Tag Archives: NAC

NAC Pops show – 80s Mix Tape

The PolyBlog
January 12 2020

This was outing #6 of the year (following 1 OLT, 2 NAC, 1 hockey game, and 1 Gladstone) to see the NAC Pops show called “80s Mix Tape” with conductor Stuart Chafetz and singers Julie Reiber and Bryce Ryness. The show was a collection of 21 songs from the 1980s performed by the NAC Orchestra, with 8 instrumental versions and 13 with lyrics. The full playlist (with two extra songs) is at the bottom.

The show kicked off with the instrumental version of The Final Countdown (Europe), and it was good, but not amazing. A nice light opening. They then went directly into a song with the female singer, Call Me (Blondie). I felt like she was doing a pop lite version of the song, no real grit, and the version I’m used to from Blondie has more deeper tones behind it. Or so I thought. However, you’ll see in the playlist version below, my memory might be off because it isn’t much darker/deeper in tone than the version I heard last night. It didn’t amaze me.

They then segued to the male singer doing Wake Me Up Before You Go Go (Wham). And I thought we were in trouble. I really like the song, and the energy of the original is enough to keep my toes bouncing if it is on the car stereo or headphones. I remember actually having it on a cassette tape, yes I’m that old, and listening to it on my no-name walkman while doing my paper route. It kept me moving and avoided my mind going numb while doing it. Yet the male artist seemed completely flat. Plus, I’m used to a radio version that is slightly sped up I think, as I consistently hear the CD version and think it is about 10% too slow.

We’ve experienced this before though. The orchestra is always great, but despite hiring Broadway singers to front the songs, the versions often come off somewhere between a theme park summer revue offering, a low-rated Glee episode, or high-end karaoke. One last year with “women of rock” had that problem in places.

Then the guy headed into Careless Whisper (George Michael) as a duet with the woman, and it was decent. At least I thought so, Andrea wasn’t sold.

Back to the female singer, the show moved into True Colors (Cindi Lauper). And suddenly that “deeper” sound that I was looking for in the Blondie song was there. Deep, rich, not poppy, and she was awesome. Andrea thought she was a bit off-tempo, but I loved it. Ironically, this is the second time this week I’ve seen that song performed, although the other time was just on TV. I watched the premiere of the show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and it was sung by her father played by Peter Gallagher. The full episode is available on YouTube, not a bad show. Nothing “extraordinary”, more like a Glee replacement. I’ve cued up the Peter Gallagher intro scene although you can jump ahead two minutes to the actual singing (for context, he’s in a catatonic state but she “hears” what’s going on in his head).

Back to the NAC…the next song was Broken Wings (Mr. Mister), and again, another decent version. Maybe we’re back on track? The NAC did three instrumentals following this:

  • Theme from Chariots of Fire — I have no idea why so many people think this song is amazing, I want to fall asleep for the film, the soundtrack, and well, even the name;
  • Theme from Ghostbusters — hard to describe, but I felt like the balance was off in the orchestra, maybe needs more strings than brass, I don’t know enough to define, while Andrea thought it was okay but would have been better if sang; and,
  • Theme from Back to the Future — it was an awesome rendition, with the combo of “old Western” pomp with a bit of Huey Lewis’ infused pop mixed with suspense music from Indiana Jones-style adventure themes.

Continuing the same theme, the last song of the first half was Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” — aaaaand we were back to sucking canal water again.

Intermission was great, which I wouldn’t normally mention, but we wandered down by one of the other theatres which is showing Unikkaaqtuat right now from the Indigenous Theatre series. While we were there, we got to see some amazing posters they have put up about the Innu stories featured in the play. Really spectacular imagery provided by Taqqut Productions. Anyway, I digress.

When the second half started, they followed the tradition of the first song of each set being an instrumental, and they went with Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears). Really well done.

They followed it up with the male singer doing In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins) and while I thought it was “okay”, Andrea thought it was really good. Perhaps my reticence is more that I’m not a big fan of the song — I’ll listen to it occasionally, but if I have a skip function, it won’t stay on my playlist long. I am not a big fan of slow ballads, no matter how well done. Doesn’t stop me from singing along if it’s on, but I wouldn’t willingly choose it more than about once a year.

