus, two different pickup campers plus a Winnebago motorhome in which we’d travel every July & August the highways and byways of British Columbia. There was a particular campsite we loved to stay in on Rogers Pass called The Loop. A creek fed by the Illecillewaet Glacier ran through the site. 

The sound of the rushing creek water and the throbbing hum of CPR diesel engines entering the nearby Connaught Tunnel is a soundscape that’s been impregnated in my memory for years. With the app there was no problem reproducing a live facsimile. I clicked on photos of babbling brooks and railway train links. The app, which allows up to 5 separate sounds to be mixed simultaneously, instantly produced a soundtrack to accompany my Glacier Park memories. This has resulted in an improved sleep pattern as I allow my mind to reconnect to those happy family trips. 

According to the Dr, Oz article, using white noise to kindle sleep isn’t everyone’s cup-of-tea. One’s partner in life may not take pleasure in having the sound of a plummeting waterfall fill the night air. In such cases the use of ears buds is recommended. However, Pat also enjoys the roaring waves.

As a teenager I volunteered to be put to sleep by a touring hypnotist performing a show in Port Alberni. On stage in front of an audience he had me asleep in a matter of minutes. Apparently I was a good subject for such shenanigans. My father, a medical doctor, was not amused when he heard about it, especially when the hypnotist wanted to put me to sleep in a store display window to advertise another show the following evening. I was grounded until the show left town.

Photo above: The first vehicle we used for camping trips was this Volkswagen Bus. I installed a bed, a baby crib and window coverings as the unit was not built by Volkswagen as a camper. We cooked on a Coleman stove set up on a portable table outside the vehicle. I’m dressed in a suit for this photo taken by my wife Pat. We must have been going somewhere special. However, according to her, I was on my way to teach school. Do teachers still suit up for work? 

Photo above: A few years later we upgraded to the pickup camper seen here backed up to the boulder-strewn bank of the Illecillewaet River in Glacier National Park.

Photo above: Our most luxurious camping unit was a Winnebago Brave-class motorhome. The picture was taken in 1976 on one of our summer camping trips to the Loop Campsite in Glacier National Park. We bought the unit new in 1971 from a motorhome dealership that had just opened at Granville & Broadway Streets in Vancouver. I recall being very nervous driving the unit through downtown traffic to catch the ferry from Horseshoe Bay. It was the widest vehicle I’d ever driven.

Photo above: The Winnebago Company headquartered in Forest City, Iowa, introduced the Brave series in 1970. They came in 17 and 19-foot lengths. Ours was the 19-foot model. In the summers of 1973 and 1974, I attended UBC to gain my BC teacher’s certification. I lived in the unit parking it at night on a university lot. We kept the vehicle for 10 years and sold it for almost the same price we bought it for - $12,000. 

Film studios down-sell the fact a film is actually a musical

I read recently a report that this fall’s flu shot has not been as effective as other years. Apparently some of the virus strains included in this year’s flu vaccine have mutated into other virus strains. Unfortunately, I seem to have picked up one of those marauding mutates that were part of my flu-shot cocktail. 

However, along with Pat and my brother Terry I still managed our annual New Year’s Eve outing to the Chemainus Festival Theatre for dinner and the company’s Christmas play. Probably not the wisest thing to do when not feeling well but I didn’t want to spoil our New Years Eve. On the way home we passed through Ladysmith to view the town’s impressive Christmas lighting display.

I felt close to normal on Saturday morning which enabled me to drive up to Parksville to take in the final of the BC Men’s Junior Championship. Sportsnet TV was broadcasting the game live and I found it amazing how much lighting equipment they’d packed into the ice rink to enhance the game for viewers. (see photo below).

Pat and I read all our favorite magazines on our iPads through an online service called NextIssue. Browsing the latest Maclean’s magazine I noticed an article by Jaime J. Weinman about how selling a musical to modern moviegoers involves being a bit evasive about what it is. It started me thinking about the Annie movie  I reviewed recently in this blog and how the advertising trailers had promoted it. 

