Free music around town to celebrate Canada 150
The heat is on and the city is a buzz of guests arriving from all parts of the country, even in my own family. Sisters from St Catharines, Edmonton and Calgary have arrived. The sister who actually lives here, but was away, is coming back today from Squamish.
Once my brother arrives and the whole family has gathered, I need find a photographer to shoot some staged photos so we can remember this rare occasion when all my mum’s kids, plus mum herself, are together.
We’ll tell stories over the dinner table, recollect silly memories, many of me as I am the youngest and all my sisters have a funny or embarrassing story they recall about my youth and childhood. I like these stories and I like meeting people and asking them questions that allows them reveal a layer of their past. Socializing creates these souvenirs for the mind.
————— Festivals Kelowna and Parks Alive have absolutely saturated us with cool music at different locations from North Glenmore to Rutland, East Kelowna, downtown, the Mission, Kettle Valley and Black Mountain.
There is no excuse not to get your lawn chair and sippy cup out to one of these events.
Even more interesting is that Festivals Kelowna has commissioned various bands throughout the Okanagan to perform as part of their one-hour show, two songs by Canadian artists which they can either reimagine to suit to their genre or style or keep it original.
This is part of the Canada 150 celebration series and tonight at 7 on the Island Stage in Waterfront Park, Floyd Vedan will include Rush’s Tom Sawyer and Loverboy’s The Kid is Hot Tonight in his repertoire.
On Friday, the lovely folk infused stylings of Jane Eamon can be heard at Kerry Park beginning at 7:15 p.m. She’ll perform Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Tax and Ian and Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds as part of her one-hour show.
If jazz is your genre then come join me at Strathcona Park on Abbott Street next Tuesday when I will be on stage from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. My five-piece band will include Loni Moger, Stephen Buck, Darko and Martin Lord. Our Canadian songs: Anne Murray’s Snowbird and Alanis Morisette’s Ironic.
The concerts are free. Visit the website at festivalskelowna.com for more information.
————— A week ago, I went to the opening night of The Glass Menagerie at Kelowna Actors Studio. This Tennessee Williams play catapulted him from obscurity to fame.
The play is introduced to the audience by Tom Wingfield, narrator and protagonist, as a play based on the recollection of his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Because the play is based on memory, Tom cautions the audience that what they see may not be precisely what happened.
Tom (Will Cullen) is a writer who earns a marginal living in a shoe factory with a penchant for movies and aspirations of becoming a poet. He escapes his family obligations, and the drudgery that is his current life, in the evenings, much to his mother’s dismay.
His mother, Amanda Wingfield (Tracey Hway), is a faded Southern Belle, abandoned by her husband and facing with the harsh realities of her financial situation. She is tense and draws from the past when she wore a white dress with a blue satin sash and had plenty of gentleman callers visiting her.
She wants the same for her daughter, Laura (Andrea Sorestad), but Laura is painfully shy to point that she becomes ill when confronted. As a result of a childhood injury that left her crippled, Laura stays home most of her days — losing herself inside her collection of glass figurines and the records she plays that were left by her father, who abandoned her as a small child.
This trio of characters is so lost, each one deflated by life’s cruelty, each one so captivating because we all love watching other people’s misery.
Each character revealed themselves to me through the actors.
Hway, performed with a vacancy and depth that Amanda needed to be real, underplayed the stereotypical southern bells drawl with a voice that was croaky and deflated by life’s hard knocks.
It’s only when she breathed in a past memory of her glory days that we witnessed how happy she once was and how her life could have gone, if she chose another suitor.
Cullen gave us a matter of fact, straight-lined performance, executing his lines with an ease so familiar I forgot he was acting and just found myself watching, believing, feeling sorry for him and his situation.
Sorestad, who came into the show late as a result of an actress having to drop out, did a fine job of honing her naturally vivacious personality into quiet sweetness. Tougher to do is creating the awkward gaucheness of a young woman so achingly embarrassed by her own self-doubt and physical impairment that she makes herself so sick she avoids sitting to dinner when her gentleman caller arrives.
Sean Harris Oliver plays Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller who once was the hero of the sports field and popular with his looks and charm. His light has faded and he is working at the same shoe factory as Tom. Oliver plays his character just as we imagine him at his peak of youth. He is charming and engaged with the ladies in the room and adds a certain sparkle.
I enjoyed being part of the audience of this play and find myself reliving moments that perhaps pertain to my own fears and illusions of grandeur — we all have them and this plays tends to reveal our secrets.
For tickets and information visit kelownaactorsstudio.com. I recommend coming early and having dinner, I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of the four-course meal, which included for my maincourse fall-off-the-bone ribs washed down by a Bloody Mary, which KAS calls The Divas Wrath.
The venue is air-conditioned for a comfortable night out. Kelowna Actors Studio is at 1379 Ellis St. Dinner begins at 5:45 p.m. and showtime is 7:30 p.m.
————— On Friday night, drop by Muninn’s Post, 575 Bernard Ave., to hear The 3-OH! Trio Quintet as they perform some jazz, Latin and swing standards. Joining Sean Bray and Loni Moger and me onstage will be Trevor Salloum and Brian McMahon. There is a $10 music charge which goes to the band.