Award-winning Canadian singer-actress Joëlle Rabu is returning to the Comox Valley with an intimate evening of song March 5 at the Sid Williams Theatre.
Rabu’s concert will feature songs from her international hit show Tonight Piaf (a stage play about French songbird Edith Piaf), as well as an eclectic assortment of tunes that draw from Rabu’s jazz, torch, European cabaret and musical theatre influences.
Rabu will perform with award-winning pianist Nico Rhodes, her 21-year-old son. Rhodes spent most of his youth on the road and in theatres travelling with his mom’s ensemble as they toured throughout Canada and the U.S.
By the time he was 17, he had won numerous jazz and classical music awards for both his piano and saxophone interpretations, and found a passion for musical theatre. He recently returned from a highly successful tour as music director-pianist of both the Chemainus Theatre and Vancouver Arts Club productions of A Closer Walk with Pasty Cline, which is also scheduled for a Mainland run this summer.
He is co-composing and arranging the music for two new Canadian musical theatre works.
Rabu’s love of music was nurtured in Courtenay throughout her years at Courtenay Junior High. She studied classical piano for eight years, and in the mid-’70s played in the school band and sang in the school choir.
But it wasn’t until 1983 that Rabu discovered her love of performance when she was cast in the one-woman show about Edith Piaf at Vancouver’s City Stage. The three-week engagement was held over for more than one year and won Rabu two Jessie Awards.
She has since been nominated for a third Jessie plus a Juno, and most recently was honoured with the Touring Artist of the Year Award and the Excellence in the Arts Award in British Columbia.
Over the past 26 years, she has toured five continents with her Piaf show and her concert of mixed repertoire accompanied by her longtime musicians. She has also performed with symphony orchestras across Canada and the States, sang for royalty and recorded six albums.
But her greatest pleasure, she says, has been seeing her son bring his own musical styles to the stage while enjoying the fulfilling, creative world of music and theatre.
Showtime March 5 is 7:30 p.m. and tickets are available at the SWT ticket centre or by calling 250-338-2430 for reservations.
For more, visit www.sidwilliamstheatre.com. For Youtube song clips, see www.youtube.com.