I got out my iPad and previewed a few trailers of the film. As the Maclean’s article had pointed out, there was only a few seconds of onscreen singing used. One of the trailers concentrated only on the dialogue for Cameron Diaz (Miss Hannigan), making it “look like a comedy without music.”

Another movie musical out this Christmas is Into the Woods which I haven’t seen yet. The article points out that if a person didn’t know the Broadway catalog, they might be very surprised to find it is a musical. Even though the film is based on Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 song-filled take on Grimm’s fairy tales, the first theatrical trailer had no singing whatsoever.

According to Matthew Kennedy, author of the book Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960’s, he claims that studio marketing departments often believe the musical is in disrepute. They feel if people hate musicals, then why give that information.

Even last year’s mega-hit Disney film Frozen was first marketed as a non-musical, concentrating instead on a character called Olaf, a comedy-relief snowman voiced by Josh Gad. It wasn’t until the hit song Let it Go took off worldwide that advertising slid into a musical mode.

According to Weinman’s editorial, the 2002 film version of Chicago is considered to be the ultimate example of how a musical can be sold to a modern movie theatre audience. The studio trailers mostly ignored the music and sold it based on its dark comic plot. 

The article quotes Samual Craig, a professor of marketing at New York University who explains that music will attract people to a concert but not a movie. He goes on to say that without a strong story, a film’s appeal will be limited. With this in mind the studio promotion of Chicago concentrated on convincing people there was a compelling story behind all the music. The film itself made sure the audience kept focused on the plot by setting most of the numbers in a dream-like world, making it possible for musical-haters to speculate that the characters were imagining the songs.

In conclusion the Maclean’s article claims that ever since Chicago’s success at the ticket booth and at film award ceremonies, no matter how much singing there is in a film, the studio-marketing departments usually aim their promotion material towards people who prefer a more realistic film style.

However, no marketing guru could hide the fact that the 2012 film version of the musical Les Miserables had non-stop singing from start to finish. Instead the marketing staff emphasized that the music was recorded live right on the set instead of having the actors lip-sync their songs to a pre-recorded soundtrack, thus making the film more musically authentic.

Photo above: Dancers strut their stuff in the film version of Chicago.

It appears at this point in time the film studios will continue to sell musicals to the demographic groups that appear, at least in their eyes, as hostile to the form. They know fans of musicals like myself will automatically buy a ticket to a movie based on a Broadway show. However, their job is to get more bums in the seats and if it takes a little sleight of hand to do it, so be it. On the up side, it may be some of those people who don’t know it’s a musical going in, just might be surprised and actually like it.

Sunday wrapped up our New Year’s week. Pat worked most of the day on organizing her next Timbre! choir concert and I started noodling through the score of Anything Goes that I’m doing for the Bard to Broadway company in Qualicum next summer. Late in the afternoon both of us took in the big budget Hollywood epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, another politically controversial film playing this holiday season. 

Joining the extraordinary banning throughout North America of the Kim Jong-Un assassination movie The Interview, Exodus: Gods and Kings was banned in Egypt for what the country’s culture minister Gaber Asfour explained was the films “Zionist view of history” and that it contained “historical inaccuracies.” O dear. I think it’s time some of these world leaders lightened up. When did Hollywood ever worry about making a script historically accurate?

After the film we scooted home to watch Canada thrash Slovakia at the World Junior Hockey Championships. We then viewed an episode of The Good Wife on Netflix. We’d planned to watch the opening of another season of Downton Abbey but decided we’d had our flick fill for the day.

I let the digital recorder do its job so we’d be able to view the show later in the week.

Bard 2 Broadway Theatre’s 2015 Summer Season.

General AUDITIONS for all three 2015 shows (The 39 Steps, Play it Again Sam and the musical Anything Goes are being held in Parksville at the McMillan Art Centre (133 McMillan Street) on Sat. Jan 24 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm and Sun. Jan 25 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm. 