And then we come to the price of admission. Holy snicker doodles. The orchestra did an instrumental version of Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson), and sure, the overall orchestra part was solid, as always. But the OMG part was that they had the concert master / first chair violin Jessica Linnebach do a showcase for the song. All of the individual artists are good, let’s face it, they are in the NAC’s orchestra. No small feat. And she is the associate concert master for NAC and concert master for most of the Pops series. Sure, we’ve seen the overall concertmaster, Yosuke Kawasaki, perform, usually something to do with more classical pieces specifically for a violin solo. But Jessica? Almost never on her own.

She was absolutely awesome. And was likely exhausted at the end of it. I pulled some videos from YouTube. Here she is after winning a competition in NYC:

And a more classical piece (34 minutes long, so maybe she wasn’t tired after Smooth Criminal!).

Alas, no separate recordings on iTunes to enjoy. Sigh. Hope to see more of her solos in the future. The playlist has a version of the instrumental, but it doesn’t do justice to her violin contributions.

Moving on, we had Alone (Heart) and the female singer did a great job again, leaving me to wonder what happened in the Blondie song at the start…was it just a stylistic choice? Sound levels were off?

Next up was The Spirit of Radio (Rush), performed as an instrumental in memoriam for Neil Peart, the drummer of Rush who passed away on Friday. I’ve included an instrumental as well as the original in the playlist, partly as the song isn’t that familiar to some. But there are some snippets that are frequently sampled by radio stations for their jingles and internal promotions, so you’ll recognize the segments when you hear them.

The orchestra followed up with another instrumental And So It Goes (Billy Joel). Every time I hear this song, either in the original or in instrumental, it makes me think of Newfoundland. There is an almost Irish lilt to the music that goes past the up-tempo beat of Cape Breton, and more of a sweeping landscape song. Really good version. The playlist has both a cheap instrumental version as well as the original by Billy Joel.

They then went on to the wrap-up phase of the concert with five songs with the singers. I didn’t much care for any of the versions:

  • 867-5309 / Jenny (Tommy Tutone) was flat, and the only interesting part was that the orchestra members were singing backup, which I’ve never noticed them do before;
  • If I Could Turn Back Time (Cher) was okay, certainly clear articulation, and Andrea thought it was good;
  • Addicted to Love (Robert Palmer) was awful, I have NO IDEA what he was going for in sound, some sort of weird accent thrown in too;
  • The Heart of Rock and Roll (Huey Lewis) was another bad theme park revue version, or a bad cover band at a fireworks display; and,
  • Celebration (Kool and the Gang), which while not much better performed, at least had two things going for it — energy and audience participation.

And it is an interesting side-note to the performance. Normally, the average age of the Pops audience hits in the high-50s / low 60s probably. Definitely an older crowd. I’m 51 and I’m younger than most attendees by at least 10 years. Which is common for most orchestras, since the tickets aren’t cheap, we went for dinner, and we had a babysitter for six hours, plus parking. So most goers are either older or have more disposable income, or both.

But last night’s crowd was decidely skewed younger. 30s and 40s, I would say. And the result was LOUD. The NAC got cheers, people singing with the last song, and standing up and dancing. Normally, Ottawa is a sitting crowd. Often a complaint for Bluesfest, folk concerts, and hockey games. But the audience could actually be heard last night. Which was a special feat since the weather kept a lot of people home, with a less-than-capacity crowd.

In the end, my review is probably the same one I will always have for Pops outings — the orchestra is awesome, the singers are hit and miss.

NAC Pops show – The Music of John Williams

The PolyBlog
October 19 2019

My wife and I enjoy the NAC Orchestra shows, particularly the Pops, and if it wasn’t for simple cost and logistics, we’d sign up for them every year. Instead, we pick and choose the shows we want along with some others. With 17 shows across multiple venues, this was outing #2 this year. The theme for the night? The music of John Williams, namely from all his soundtracks of the greatest hits of films.

Up first was the Main Title from Star Wars (1977), and it’s a great blockbuster opening. From there, they slid into Superman March from Superman (1978). Just those two alone would be worth the price of admission for some people, including me.

After that, they went through The Flight to Neverland from Hook (1991), excerpts from Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Cowboys Overture from The Cowboys (1972), and Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). They’re all good, and the Cowboys Overture has that big epic Western feel to it. But none are amazing.

The first half ended with Devil’s Dance from the Witches of Eastwick (1987) (aka Dance of the Witches), which I don’t remember being quite so Hallowe’enish in its feel, and then the blockbuster Raider’s March from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Pick these two plus the first two, and I could call it a night.

