Renowned jazz vocalist joins youth orchestra for ‘Home for the Holidays’

La Jeunesse Youth Orchestra rings in the festive season with symphonic jazz, as vocalist Michael Danso joins the Orchestra for ‘Home for the Holidays’ on November 29.
Now in its eleventh season, Port Hope-based LJYO continues to grow, with 36 members this year along with nine adult coaches. Members this year come from as far as Oshawa, Lindsay and Castleton.
The holiday concert will include symphonic favourites such as Carol f the Bells, selections from The Nutcracker Suite, and six pieces specially arranged by woodwind coach David Tanner, featuring the full orchestra and internationally renowned jazz vocalist Danso.
Known around the world for his stage roles in Riverdance and Jesus Christ Superstar, Danso has also performed as a vocal soloist with many symphony orchestras.
“Danso’s remarkable voice combines the warmth and silky soulfulness of Nat King Cole with the panache of Sammy Davis Jr.,” wrote Andy Cooper in the Regina Leader Post.
“Danso’s gifts as a performer defy description, his vocal range is immense, his stage presence commanding,” says reviewer John Ware in Portfolio Magazine.
In ‘Home for the Holidays’, Danso will perform Baby It’s Cold Outside, Winter Wonderland, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and other seasonal classics.
“LJYO will undoubtedly be positively affected by this incredibly seasoned performer, who has appeared with orchestras all over the world,” says LJYO Music Director Michael Lyons.
‘Home for the Holidays’ takes place at 7 pm on November 29 at the Port Hope United Church. Tickets are $20, $15 for students, $50 for a family, available at 1-866-460-LJYO, at the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope and at Victoria Hall in Cobourg.

Colborne artist wins Governor General’s Literary Award

Colborne artist Jirina Marton has won a Governor General’s Award for Illustrated Children’s Literature, for the book Bella’s Tree.The awards were announced on November 17 in Montreal, and will be presented by Governor General Michaëlle Jean at Rideau Hall on November 26. Each award includes a prize of $25,000. In Bella’s Tree, “Jirina Marton’s illustrations invite the reader to a winter landscape full of textures and subtle, earthy colour palettes,” says a Canada Council news release. “The Van Gogh-like interior and its warm tones create a holiday season mood that evokes an emotional response.”
Marton has a distinguished career as an illustrator, and was a finalist for a Governor General’s award in 2007. She is also a member of the Colborne Art Gallery, where original oil pastel illustrations for Bella’s Tree are now available.
Born in Czechoslovakia, she began drawing at the age of three, but she recalls that her first artistic expression – on a freshly painted kitchen wall – earned her a spanking. She soon became wiser in her choice of drawing media.
After attending art school in Prague, she emigrated to France, worked in Paris, and eventually settled in Canada. Her illustrations now grace dozens of books, including Marja’s Skis, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2007, and The Bear Says North: Tales from Northern Lands, a Silver Birch Award selection in 2005.

Death In Venice – Haunting Delicacy.

by Walter Luedtke

It has been argued that all you need for drama is one actor and four walls and Robert Latimer’s one-man turn as von Aschenbach at the Capitol delivered the proof. Latimer had already given a stellar impersonation of David Hare in Via Dolorosa three years ago and this performance was every bit its equal.

Death In Venice, Thomas Mann's 1911 novella about an elderly man's obsession with a boy, is a work of exquisite craftsmanship – ‘a tale of gentle sorrow and violent emotions, tortured intellectual rigor and guilty homo-erotic rapture’. Latimer’s subtle and achingly restrained performance, managed to do justice to the haunting delicacy of Mann’s language.

Latimer’ s craft was equal to the versatility demanded by a solo turn playing a fastidious German aesthete as well as assorted porters, tourists, and gondoliers. He produced the appropriate accents and gestures – sometimes violent, but mostly controlled with a slightly hunched back and arms tightly pressed to his sides.

And then came the heart-stopping “theatrical moment”, when Aschenbach is driven to burst out "I love you." and brings his hand to his lips as if to stop the words that have already escaped. Theatre pure!

One of the many things to be admired in Latimer’s work as an actor and director is the infinite care he brings to his task. On this occasion it was sleuthing and many trans-Atlantic phone calls to locate the play in manuscript form – it has not been published yet. The result is yet another Canadian premiere of an internationally acclaimed play in Port Hope.