In Nanaimo Auditions are being held at St. Paul’s Church Hall (100 Chapel Street) on Sat. Jan 31 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm and Sun. Feb 01 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm. - Call-backs are Sun. Feb 08.

NOTE: Please prepare a 1-2 minute monologue.  If auditioning for the musical, please prepare a song, and provide sheet music for our accompanist, or backing track on CD or iPod.  Please wear comfortable clothing.  Please be prepared to stay for about 2 hours.  If you wish more information, or if you are genuinely interested, but cannot make these dates / times, please contact:- Gary Brown 250-468-9545 - stageguy@shaw.ca or Eileen Butts 250-248-3782 - ebutts@shaw.ca

Christmas week a family affair

On December 21 the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular wrapped up its run with an afternoon performance at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo. Having lived with the show since November 18, it was difficult not to feel a certain loss. Suddenly you realize you won’t be playing through your piano score ever again, and many cast members who you got to know well over the last month may never cross your path again. When a show goes dark it’s almost like a death. However, it’s part of showbiz and such inspired journeys inevitably end.

On Monday it was time to move on and get ready for Christmas. My wife Pat was cruising the malls searching for gifts. My job was to shop for the provisions needed for our big family feast, which we traditionally have on Boxing Day. By 8:00 am on Christmas Eve day I was out the door and loading a supermarket basket in advance of the crowds I knew would be jockeying for parking lot space by mid-­‐morning. By noon I had everything packed away in our kitchen cupboards or stacked inside the refrigerator, ready for Friday’s marathon turkey-­‐cook day.

With Pat wrapping Christmas gifts during the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I decided to take in a movie matinee. A good choice I thought would be a new Ailm version of the Broadway musical Annie that had just opened at the Galaxy theatre here in Nanaimo. Having performed the Broadway version with a student group during my high school teaching years, I know the live show well and was looking forward to seeing the new 2014 movie version. I recall in the process of rehearsing students using the very popular and well-­‐done 1982 film as a teaching tool.

Unfortunately my decision to attend the matinee was a mistake; the 2014 film update is an absolute disaster. According to all the preview hype, this new version of Annie was supposed to build a new generation of fans for the musical. Well, sprinklings of these young folks were at the same screening I viewed Wednesday afternoon and most looked bored out of their minds.

Some things in classic film fare should never be tinkered with. The Wizard of Oz would be one. No remake could ever top the first one. Gone With the Wind is another. Sadly this 2014 version of Annie is nothing more than an attempt by the Sony movie studio to fleece trusting parents looking for some respectable holiday entertainment for their children. I understand the film was also one of those stolen in the recent cyberattack by North Korea of the company’s computers. Perhaps Kim Jong-­‐un wanted it for a private screening.

I recall Carol Burnett being hilarious as Miss Hannigan in the 1982 film. In this updated version the role is played by Cameron Diaz who screams her dialogue at such a shrill pitch that my ears haven’t yet recovered. As far as her singing goes, it was pure torture. The character of Daddy Warbucks in this ill-thought-out mess has been renamed Will Stacks, a rich industrialist who is running for mayor of New York City. Oscar-­‐winner Jamie Foxx literally sleepwalks through the part. And what about Annie herself? I need to be fair here. Quvenzhané Wallis, who in 2012 was the youngest actress ever to receive a nomination for an Academy Award for her role in Beasts of the Southern Wild, does a pretty good acting job although her vocal chops are fairly thin.


Singing is obviously a key component in any musical. Sadly in this new version it was decided to update the classic Charles Strouse score to fit with the popular music of today. What a dumb idea. As an example, the musical’s big hit ballad Tomorrow had a backbeat so heavy it sounded like the Rolling Stones were doing a stadium sound check. The film’s soundtrack has been processed to a synthetic muddle and the vocals auto-­‐tuned to the point that any real musical emotion has been literally squeezed from every bar. Basically every song has been made to sound like your typical pop tune complete with electric drums and banks of synthesizers.

