Surely the Festival faithful are by now staggering under the
weight of extraordinary music.
"Week one" is nearly over. We've gone from the Duke Trio to Duke Ellington– à la Late
Night Jazz and have ascended to the Gods
of Music last night with a star-studded
cast that is rarely assembled.
Today we get to Meet the Composers quite literally.
One of the rewarding things about the Tuckamore Festival is
how it offers such an expanded and diverse world of music to the general
public. From inspiration to perspiration–
and with a grand romp across musical idioms– we get entrée to the real world of
musicians in so many various ways.
Nothing can replace the experience of hearing superb jazz in
downtown St. John's - complete with the unscripted sounds of motorcycles on
Water St. and the sweet smells of baking at the Rocket Room. There were collective sighs of
anticipation as Mark Fewer introduced the familiar jazz standards and
alternatively chuckles as he scolded us for not recognizing others. But we'll remember some of those names
after watching the smoke almost come off his fiddle with Fewer's ferocious
playing. And Bill Brennan charmed
us as always with his smooth, apparently effortless, piano playing. They are a fitting counterpoint to each
other as a duo.
The Gods of Music
program took us from Schubert to Dohnanyi to Ravel. The Schubert was an impressive four-hands by Timothy Steeves
and Peter Longworth flying along the keyboards; the Dohnanyi was a memorable
interpretation of all five movements of the Serenade in C major Op. 10 by Nancy
Dahn (violin), Thomas Wiebe (cello) and David Samuel (viola); and the popular
String Quartet in F Major by Ravel was played with aplomb by Fewer, Dahn,
Samuel and Vernor Regehr on cello.
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| Wiebe gave an excellent intro to Dohnanyi's family. |
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