The second half started off with Liberty Fanfare (1986) which apparently Williams composed as a tribute for the re-inauguration/opening of the Statue of Liberty. Okay, not amazing. Suite from Far and Away (1992), Theme from Schindler’s List (1993), Hedwig’s Theme and Harry’s Wondrous World from Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (2001) followed, and while they were all good, only Hedwig’s Theme had a bit of innovation in it to keep it interesting. The concert master and first chair violin Yosuke Kawasaki played Schindler’s List, which was a great violin piece, but not really a challenge for the master.

Next up was the Shark Theme from Jaws (1975) and the sound is iconic. Plus conductor Jack Everly played with a hand puppet shark for laughs during the piece, which was fun. I was a bit disappointed with the Main Theme from Jurassic Park (1993), didn’t really excite me, although perhaps that’s because it is from the start of the movie before chaos reigns.

Last on the official programme was the classic “Adventures on Earth” from E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982). It felt great to hear, although that may be partly because we just watched it a week ago with our son.

For an encore, they dusted off another Star Wars one, which was one of the marches from Return of the Jedi, I think, as it has the lighter Ewok theme worked into it a couple of places.

Overall, 17 pieces for the night, although I would have been perfectly happy with just five of them. Six if you include the encore. Still, the rest were all nostalgia for the movies, and enjoyable.

If you’re interested, here’s an Apple Playlist with all the music:

NAC Theatre – The Wedding Party

The PolyBlog
February 7 2019

My wife and I went to see the show called “The Wedding Party” at the National Arts Centre this past weekend, and I absolutely loved it. It made me fall in love with professional plays again.

Now you may be thinking, what’s not to love? But I confess that I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with the NAC when it comes to plays. Almost every play that I have seen at the NAC, not a huge number admittedly, have been pretty damn good. And all of them were well-acted. The hate part comes from the fundamental challenge that the artistic director faces each year in selecting plays. An interview a few years ago with one of the new appointees noted that they had to choose between material that was easily accessible to all audiences – almost commercial pablum in some cases – or more culturally risky, artistically challenging, creatively provocative offerings. Most of the ADs opt for the second type, and much of their subscriber base would agree, relegating commercial pablum to “lesser theatres” for the masses, i.e. not appropriate for the, sniff, NAC theatre. Or was that NAC thEATre, with a lilt in the middle and a thrust upwards of the nose?

During the interview, the AD referred to the first type, the commercial pablum, with the example of the play Salt Water Moon by David French. It was an interesting reference because it was one of the plays I had seen there and absolutely LOVED. Yet, every year since then, I review the list of upcoming plays and generally yawn. I’m sure they’re well-acted, but they don’t interest me. Often there’s a Shakespearean era, classical style play. Good but not my favorite style. Historical? I have little interest in a playwright’s view of the relationship between a Prime Minister and his maid, for instance, or the culturally sensitive overview of an minority group’s treatment during the late 1800s. I’m willing to read an article about it, or deal with similar issues at work, but it’s not what I’m looking for in the way of entertainment, preferring lighter fare for a night out. Partly as I often find the nuancing superficial and exploitative, and I’ve seen more provocative insightful pieces in print. But I digress.

Instead, my wife and I often opt for the Ottawa Little Theatre, a play at Centrepointe or Kanata, or more likely still, NAC pop orchestra outings. The plays at OLT are good, and out of 8 or 9 plays in a year, we normally like at least four for acting and script, another two for either one, another one or so for being “okay”, and two that might be simply so-so.

Still, every year I check the NAC English Theatre series announcements, and just about every year I pass. Some are okay sounding, but when you add in the cost, the time commitment for a rare night out, babysitter, etc., “okay” isn’t enough to get me over the purchase hump. Then I saw the description of the Wedding Party:

What do estranged twins, Moldovan circus performers, a Bernese Mountain Dog and several bottles of expensive champagne have in common? In The Wedding Party, the answer is nothing . . . and everything! Save the date for this wild romp through that most stressful and bizarre of rituals – the joyous, hellish and often alcohol-fuelled post-wedding reception. This comedic tour-de-force features regulars from the Stratford and Shaw festivals.

Careening between a shambolic war of compliments, fraying nerves and a mind-blowing, character-swapping cast of dozens, The Wedding Party will have you entirely complicit in the chaos!

