TD Concerts At The Pier
Expect to find music on White Rock’s waterfront on Saturday nights this summer.
As well as restaurant and pub venues along the strip offering their own entertainment, a live-music series on a stage beside the pier is bringing topflight alternative-pop acts to the area – and these open-air performances are free.
Presented by the City of White Rock and the White Rock BIA – with major sponsorship from TD Canada Trust, and assistance from the Peak Performance Project, the TD Concerts At The Pier series continues until Aug. 8.
Headliners for the 7-10 p.m. concert this Saturday (July 18) are Vancouver East Side-raised indie soul band The Boom Booms, with opening acts Colleen Rennison and Bend Sinister.
Coming up: Gary Comeau and the Voodoo All Stars (July 25, with Ben Rogers and Lester Quitzau); and, The Matinee (Aug. 8, with Tonye Aganaba and Blue Moon Marquee).
Vendel Festival
It sounds like a feast for the soul – and a sampling of treats for the senses.
Sussanne Hoiberg is presenting another of her Vendel Festival art shows this weekend (July 17-19) in the multi-level oceanside garden setting of the Dancing Firs retreat, 13894 Terry Rd. (Friday 7-9 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.- 6 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.)
Opening celebration will include a live band, and music will be part of the uplifting arts and expression-oriented atmosphere for all three days of the event, which also includes vendors offering specialty food fare and wine tastings paired with chocolate.
Some 10 artists, including Hoiberg herself, will be exhibiting everything from painting, illustration, photography, sculpture in wood, metal, stone and clay to pastels, encaustic wax and ‘gourd’ art.
Featured artists include David Boughton, Lynne Bradford, Joanne Dennis, Suzanne Erickson, Gabrielle Greig, Ingo Holst and Rachel Legare.
A new twist this year will be specialized art classes on Sunday that will give members of the public a chance to explore their own inner artist with demonstrations of watercolour, acrylic and plein-air techniques.
For more information, contact susanne@vendelarts.com, call 604-785-5029, or visit www.vendelfestival.weebly.com
Blues Challenge
You can bring your own sandwiches and soft drinks to Semiahmoo Park July 26 as the White Rock Blues Society presents its sixth annual Blues Challenge.
But chances are meat lovers are going to get hungry when they smell what Memphis Mike is cooking up on the grill at the event, the society’s Rod Dranfield says, adding that the genuine Southern-style barbecue ought to add the perfect complement to a day of wailing blues at the park.
Throughout the day, some 13 acts will vie to represent White Rock at this year’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tenn. Topping off the event will be a full performance by the evening headliner, Chicago blues legend, Jimmy D. Lane.
The blues and barbecue has proven a winning combination for the society, which joined forces with Blue Frog Studios on a similar event last year. But moving the Blues Challenge to the park in time for summer, rather than conducting the popular event in a smaller venue in the fall, makes a lot of sense for the society, Dranfield says. It will also work for winning competitors, who will have more more chance to “leverage” their wins through subsequent gigs, he adds.
Competitors seeking the society’s sponsorship to attend the Memphis IBC include such bands and leaders as Harpdog Brown, the Jim Black Band, Arsen Shomakov, the Hell’s Gate Blues Band, McKinley Wolf, Gary Preston and Jimmy Zee, while solo/duo finalists include Jesse Roper, Lonnie Glass, The Blues Baron, Nash Mcinnes and Murray Porter.
The unmatched, family friendly waterfront park venue is courtesy of councillor Joanne Charles and the Semiahmoo First Nation.
Tickets will be $15 in advance (until July 22) and $20 at the gate, and children 12 and under, accompanied by an adult, can get in free.
Tickets are available at tickets.surrey.ca, www.whiterockblues.com, Tapestry Music, Surfside Music, or by calling 604-542-6515.
White Rock Community Centre
The Art On Display summer series at White Rock Community Centre (15154 Russell Ave.) continues to feature visual artist Joyce Ozier’s abstract exhibit ‘Marked Panels. Panels. Panels.’ until July 17.
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, Ozier says, “allows the viewer to be involved physically, rather than being solely an observer… it allows for simplicity, dynamic gesture, playfulness and indeterminacy.”
Second show, opening July 23, is Being Human, by Langley artist Gina Kling.
Her large, imposing canvases convey images of life, love and hope in a way that harks back to the work of old-world masters.
Whether painting in watercolour, or drawing free-hand on cotton stretched canvas, and investing her painting with richness and detail through her skill with oils, the Emily Carr-trained, Federation of Canadian Artists member is clearly travelling the same paths as the masters.
Drawing inspiration from lesser-known biblical verses, she seeks to depict and evoke the human spirit and all our flaws – and perfections.
The show will run at White Rock Community Centre until Aug. 28.
Voja Morosan
Belgrade,Yugoslavia-born artist Vojislav (Voja) Morosan adopted White Rock and the Semiahmoo Peninsula area as a second home in the 1990s and became one of its most dedicated chroniclers, through meticulously accurate and highly evocative plein-air paintings.
