Ridley Bent
Tall tales, hard-drinking, fast-driving, larger-than-life characters – these are the province of seven-time BC Country Music Award-winning writer-performer Ridley Bent, who brings his storytelling sensibility to the intimate stage of White Rock’s Blue Frog Studios, July 10 at 8 p.m.
Described in one review as “a beat-poet cowboy that can sing a broken-hearted country song that will make you want to cry,” Bent – also a Canadian Country Music Award nominee in 2009 – will be playing songs from his new album Wildcard.
Opening for Bent will be homegrown country act Fionn – formerly known as Alanna and Brianne.
The 17-year-old twins – a performing duo as close-harmonists and multi-instrumentalists since they were 13 – were Diamond in the Rock contest winners in 2013 and recorded their first EP with famed songwriter and producer Steve Dorffand in Los Angeles and Nashville last year.
The venue is located at 1328 Johnston Rd.
Tickets are available at www.bluefrogstudios.ca or by calling 604-542-3055.
Beach House Theatre
Book early to avoid disappointment, the saying goes, and that’s particularly true for tickets to Beach House Theatre, now readying its fourth season of live summer theatre for its state-of-the-art tent setting at Crescent Beach.
Tickets go on sale this Thursday (June 25) at 7 a.m. – and, if past seasons are anything to go by, they’ll be snapped up very quickly.
There’s a change of pace in this season: instead of Shakespeare the company will be highlighting Oscar Wilde with his masterpiece 1895 comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest (Aug. 11-16).
Just as much of a classic as many of Shakespeare’s well-loved plays, the elaborately-costumed show has the benefit – for those wishing to catch all the delightful nuances of a farcical comedy of dalliance among the British upper classes – of being in ‘modern’ English rather than Elizabethan blank verse.
Featured players in The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Beach House founders Candace Radcliffe and Rick Harmon, are Tom Gage, Patrick Dodd, Bethany Stanley, Marika Stanger, Michelle Collier, Carol Mann, James Walker, Paul Richardson and Paul Rancourt.
Children’s author Robert Munsch has become a staple of Beach House for its family-oriented second show, and the tradition will continue this year with Munsch Upon A Time (Aug. 12-15).
Directed by Elgin Park Players alumnus Courtney Shields, it features Aaron Holt, Claire Pollock and Matt Falletta.
For more information on events, visit beachhousetheatre.org
The 39 Steps
Another hot summer ticket, available now, is Peninsula Productions’ almost perverse exercise in comedic minimalism – just four actors playing all 150 roles in an adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1935 spy thriller The 39 Steps.
The show will be moving into Coast Capital Playhouse (1532 Johnston Rd.) July 8-25 while White Rock Players Club is on hiatus.
Reinvented in 2005 by Patrick Barlow as a theatrical romp that has become a hit around the world, The 39 Steps, directed in Peninsula’s version by well-known Vancouver man of the theatre Matthew Bissett (A Night On Broadway), promises to deliver a trunkload of laughs with bare-bones props and sets, evocative period costumes by Mahara Sinclaire, and a versatile cast adept in physical humour.
Corey Haas stars as suave adventurer Richard Hannay in the story – loosely drawn from the novel by John Buchan (erstwhile Lord Tweedsmuir) – of an innocent man framed for murder and forced to flee to the Scottish Highlands to track down the real culprits, a sinister spy organization spiriting aviation secrets from Britain.
Helping him evoke the elaborate visuals and plot twists of the original are Toronto actress Laura Caswell (heroine Pamela, mystery woman Arabella Smith and a forlorn crofter’s wife) and Ben Odberg (The Game’s Afoot, Blithe Spirit) and Ashley O’Connell (the Arts Club’s Spamalot) in a valiantly absurd attempt to play the rest of the supporting roles.
Tickets ($25; seniors/children $20) are available from www.peninsulaproductions.org or 604-536-7535.
Daniel Wesley
He’s a White Rock native and soon-to-be South Surrey resident – and he and his wife are also expecting their first child next month.
Daniel Wesley, 33 – one of BC’s most popular independent music artists – will also be playing a lead role as headline entertainer at the City of White Rock’s Canada Day celebrations on Wednesday, July 1.
Wesley’s appearance is part of the new look for White Rock celebrations, in which the White Rock BIA, and executive director Douglas Smith (New Westminster’s Concerts at the Quay series), has been taking an active role in marketing, production and presentation.
The concert will also be something of a homecoming for Wesley’s longtime drummer, Tim Proznick (son of Semiahmoo band guru David and brother of jazz bassist Jodi).
