CELEBRATING

thearts
AN ENLIGHTENING JOURNEY
WITH #WEPLAYON
C
THE #WEPLAYON MUSICIANS LOOK OUT OVER A STANDING OVATION AT THEIR BEETHOVEN 9 CONCERT LAST OCTOBER
BC Radio 2 host Tom Allen is set
to join the #WePlayOn Musicians
as a guest MC for their next
concert, A Picture Paints a Thousand
Words, taking place at Metropolitan
United Church on April 23.
Jean-Francois Rivest will take up the
baton to lead the orchestra through
Ravel’s vibrant interpretation of Pictures
at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky.
“Pictures at an Exhibition is a really
fun piece to both play and to listen to
because there’s such a great story
behind it,” remarked Thea Boyd, #We-
PlayOn member and media relations
officer.
Host of the popular CBC show Shift,
Allen will guide the audience through
the narrative of the piece, which was
written by Mussorgsky in 1874 after
being inspired by an art show.
Originally conceived for solo piano,
Ravel’s imaginative orchestral version
made it famous.
“Tom is a Canadian national treasure.
He will tell us how this piece
i
came to be about, what Ravel was
thinking when he arranged it, as there
are so many interesting movements,”
Boyd explained.
“The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.
Tuileries Gardens in Paris. There’s
cattle, gnomes, witches. It will be
enlightening for the audience to get
a sense of what was going on in the
composer’s mind. Music is all about
communication, and if you don’t know
much about classical music, it can be a
bit intimidating. So to have someone
as humorous as Tom is, people will get
to know the work in a totally different
way,” she added.
The program also includes Wagner’s
Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan
und Isolde, and acclaimed cellist Matt
Haimovitz will bring a fresh ear to
Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations.
The #WePlayOn musicians banded
together after the collapse of Orchestra
London - in which Boyd played
viola for almost three decades - in
December 2014.
The group has done remarkably
well - performing to sold-out houses -
especially considering the majority of
their advertising has been by word-ofmouth
and social media.
“We’ve been around for 78 years in
one form or another and that is longer
than a lot of other cities. Our message
has always been that ‘we play on’
and that is what we’ve done, and really
tried to look at what the audience
would like,” Boyd explained.
The orchestra is taking a fresh approach
to how it relates to the people
who come to see them, including inviting
audience members to sit alongside
players during their cocktail series
concerts.
“Without our audience, there’s no
point in what we do. We have really
made an effort to get to know the individuals
that make up the audience,
and let them get to know us,” Boyd
said.
“We really do feel that London deserves
a professional symphony orchestra.”
- Amie Ronald-Morgan
#WEPLAYON MUSICIANS OF ORCHESTRA LONDON PRESENTS A PICTURE PAINTS A THOUSAND
WORDS, APRIL 23, 7:30PM, AT METROPOLITAN UNITED CHURCH (468 WELLINGTON
STREET). TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH #WEPLAYON’S WORDPRESS SITE.
PHOTO CREDIT: BRYAN NELSON
T
COVER STORY
OH BOY! BUDDY HOLLY
TAKES OVER THE
GRAND THEATRE
here is an extraordinary story that leads up to the day
the music died - a meteoric rise to fame of a bespectacled
and talented young man from Lubbock, Texas,
during the golden age of rock and roll.
Shaking the boards at the Grand Theatre is Buddy: The
Buddy Holly Story, a musical play about one of rock’s iconic
figures whose brief life became the stuff of legend.
Holly perished in a plane crash in February 1959 alongside
Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper after a concert the
stars had all played.
“This is something I said on the first day (of rehearsals):
This show is called ‘Buddy’. This is a show about friendship
as well as this particular man named Buddy,” director Susan
Ferley explained.
The play spans three years, from 1956 to 1959.
“It’s very much about his emerging out of country music
in Lubbock and feeling the call of rock and roll. Certainly
at that time you weren’t encouraged in rock if you were a
musician. There’s a line in the show - that (rock) is like a
communicable disease - that’s how people thought of it. It
was too provocative,” Ferley explained.
The show follows his initial stumble being signed to
Decca Records - a label that cranked out the country music
he didn’t want to make - to his relationship with Norman
Petty, the visionary engineer who recorded Holly’s biggest
hit, ‘That’ll Be the Day’, within hours of their first meeting.
“When he got connected to Norm, the combination of
what they each brought to the music was extraordinary -
Norm believing in him and the expertise and ideas that he
lent to help feed Buddy’s endless creativity when it came
to innovation and incorporating the things it took to create
this new sound,” Ferley said.
“Buddy may be gone but this astonishing legacy remains
of not only his music but the inspiration he provided,
whether it was to The Beatles, The Stones, The Hollies - that
band literally drawing their name from his - to the idea of
the singer-songwriter creating their own music,” she added.
The show is packed with instantly recognizable tunes –
‘Peggy Sue’, ‘Oh Boy’, ‘Everyday’, ‘Not Fade Away’, ‘Maybe
Baby’, ‘Rave On’, ‘It’s So Easy’, ‘Think it Over’ - and many more.
Zachary Stevenson has played Buddy in this show several
times across Canada and the US and has travelled to the
landmarks south of the border including Holly’s hometown;
the Buddy Holly Center, the Lubbock museum that houses
an extensive collection of its native son’s memorabilia; his
gravesite; NorVaJak Studios in Clovis, New Mexico, where
more than 90 percent of Holly’s music was recorded by
Petty; the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Holly
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The Grand Theatre (471 Richmond Street) presents
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, from April 12 to May
7. For tickets call 519-672-8800/1-800-265-1593.
ZACHARY STEVENSON AS BUDDY HOLLY
played his last show; and the nearby memorial where the
crash site is located.
Needless to say, Stevenson is very committed to preserving
Holly’s legacy through performing and has earned rave
reviews with his portrayal.
“Zachary is engaging and fun and charming as Buddy,
and brings a breadth and depth to the story being told,”
Ferley remarked.
The cast includes two local graduates from the Grand’s
High School Project, Oscar Moreno as Ritchie Valens, and
Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane in multiple roles.
The cast also includes Matthew Campbell (as Norm
Petty), Jeremy Walmsley and Al Braatz (as Crickets Jerry Allison
and Joe Mauldin), Dianne Oliveira (Holly’s wife Maria
Elena), Rob Torr (radio DJ Hipockets Duncan), Isaac Bell (4th
Cricket), and Kevin Aichele (The Big Bopper).
The company is doing a fabulous job with the material,
Ferley remarked.
“Just hearing them play the music is invigorating. It is exhilarating
being in the room - to celebrate the artist Buddy
Holly and the friendships he had with his band The Crickets,
but also to watch this extraordinary cast,” she said.
“The music is infectious. Buddy was singing about young
love. As he matures, you witness this boy become a man
and how that is informing his music and the stories he is
telling.”
- Amie Ronald-Morgan
PHOTO CREDIT: ZACHARYSTEVENSON.COM
THE ARTS SECTION CONTINUES ON PAGE 24
APRIL 7 - MAY 4 • 2016 CELEBRATING 27 YEARS
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