If you ignore the normal hyperbole of descriptions, the underlying premise is a “slice of normal life” with something most audiences can relate to – a wedding reception. I find the dynamics of wedding organizing fascinating, from our wedding planning experience all the way through to other people’s weddings we’ve attended or others we just heard about from friends. I was in.

I didn’t quite know what the extra description was all about, but it seemed simple enough. I even liked the setup at the theatre with signs welcoming you to the wedding of Sherry and Jack, and signs directing you to the right (friends/family of the groom) or left (friends/family of the bride). Cute touch. The stage was set up for what looked like a nice open area, kind of like a sitting area just outside a reception hall, etc. Then the play started and a magician came out talking about cheesy disappearing acts and sending people back to the Garden of Eden. WTF? Was I tricked? Was this some whackadoodle of a show?

No, it’s fine. That little vignette disappears, being left unexplained at the time, and the main play starts. You mean a few key characters … the mother of the bride initially, as well as the wedding planner. Guess what, there’s a bit of tension in the air as it becomes clear Sherry’s family is not that well-off and Jack’s family is loaded. As such, Mama of the bride is feeling a bit out of place against a wedding that in her estimate must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (including a last minute addition of a 100 person choir!). You shortly thereafter meet the parents of the groom, and while the mother of the groom is trying to keep things a bit on an even keel, the father of the groom thinks the bride and her family are all embarrassments. Tension mounts, and there’s lots of humour as it goes.

Then you start to notice something, if you haven’t already. A new character comes in, and it’s the same actor playing one of the other parts. Oh, I get it, the actors play multiple parts, cool. Absolutely they do…most have 3 or more roles over the course of the play, making it seem like the actual cast of 6 is more like 15 or more. I know that this approach is quite common, but I’ve usually only seen it with one-actor playing all the roles or one or two doing it, never all of them playing 3 each. My limited experience, I guess.

Three of the combinations are awesome. Tom Rooney plays both the father of the groom, Jack, and his estranged twin brother Tony. Obviously, they can’t be on stage at the same time (or can they?) and there is an in-joke about the photographer wanting a photo of the two brothers together, which Jack responds to dryly with “That’s probably not going to happen”. I don’t want to spoil things, but they do find a way to interact, and it is way better than anything I would have expected.

Equally, Moya O’Connell plays the mother of the groom, and Jack’s wife, plus a “much younger” friend of her son, Alice, who serves as “emcee” for the party. At one point, she complains to another character that she’s upset that her husband called her Alice by mistake, and the “in joke” / meta response is that “Well, in his defense, you do look a lot alike”. The funny thing is that at first I didn’t even realize it was her. Alice is 20 years younger, at least, with glasses, accent, and different hair. She was awesome. It’s funny though, I kept thinking she looked familiar and that couldn’t be because I haven’t seen anything for her to have been in lately. I ran through the list of screen credits too, and missed one – she was in a single episode of the TV show Andromeda that I binge-watched last year. IMDB helped me figure it out, so yes, she did look familiar.

The third one though is a bit “different”. Jason Cadieux plays an uncle of the bride, lawyer for the groom’s company, and get ready for it, grandmother of the bride. Edna is a sparkplug. Think Sophia from Golden Girls with another foot of height, another 100 pounds of heft, hairy chest, a raspy voice, and nowhere near the good health. He was flat-out awesome.

The play continues on with tension between the families over money, alcohol consumption, and control over the look and feel of the wedding reception, and tension within each of the families (Sherry didn’t want her mom to make a speech, Jack’s dealing with the estranged brother and some marital bumps with his wife). All are source for humour, as long as you don’t have to live it. It’s a train wreck of a wedding reception where all of the things that can go wrong emotionally do go off the rails. If you don’t recognize at least a few of the characters from past weddings you have been at, you weren’t paying attention!

I confess there are a couple of scenes that don’t work. One is the magic trick at the start. There’s a reason for it, but it’s not much of a payoff. Equally, a scene involving Kristen Thomas as the playwright, mother of the bride, and a dog where she’s making a speech as the dog and another where she’s talking like she’s the mother of the bride but wearing the dog setup kind of make no sense. But she’s the playwright, hard to argue she has it wrong. And finally a scene where an interaction between two characters ends, one leaves and exits the play, and the other is more or less just left hanging out on the stage, with no “resolution” to his storyline. Not enough to not enjoy the play, but more that it seemed like those scenes still need some tweaking even though it was workshopped repeatedly when they wrote it.