Equally painstaking is his selection of the evocative music – this time resurrecting the voice of Joseph Schmidt, the famed German lyric tenor.

As with all First Stages presentations, Death in Venice was a staged “concert reading without the benefit of lengthy rehearsals and with a minimum of costumes or props, in this case two tables, two chairs, a coat rack.

A play reading experience has been compared to watching a radio play unfold, with the emphasis on the spoken word, that provides the spark to ignite the imagination of the audience.

Serious, professional world theatre, painstakingly presented to a devoted, yet still too small, audience - that is First Stages.

The Forsyth Report: The Road to Mecca at First Stages

What a powerful play and what powerful performances.
When you consider that the play The Road to Mecca by South African playwright, actor, novelist and director Athol Fugard is about an old woman who is a friendless, somewhat odd – actually a lot odd - artist who lives alone in the home she calls Mecca and that the play is all about her art and its effect on the community in which she lives, it’s easy to wonder how this will work as a play reading when you can’t see the art. It’s the play Robert Latimer chose to start the 2009-10 First Stages Theatre Company season and believe me, it worked.
The character of Helen Martins, whose Mecca is a place of love, refuge and memories, is based on the life of the real Helen Martins of Nieu Bethesda, South Africa. The inside of her house was a kaleidoscope of coloured glass and outside in the garden were more than 200 strange sculptures of owls, biblical figures, buddhas and ancient gods and goddesses. The neighbours thought she was nuts and her stuff a blight, the local church minister tries to persuade her to move to a retirement residence and her friend, perhaps the only one she has and to whom she has sent a plaintive note suggesting suicide, drives hundreds of miles non-stop to find out what gives. The result is Fugard’s examination of what it means to be an artist, what it means to be older and what it means to be shunned. It’s an exploration of the question we also may face: should we be forced/persuaded to leave our home when we are perceived to be unable to take care of ourselves?
What a powerful play and what powerful performances by the three actors, directed, of course, by Robert. Maria Heidler played Miss Helen, Godric Latimer-Kim played her friend Elsa Barlow and the Reverend Marius Byleveld was played by Sven Van de Ven. All the action takes place in Miss Helen’s living room and every second was riveting. The entire audience was rooting for her and there wasn’t a person in the house who wasn’t ecstatic when Miss Helen reveals her true strength and decides to stay in her Mecca.
The real Helen Martins committed suicide in 1975 and today her home, known as The Owl House, has been proclaimed a national monument and is a Mecca for artists and tourists.
Don’t miss First stages next production: an adaptation of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. It will be a not-to-be-missed experience performed and directed by Robert. It’s at the Capitol Theatre on Sunday October 18th at 3:00 p.m. The box office is 905.885.1071 or 1.800.434.5092.
See you there.
Selena Forsyth

The Ramblin Rose Report: Spirit of the Hills 3rd Annual Photography Show

3 by 3 -- 3rd showing and 3 local winners reprise a winning event
Taking in the 3rd annual Photography Show at the Spirit of the Hills event timed to coincide with the Warkworth Long Lunch was a cool way to spend a sweltering Sunday in August.
The Warkworth streetscape gleamed with white canvas shade cover and long checkered tables as the lunch was served up yet again under a sun-drenched sky.
Some of the really interesting action took place in the 31 Main Street Offices of J. Bruce Taylor Accounting, however -- not a venue that would appear at first glance to lend itself lightly to fine art visuals. But J. Bruce Taylor is a smart cookie, so right along with the rest of Warkworth's main street, his storefront was open for viewing staffed by Spirit of the Hills regulars.
The 3rd place finalist, Bob Leahy, has long been a vibrant part of the local arts scene, producing and showing some stunning photos of the surrounding area: his offering for 2009 was sold before the show was over and off the wall like it had legs of its own. The Ten Horses depicted in his entry faced in every direction in a snowy landscape, somewhat symbolically for these times -- change comes to us from unexpected quarters, frequently in a flurry and at speed.
Jennifer Gibson took home the 2nd place honours for depicting "Essence" - a floral closeup writ large on a pristine background. It was a summery note in a panorama of chills: the humid scented air flowing through the display space could have been a surrounding greenhouse for her dewy, cool-toned work.
Winter scenes swept us away to a brisk, chilly February day once again with the winning entry, by Gerald (Jerry) Taylor. The ambient temperature dropped by ten degrees while we viewed this piece -- the biting, snow-laden wind seemed to drift right out of the image into the display area. Looking at this, one forgot entirely the damp and warm August day and came back to the present with a start, shivering a little in the sudden heat. The evocation of an often cold and lonely day on the farmstead, entitled "Bad Day for Chores" surely earned its ranking in this excellent show.
Warkworth and Spirit of the Hills have long been kind to the photographers among them. Such kindness is clearly reciprocated by the talent emerging locally. The town boasts a strong arts presence with many established, long time artists and artisans operating there, encouraging newcomers and wooing the summer crowds back to visit in the shoulder seasons, perchance to dream a seasonal cycle round.