A special summer retrospective of the late artist’s work at Seventh Heaven Art and Beauty Salon (12185 Beecher St., Crescent Beach) brings home vividly his skill at capturing the topography, mood and characteristic heritage architecture of the Peninsula – much of which has since fallen to the wrecker’s hammer due to redevelopment pressure.
For the nostalgic, Morosan’s glowing colours and architectural details – also the focus of a Tourism White Rock calendar last year and preserved among White Rock Museum and Archives’ collection – offer a compelling legacy.
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.
The 39 Steps
Comedic minimalism is the order of the day at Coast Capital Playhouse (1532 Johnston Rd.) where the live-theatre version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 spy thriller The 39 Steps continues until July 25.
Presented by Peninsula Productions while the White Rock Players Club is on hiatus, the international hit, adapted by Patrick Barlow, plays the very-British tale of intrigue strictly for laughs.
Four actors, using costumes and bare-bones props and set elements, attempt to evoke every scene – and change of scene – in the fast-moving plot, derived from the famous John Buchan novel.
And it provides a field day for versatile players Corey Haas (as suave adventurer Richard Hannay) and Laura Caswell, Ben Odberg (The Game’s Afoot, Blithe Spirit) and Ashley O’Connell (the Arts Club’s Spamalot) as everybody else.
Produced by Peninsula artistic director Wendy Bollard, The 39 Steps is directed by well-known Vancouver man-of-the-theatre Matthew Bissett.
Tickets ($25; seniors/children $20) are available from www.peninsulaproductions.org or 604-536-7535.
Beach House Theatre
At press time there were still tickets for sale for both shows in Beach House Theatre’s week-long ‘season’ in Crescent Beach, although many of the performances of the evening show, Oscar Wilde’s classic 1895 comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest (Aug. 11-16) are now sold out.
Directed by Beach House founders Candace Radcliffe and Rick Harmon, it’s an elaborately-costumed, farcical comedy of dalliance among the British upper classes, featuring Tom Gage, Patrick Dodd, Bethany Stanley, Marika Stanger, Michelle Collier, Carol Mann, James Walker, Paul Richardson and Paul Rancourt.
There are still good chances, however, to book tickets for Munsch Upon A Time (Aug. 12-15), the family-oriented morning show at Beach House’s state-of-the-art tent auditorium, next to the beach on Blackie Spit.
Directed by Elgin Park Players alumnus Courtney Shields, it’s another delightful collage of stories by popular children’s author Robert Munsch, featuring Aaron Holt, Claire Pollock and Matt Falletta.
For tickets and more information on events, call 604-594-5888, visit beachhousetheatre.org or email tickets@beachhousetheatre.org
Trad jazz for dancing
Classic live Dixieland and retro jazz sets the easy-going tempos for dancers of all age groups (19 and up) every Sunday afternoon – barring a few holidays and special events – at the Royal Canadian Legion Crescent Branch 240 (2643 128 St.).
Until regular sessions of the White Rock Traditional Jazz Society return in the fall, the society’s house band – Red Beans & Rice, usually led by trumpeter and vocalist Rice Honeywell Sr. – is filling in with regular 2 to 5 p.m. performances each Sunday (except Aug. 2). Admission is $10 for WRTJS and legion members, $12 for everybody else.
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
Tweens and teens will get a fine introduction to acrylic technique – and some of the secrets of composition and individual expression – in a painting class offered by Chris and Marilyn McClure’s Golden Cactus Fine Art Studio July 27-31 (10 a.m. to noon each day).
Class fee ($220) includes canvas paints and use of studio brushes.
Well-known White Rock artist Chris McClure – romantic realist painter and creator of International Artist Day, and the city’s annual IAD Festival – says he plans to work directly with each student as well as demonstrating ideas to the group. Students can expect to produce two canvases over the course of the class, he said.
“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.”
The Golden Cactus studio is located at the corner of Johnston Road and Thrift Avenue (Hillcrest Mall).
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/GoldenCactusStudio
White Rock Players’ Club
White Rock Players Club, on summer hiatus while independent shows like Peninsula Production’s The 39 Steps take over the Coast Capital Playhouse, is hatching an ambitious season to start its seventh decade of home-grown little theatre in the city.
The first show announced for the 2015-2016 season will be a bold attempt to stage a theatrical legend – Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman (Oct. 7-24), a tragic study of the unravelling of tired commercial traveller Willy Loman in the late 1940s.
The club’s annual audience-pleaser, the Christmas pantomime, will return Dec. 4 – Jan. 2, updating Charlotte Johnson’s 1960 script of Cinderella under the guidance of director Lisa Pavilionis.
Marc Camoletti’s 1960s door-slammer farce Boeing, Boeing is set to hit the stage March 2-19 followed by Noel Coward’s 1930s comedy of manners Private Lives (April 13-30).
The announced season-closer will offer two versions of a classic comedy – a staging, on alternate nights, of both the male and female versions of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple.
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
