Just a few news items to pass along this week as I work to play catch-up after taking last weekend off to escape for Easter to Sherwood Inn up in lovely Muskoka, on the shores of Lake St. Joseph. Had a lovely time, thank you very much...
The big news this week involves the kickoff to the public fundraising drive for the St. Catharines Performing Arts Centre. At a splashy event this week, the City of St. Catharines announced the fundraising chairman for the project is Peter Partridge, a well-known and very well connected investment advisor and patron of the arts in St. Catharines. If he is not attending a cultural event he is likely involved in the organization of an event, especially if it involves his talents as a choral conductor.
Peter and his wife Janet, along with the rest of the Partridge Family (no, not that one...) have graciously stepped up to the plate and donated the first $1 M to the $5 M fundraising campaign, which is a phenomenal gesture to get the ball rolling on a very important local arts project. Government cannot and should not be expected to foot the entire bill for things like this, and that means we all have to step up and do our part in whatever small way we can. I hope we can get this wrapped up long before the scheduled opening of the PAC in 2015. But you and I and many others, both privately and corporately need to do our part.
I've known Peter and Janet for many years now, beginning when they worked together on a classical music programme on our sister radio station, the country-music (yes, country!) station QR-FM. I was working the evening shift at CKTB RADIO back in those days and we often crossed paths in the evening as they worked in the music library to put together and record another show using good old-fashioned record albums. Remember those? If I remember correctly, the show aired weeknights, but I can't quite recall exactly when.
Later, I got to know both the Partridges well as they frequented the store Downtown Fine Music in St. Catharines, and later when I started up my web-based music service A Web of Fine Music, which you can still find at www.finemusic.ca. Peter and Janet are the perfect pair to get this project underway, and we wish them well in the future.
For their work and generous donation, the main concert hall that will house the Niagara Symphony and other large-scale productions will be known as Partridge Hall in their honour, and I think that is only appropriate. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think, Partridge Hall? Just a thought, but are we not lucky a person or family with the name, oh, I don't know, maybe Krapp hadn't come forward to claim naming rights? No offense to the Krapp families in the area, but you know...just an aside on your humble scribe's part.
Speaking of generous donations, it was announced today the Stratford Festival is the recipient of $ 1M in funding from the provincial government through Celebrate Ontario, to support the 2013 season's productions of The Merchant of Venice, Fiddler on the Roof and Tommy, all three expected to be popular shows at the Festival this year. As Executive Director Anita Gaffney noted in today's press release, "Every ticket sold at the Festival generates an additional $270 in spending, for a total of about $140 million in economic activity each year." Those are significant numbers and help to illustrate how important our two major summer theatre festivals are to their local economies.
By the way, both the Shaw and Stratford Festivals now have previews underway, and as the start of their respective seasons approach I will be writing more about them in this space as as been the case in past seasons.
Finally, a couple of quick notes of a local nature this week, as Essential Collective Theatre Company presents the second and final performance of the one-woman show My Pregnant Brother this evening in English at the Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre in downtown St. Catharines at 8pm. The play, written and performed by Johanna Nutter and directed and dramaturged by Jeremy Taylor, was presented in French last evening. Tickets should be available at the door this evening.
And a local musician and customer of mine over the years, Mark Steiger, has some of his compositions featured in St. Jacobs Sunday afternoon, as the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society presents the Open Harmony String Quartet at 2 pm at Gallery Momo in the "Mill" on Front Street between King and Isabella. The concert features Mozart's Divertimento in D, the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia arranged for cello and double-bass, and Mark Steiger's Astraeus and - Looking in Windows (in two parts) and A Set of Waltzes and Tangos, tba as I understand it.
Mark has been busy on the local music scene as both composer and performer, and has been a teacher with his own guitar studio for many years as well. I didn't realize he studied composition with Ronald Tremain at Brock University and with Alexina Louie at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. I was once approached by Mr. Tremain to join the board of his music series years ago, and I interviewed Alexina Louie around the same time when she was premiering a work with the Toronto Symphony. Small world.
Anyway, best of luck to my friend Mark, and if you want to catch the concert, tickets should be available at the door in St. Jacobs tomorrow afternoon or in advance through the KWCMS website in Waterloo.
Enjoy the week!
April 6th, 2013.
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