The Ramblin Rose Report: Rhythm and Form, work by Claus Heinecke and gallery artists.

Rhythm: in Art, Literature. a patterned repetition of a motif, formal element, etc., at regular or irregular intervals in the same or a modified form.

Form: Fine Arts.
a. the organization, placement, or relationship of basic elements, as lines and colors in a painting or volumes and voids in a sculpture, so as to produce a coherent image; the formal structure of a work of art. b. three-dimensional quality or volume, as of a represented object or anatomical part. c. an object, person, or part of the human body or the appearance of any of these, esp. as seen in nature: His work is characterized by the radical distortion of the human form.

Claus Heinecke's current exhibit at the Colborne Art Gallery features long, languid rhythms, coupled with sinuous forms like a single plant from a kelp forest still swaying in the aquamarine currents of its native home; short, graceful strokes curving compact and tidy like a songbird, enlarged to readily viewable size; rounded fullness of a gravid female torso carefully coaxed out of the wood in such a way as to allow the strong grain to delineate those parts of
the whole which most need to be emphasized.

The sculptures are delightful - warmly coloured, inviting touch, suggesting a silkiness that belies the splintery and knobbly native woods they are made from.

Paintings accompany them: uses of the same forms and rhythms, developing from a quickly sketched and deft study into a fleshed out and carefully executed portrait, and then into a rough 3D form, finally emerging completely into its finished three-dimensional presence

This exhibit depicts not just the final products of a creative force dedicated to the sensuous look and feel of well-executed art, but the process by which these reach that state of grace. An eminently satisfying show on many levels and well worth a second visit.

Summer display for 'Winter's' quilts

by Peg McCarthy, Northumberland News
Art born of necessity is on display at the Art Gallery of Northumberland, in Victoria Hall.
Quilter Dorothy Winter has created new works for her current show in the Paul Kane Gallery, with one quilt in the main gallery that complements sculptural work by Frances Gage.
What was once a cheap source of bedding, quilts have evolved into an art form, said Ms. Winter, one which she calls "an original recycling success of pioneering" that re-uses scraps of material to create blankets and covers. A single quilt can take three months.
Never an artist or a sewer, said Ms. Winter, she worked at covering beds, then walls, in her eastern Ontario farmhouse in the 1970's.
"I became lost in admiration with the designs and colours of these little pieces," she said, adding quilters have never had sufficient appreciation of their stitched art.
Ms. Winter has always kept the stitching simple, but that said, her designs are intricate and each quilt has its own story to tell. Working entirely on her own, by choice, Ms. Winter has let the fabric lead her, and she's inspired by the material and the Ontario countryside.
"I greatly admire other people's work, but I try not to be influenced. I want something entirely from me."
And as fabric stores quietly disappear, Ms. Winter buys what catches her interest, and then lets the design flow from the bits and pieces, and hopes there is still enough available material to complete the quilt. Sometimes she's inspired by the everyday.
"My husband's ties constantly fell from the rack to the floor," she smiled, as she recalled asking men for their unused ties. "Before long, I had hundreds and I felt obliged to do something with them.
"A tie is a statement about a man - like the facts of a personality."
Sorted into colour and type of fabric, designs took form. In one quilt, they form a kind of colour wheel.
"There is so much symbolism in art - the circle is perfect, the square further away."
She works with opposing elements and sets them in a way to express balance, "in nature, in ourselves, the different aspects and pulls in our own nature - what we do to achieve tranquility."
It's serious work, but she admitted the "fudge factor is big". Trial and error, and her experience all have a part in each quilt. When one is completed, "it's at the stage where there's nothing I would change. When it just looks right and when anyone could look at it and feel they could do that," needle and thread are put down.
Dorothy Winter: Recent Quilts runs in the Paul Kane Gallery until Aug. 29. An opening reception is Saturday, Aug. 22, from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 905-372-0333