About an hour in I couldn’t take it anymore and headed for the theatre exit.  

  

PHOTO: Pat prepared a superb Boxing Day dinner in our Nanaimo home. From L to R – Brother Terry, daughter-­‐in-­‐law Jessica, grandsons Nathan & Matthew, Pat, son Cory, daughter-­‐in-­‐law Dorianne and son Brock. 

PHOTO: The turkey. I can hardly wait to start carving. 

PHOTO ABOVE: My father cut out this group of carol singers in the 1940‘s from a sheet of 1⁄4 inch plywood. I display it every year at our front door. Back in those days lead was still a key ingredient in paint so the colours have never faded.

PHOTO ABOVE: 16 years ago Pat & I conducted our last School District #70 Christmas Candlelight Concert. As a gift, the students in the choir had melted down all the candles used over the years for rehearsal purposes and made one gigantic one for us. Every Christmas Pat and I light the candle at our family dinner. 

PHOTO: Son Cory gave me a painting by Port Alberni artist Michelle Peffers. It was painted from a photo of me climbing down from the cab of APR Locomotive #7 during a switching operation in the Port Alberni Rail Yard. I hung the painting on my office wall. 

PHOTO : Every December I display this model steam engine that my brother Terry & I received as a gift from our parents on Christmas Day in 1946. 

PHOTO : This black and white photo shows my brother (L) and myself admiring the model train that my father had built and set up for us on Christmas Day 1946. 

PHOTO: My Christmas gift this year was a new workbench. It took my son Brock and myself over two hours to assemble it. The hardwood top looks almost too good to repair stuff on. 

Final weekend for Christmas Spectacular

Thank you to all those readers who emailed to say they were pleased I’d returned to blog-land. I’ll try to post on a more regular basis in the New Year.

As you know from last week’s blog, I’m again performing in the band accompanying the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular. Last Sunday evening we wrapped up the run at the Cedar Community Hall, performing 6 shows between Friday and Sunday. Playing this many shows in such a short space of time was a first for me. 

This week the cast has been enjoying a few days off before moving the production into Nanaimo’s Port Theatre for the final four performances. The run in Cedar was very successful with many patrons expressing their preference for the Christmas ambiance the rural setting provides. However, equally there are those who like the Port Theatre run due to the better sight lines and comfortable seating inherent in a sloped floor venue. 

The shows at the Port Theatre are Dec.19 (7pm), Dec. 20 (2pm &7pm)  & Dec. 21 (2pm). Tickets can be ordered for the Port Theatre shows on-line at www.porttheatre.com or by phone at 250-754-8550.

PHOTO: Setting up for the Port Theatre run of the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular. View of the stage from the Sound Board. 

Last Saturday morning at 6:30 am I left our home in North Nanaimo and drove over the hump to Port Alberni to help set up for the Timbre! Choir’s dress rehearsal in the ADSS Theatre. Playing the Yellowpoint show meant I wouldn’t be able to attend the choir’s public performance the following day. However, I was able to stay at the dress rehearsal long enough to hear the concert’s first half before scooting back over the hump to Cedar to play a Yellowpoint matinee.   

In the half of the rehearsal I heard, the choir was in top form and the sound in the theatre was magnificent. The program was called Simply Christmas and my wife Pat as musical director had chosen a potpourri of both old and new carols. Excerpts from Messiah by Handel held its traditional place on the program alongside such new songs as Let It Go from the recent movie box office hit Frozen and a beautiful ballad by Gordon Lightfoot, newly arranged by Larry Nickel, titled Song for a Winter’s Night. Other new arrangements programmed included Huron Carol and I Saw Three Ships.  Accompanist for the concert was our niece Danielle Marcinek who recently returned from the United Kingdom and is now based in Vancouver. Judging by the emails that Pat received from audience members following the concert, Simply Christmas was a resounding triumph.