They’ll be joined by other regular sidemen Darren Paris (bass), Alex Maher (saxophone) and Mike Kenney (keyboard-guitar) for Wesley’s set, highlighting the singer-songwriter’s groove-based roots, and also promoting his new album, I Am Your Man.
Adding to the line-up for the free concert adjacent to the pier – concluding a full day of city-sponsored Canada Day activities – will be fast-rising, BC-based indie band The River and the Road.
TD Concerts At The Pier
There’s a real bonus for meter-feeders on White Rock’s waterfront on Saturday nights this summer.
A five-concert series down by the pier will feature topflight alternative-pop acts this summer to augment the lively restaurant patio trade. And the price is just right – free.
The City of White Rock and the White Rock BIA – with assistance from the Peak Performance Project, and major sponsorship from TD Canada Trust – has announced the lineup for TD Concerts At The Pier from July 4 to Aug. 8.
Headlining the 7-10 p.m. concerts will be Good For Grapes (July 4); Fast Romantics (July 11); The Boom Booms (July 18); Gary Comeau and the Voodoo All Stars (July 25); and The Matinee (Aug. 8).
Supporting acts will include Tea Petrovic, David Sinclair, Rich Hope, Ben Rogers, Tonye Aganaba, Bend Sinister, Colleen Rennison, Sarah Wheeler, Blue Moon Marquee and Lester Quitzau.
Blues Challenge
It doesn’t get hotter than this. The blues – and the steaks – will be sizzling as the White Rock Blues Society presents the sixth annual Blues Challenge July 26 at Semiahmoo Park.
Chicago blues legend Jimmy D. Lane will be the headliner for some 13 acts competing to represent White Rock at this year’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tenn. for a day-long combination of wailing blues and piping hot barbecue (by Memphis Mike’s) at the waterfront park (venue courtesy of councillor Joanne Charles and the Semiahmoo First Nation).
At press time, the competitors include – in the band category – Harpdog Brown, the Jim Black Band, Arsen Shomakov, the Hell’s Gate Blues Band, McKinley Wolf, Gary Preston and Jimmy Zee.
Competing in the solo/duo category will be Jesse Roper, Lonnie Glass, The Blues Baron, Nash Mcinnes and Murray Porter.
Tickets will be $15 in advance (until July 22) and $20 at the gate.
Tickets are available at tickets.surrey.ca, www.whiterockblues.com, Tapestry Music, Surfside Music, or by calling 604-542-6515.
Trad jazz for dancing
Every Sunday afternoon – barring a few holidays and special events – people get together to listen, and dance, to the exhilarating sound of Dixieland and retro jazz at the Royal Canadian Legion Crescent Branch 240 (2643 128 St.).
Although the regular sessions of the White Rock Traditional Jazz Society are on hiatus for the summer, the society’s house band – Red Beans & Rice, led by trumpeter and vocalist Rice Honeywell Sr. – is filling in with regular 2 to 5 p.m. performances each Sunday (except June 28 and Aug. 2). Admission is $10 for WRTJS and Legion members, $12 for everybody else.
Fans of Red Beans & Rice can also catch the band at Porter’s Bistro, 21611 48 Ave., in Langley’s historic Murrayville, in 7 p.m. Friday Friday night performances June 26 and July 10 (for reservations, call 604-530-5297).
Trad jazz enthusiasts should also note that tickets are now available for the Jazz Band Ball festival – this year hosted by the WRTJS – at Pacific Inn and Resort Centre, Sept. 25-27.
For more information, visit www.whiterocktradjazz.com
Acrylics for tweens/teens
Budding visual artists in the family?
Chris and Marilyn McClure’s Golden Cactus Fine Art Studio (at the corner of 152 Street and Thrift Avenue) will hold an acrylic painting class for tweens and teens, July 27-31 (10 a.m. to noon each day).
Class fee ($220) includes canvas paints and use of studio brushes.
Instructor Chris McClure, well-known as a romantic realist painter and founder of International Artist Day, says he plans to work directly with each student as well as demonstrating ideas to the group, and adds that students will probably produce two canvases over the course of the class.
“First day we will work on drawings of ideas to paint,” McClure said. “Over the next few days I will show them a few different ways to express themselves on canvas. I can tell by how they draw where to point them for their own voice.”
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/GoldenCactusStudio
Panels, panels, panels
How open are you to abstract art?
