Using all the tiles to give artists a home
Celebrity Scrabble event helps provide affordable housing for retired artists
Scrabble and jazz.
Disparate skills perhaps, but Fern Lindzon is a whiz at both.
The Juno-nominated jazz artist/composer is a two-time winner of the annual charity event Scrabble With the Stars so, at this year’s event on Monday at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Lindzon will act as a Scrabble expert, helping players struggling to find the highest-scoring word on the board.
It’s for a good cause, supporting the local chapter of PAL (Performing Arts Lodges of Canada), which provides affordable housing for retired artists and workers in the performing arts industry.
“I was thinking about the fact that I’ve been a jazz musician and the fact that I really love Scrabble, and in what ways they’re kind of similar,” Lindzon said. “You have to be extremely in-the-moment to do either. You have to be right there in the game, always thinking and always thinking ahead, and reacting really quickly to what gets thrown at you.
“(Scrabble) is kind of like playing a jazz solo where you’re right in the moment and you’re reacting to the band around, and you’re creating something out of the materials that you have,” she added.
A long-time member of the Toronto Scrabble Club — believed to be the world’s longest running — Lindzon said she regularly scores an average of 400 points a game, although she’s hit close to 700. Her biggest score to date? The word “depicked,” which used all seven of her tiles plus one on the board and hit two triple word scores. Final tally: 203 points.
Scrabble With the Stars, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for PAL Toronto’s 205-unit apartment building on the Esplanade, features a diverse group of 40 celebrities, including former NFLer and Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George, jazz singers Matt Dusk and Jackie Richardson, Sharon Hampson of Sharon, Lois & Bram, and actors R.H. Thomson and Jayne Eastwood.
Lindzon, who’s released three albums and has written both lyrics and music, said composition plays a role in being a Scrabble ace.
“Arranging and writing music often feels like a puzzle. But Scrabble isn’t about just about words. It’s about the strategy and it’s almost more mathematical. Words are just your playing pieces,” Lindzon said.
Lindzon and jazz musician George Koller, who’s also a fine Scrabble player, will perform two shows on Sunday at Jazz Bistro on Victoria St. ahead of Monday’s charity event. Scrabble With the Stars takes place Monday at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, 1 Front St. E. Doors open at 6 p.m.