Symphony’s Celtic Christmas is one big party
They will be talking about this show from here to Killarney.
The Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra’s Celtic Christmas kitchen party has Irish ladies dancing, bagpipers piping and bodhran drummers drumming.
“It’s going to be a fun show,” guest fiddler Kim de LaForest says. She will perform East Coast “Celticky” music, play Silent Night with the orchestra and cover Gordon Lightfoot’s Song for a Winter’s Night.
But there’s so much going on she’ll also be an interested observer.
“I’m exciting about watching all the other stuff, too,” she says.
Like Matthew Bradford’s bodhran solo on The Little Drummer Boy.
“He is fantastic,” she says. “It’s mesmerizing just watching him.”
And we’re just getting started. Maestro Victor Sawa and the staff have outdone themselves with creativity. Also appearing: Celtic band Circling over Shannon, dancers from the River City School of Irish Dance and the North Saskatchewan Regiment Pipes and Drums under retired major Donald McDonald.
Meanwhile, in the lobby, there will be a craft market, photo ops with Santa and fabric sculptures by local artist Linda Hainsworth.
Backstage, there will no doubt be some chaos “but that’s also part of the fun of a show like this. You have to sit back and enjoy the craziness of it,” de LaForest says.
Married to SSO principal trumpet player Terry Heckman, de LaForest teaches privately, adjudicates and heads up fiddle programs at St. Michael’s and W.P. Bate elementary schools.
Growing up in Regina, she remembers singing on Sundays with her grandfather, who was from Wales and, the family recently learned, Irish. She developed in both the classical and Celtic worlds and also plays viola, but it seems that the fiddle is
closest to her heart.
“It just felt like the right thing for me to be playing,” she says.
Kim de LaForest’s Christmas Favourites: • Dish: “Terry’s family’s cauliflower casserole. I’m vegetarian, so it’s not turkey for me.”
• Candy: “I’m not a big candy person but it would have to be some kind of chocolate.”
• TV show: “I still like the
Grinch — the old one.” • Songs: “That really de
pends on where I am. I like the darker ones. I like the Wexford Carol. I like the Coventry Carol. O Holy Night — my grandpa and I used to sing that.”