                 PHOTO; Timbre! preparing their concert on the ADSS Theatre stage last Saturday.

Christmas Time 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 Theory of Everything, the extraordinary story of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. Two days ago I survived the 2:24 minute running time of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Having seen all the movies in the series (this is the final installment), I’m definitely Hobbited out. Topping the list of films I’ve seen so far is Interstellar, which is about a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage. The movie blew me away. The 3 hours just flew by. I plan to see this one again just to understand everything. However, on the flip side, one movie to skip is Top Five starring Chris Rock. The film is just plain bad and vulgar to boot. I left the theatre before it was over. 

PHOTO: During the immense rainstorm last week I made a quick run out to Sproat Lake to check our summer house. I’ve never seen the lake so high. The gangway in the photo above normally slopes down to the float.   

It’s been many months since I’ve blogged. However, it’s the Christmas Season, my favorite time of the year, a busy time for Pat and myself with our musical endeavors and I wanted to bring readers up to date.  

Once again I’m performing in the band accompanying the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular. The production is in its 8^th season and I’m thrilled to be still playing the show. The last two weeks in November I spent working as the rehearsal pianist for the young cast of professional singers and dancers from Vancouver. This past week the show was put together on stage with the orchestra with a soft invitation only performance on Thursday. We opened last night.

We have 4 shows this weekend at the Cedar Community Hall south of Nanaimo before moving to the Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay for two evening shows December 9 and 10. Then it’s back to the Cedar Hall for afternoon and evening performances on Dec. 12, 13 & 14 . The Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular then moves to the Port Theatre in Nanaimo on Dec 19, 20 & 21.

This year’s Yellowpoint extravaganza includes an Elton John tribute (I get a heap of playing in this section), songs from West Side Story, disco hits including songs by the BeeGees’s and Gloria Gaynor, a Dolly Parton tribute, highlights from The Grinch, plus an array of traditional Christmas favorites. Tickets can be ordered for the Cedar & Nanaimo shows on-line at www.porttheatre.com or by phone at 250-754-8550.

Monday is a day off from the Yellowpoint show so I’m driving over the Hump to Port Alberni to help Pat’s choir Timbre! set up for a rehearsal in the ADSS Theatre for their annual Christmas concert which will play the venue on Sunday, Dec 14, at 2:30 pm.  Since I’m playing piano for the Yellow Point Christmas Spectacular I plan to catch the choir’s early morning dress rehearsal the previous day and then scoot back over the Hump to Cedar for a matinee and evening performance of the Yellowpoint show. 

Timbre!’s concert is called Simply Christmas and this year my wife Pat as musical director has chosen a potpourri of both old and new carols. Excerpts from Messiah by Handel will hold its traditional place in the program alongside such new songs as Let It Go from the recent movie box office hit Frozen and a beautiful ballad by Gordon Lightfoot titled Song for a Winter’s Night. New arrangements of Huron Carol and I Saw Three Ships have also been programmed. 

Accompanist for the concert will be our niece Danielle Marcinek who recently returned from the United Kingdom and is now based in Vancouver.

Last September Pat announced that she would be retiring as the musical director of Timbre! at the choir’s spring show on May 3rd, 2015. However, as the choir’s fall rehearsal schedule rolled on, Pat began to mention to me how she was going miss working with the choir. Last week, at no surprise to me, she has decided to put off her retirement and conduct the choir for another season. I confess I’m thrilled as I know what a void it would present in her life. Is a 50^th anniversary concert a possibility?

This past fall I made an exploratory trip north to Woss Lake with members of the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society. The trip was to assess the possibility of moving steam locomotive #112 from the Nimkish Valley to the Alberni Valley by highway on board a flat deck truck. Western Forest Products has offered the locomotive, situated in their Beaver Cove rail yard, to the Heritage Society. It was decided to go ahead with the move and, with a donation of $10,000 from the BC Railroad Association, society members have been working several weekends in preparation for the steam locomotive’s relocation.