That’s the question posed by visual artist Joyce Ozier in her exhibit ‘Marked Panels. Panels. Panels.’ continuing at White Rock Community Centre (15154 Russell Ave.) until July 17.
Some see implied representational forms in her colourful, improvisational canvases, which she highlights with pastel lines. Some draw a mood from her choice of colours. Everyone is likely to come away with a different impression or interpretation, Ozier says, adding that the way each piece evolves is always a surprise to her.
A remount of a show first presented at Vancouver’s Zack Gallery in October, most of the show consists of groupings of large panels (in excess of six feet by six feet).
The size of each painting, she says, “allows the viewer to be involved physically, rather than being solely an observer… it allows for simplicity, dynamic gesture, playfulness and indeterminacy.”
Ozier, whose career has included experimental theatre, arts management, teaching and building the award-winning WOW! WINDOWS Display and Design company, is a graduate of Skidmore College in the U.S.
Holder of a master’s degree in theatrical design from UBC, she was also a visual arts resident at the Banff Centre for the Arts earlier this year.
Voja Morosan
Although he was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, the late Vojislav (Voja) Morosan became one of the most enthusiastic chroniclers of the White Rock and Semiahmoo Peninsula scene, thanks to his meticulously accurate and highly evocative plein-air paintings.
A well-liked, familiar figure until his passing in 2008, Morosan, often found seated at his easel under a white straw hat – faithful Yorkshire terrier Pebbles by his side – captured beloved views of the Peninsula using a high-key palette.
A special summer retrospective of his landscapes at Seventh Heaven Art and Beauty Salon (12185 Beecher St., Crescent Beach) brings home vividly his skill at capturing the landscape – one that seems to be in the process of vanishing daily in the face of redevelopment pressures and insensitive architecture.
“Like Judy Jordison, Morosan was recording our heritage, and much of what he painted is now gone or changed,”, says Seventh Heaven’s Luc Charchuk.
Morosan glowing colours and rich architectural details were also the focus of a Tourism White Rock calendar last year, and his work is among White Rock Museum and Archives’ collection. Exhibits such as the Seventh Heaven show continue to ensure that his legacy – and the way the Peninsula used to look – is not forgotten.
The paintings can be viewed Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. to Aug. 30, by appointment.
For more information, call 778-292-0687, or visit the Vojislav Morosan Facebook page.
White Rock Players’ Club
White Rock Players Club, dormant for the summer, plans an ambitious season to start its seventh decade of home-grown little theatre.
The first show announced for the 2015-16 season is a bold assault on a famed theatrical Everest – Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1949 tragic study of unravelling commercial traveler Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman (Oct. 7-24).
On somewhat safer ground, the club’s annual Christmas pantomime, under the guidance of director Lisa Pavilionis, will update Charlotte Johnson’s 1960 Cinderella (Dec. 4 – Jan. 2).
Next up on the schedule is Marc Camoletti’s 1960s high-flying door-slammer Boeing, Boeing (March 2-19) and Noel Coward’s highly demanding 1930 comedy of manners Private Lives (April 13-30).
The announced season closer is an even more audacious step into classic comedy – a double staging (both male and female versions) of The Odd Couple, by Neil Simon, to be presented in rep (alternate performances).
Coast Capital Playhouse is located at 1532 Johnston Rd. Individual tickets are $18 for adults, $16 for students and seniors.
To inquire about season ticket options, call 604-536-7535.
Symphonists sought
Now celebrating its 30th concert season, the Fraser Valley Symphony is seeking new members in the violin, viola and percussion sections, but also welcomes inquiries from other interested professional-calibre musicians.
Performing alongside world class instrumental and vocal soloists, the orchestra provides an opportunity for auditioned musicians to present a variety of music to audiences throughout the region.
Rehearsals are held on Monday evenings, in Abbotsford.
Contact info@fraservalleysymphony.org or call 604-859-3877.
Singers wanted
Pacific Showtime Men’s Chorus, based in Ocean Park, rehearses Monday nights at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, 12953 20 Ave.
The small community chorus of experienced singers is currently seeking new members for all vocal ranges: lead, tenor, baritone and bass.
Offering a big sound in a variety of musical styles, Pacific Showtime has been featured at a many different Lower Mainland events, including show productions, concerts and private functions.
The repertoire is designed to include songs and a singing style that appeal to a wide variety of music preferences, with emphasis on entertainment value, and chance to develop singing skills while having fun and enjoying camaraderie.
Male singers are invited to attend rehearsals to check out the group and, hopefully, join in.
For more information, call 604-536-5292 or email leighand@shaw.ca