I laughed my ass off at numerous points, something I rarely experience in a play. And my wife and I both agreed it’s the best play we’ve seen in years. I spoke earlier today to a friend who was also at the show and her reaction was “meh”. She liked the acting, and Edna in particular, but the first half didn’t do it for her, and she didn’t find some roles that compelling. Those were ones that were awesome to me, partly as I know people who act exactly like that! 🙂 I had a blast, but art is always subjective.

I just hope the NAC series offers more pablum for the plebes like me in the future.

NAC Pops – Women Rock

The PolyBlog
January 13 2019

My wife and I had tickets for the latest NAC Pops show this week, and unlike the odd one last time (NAC Pops – Holiday Swing), this was a bit more their style when it comes to non-orchestral “modern music”. They’ll do Broadway or rock or a host of other “pop” sources for music, stick the orchestra in the back playing the music, and throw some good singers up front. I confess, at times, they bury the orchestra. But it’s still fun.

This one was along that line, with eighteen fantastic songs made popular by female artists. To handle vocals, the program had three female ex-Broadway-calibre performers — Katrina Rose Dideriksen (Hairspray, Rent, Grease, Legally Blonde, etc.), Cassidy Catanzaro (American Songbook, backups for big rock stars, songwriter), and Shayna Steele (Rent, Hairspray, Jesus Christ Superstar, huge backup opportunities with larger stars, etc.). Katrina is the young relative newbie, Cassidy is a bit older and richer voice, and Shayna is a bit older still with more experience and a more vibrant voice. They also portrayed themselves that way throughout the night — Katrina was the “rocker”, Cassidy was the experienced singer, and Shayna was the aging (but not old) master with some down-home funk.

The show opened with Katrina singing “Piece of My Heart” (Janis Joplin), and while it was okay, I found her a bit off-putting. It seemed like she was singing it, not embodying it, and some of her vocal stylings didn’t seem to fit the song. This trend would continue for most of the night.

Next up was Shayna with “Dancing in the Street” (Martha Reeves), and she knocked it out of the park. It’s a bit odd to hear the song with a full orchestra backing it up, but it was great.

Cassidy came out to do “So Far Away” (Carole King) and it was clear this girl could sing. The song didn’t challenge her much, and she was holding back, but it was great.

Then it was back to Katrina to do “Flashdance…What A Feeling” (Irene Cara). If you remember the movie, and the scene where this is sang, you know that it starts off REALLY slow. In fact, I remember reading a short article about how the opening slowness is deliberately meant to represent “holding back”, but while I find it TOO slow in the full recording, this version seemed EVEN slower. And worse, when Katrina was singing the slow or up-tempo portions, there was almost no emotional content in the song. The first part is meant to be pain (“It hurts when there’s nothing…”) followed by the joy of dance and music sending all of that pain into oblivion. If she was a B-stage singer at a concert hall, it would have been fine. In an NAC hall with limited audience reaction and energy, it fell kind of flat. And there was something familiar about her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. More later.

Shayna came back to do “Both Sides Now” (Joni Mitchell) and I hate to knock her, but it was the wrong choice for her age and voice, in my opinion at least. She did a great job, but the Joni Mitchell version at age 25 captured the innocence in the voice, a youthful spirit. Hearing a 40-something woman with a full rich voice doing it seemed odd to me. Good, but not awesome. By contrast, she followed it up with “Freeway of Love” (Aretha Franklin) and it was AMAZING. In addition, hearing the orchestra come in on the horns section was awe-inspiring. It’s not often you hear an orchestra really do justice to some of the simpler stylings in the rock anthems, but when you need a horn or string sound, these are the guys and gals to do it. Fantastic.

Cassidy came back out for another Carole King song, “Up on the Roof”, and it was solid, but not out of the park.

The last single song for the set was “Love is a Battlefield” (Pat Benatar) done as a ballad. Apparently it was originally a ballad, but Benatar turned it into an uptempo rock anthem, and Holly Knight would only license it to them to do a ballad version in the show. It was interesting, and Katrina did a great job (best one of the half for her), but it was a very strange version to hear. Not a Katrina problem, just a song I didn’t enjoy.

The first half closed off with the three of them doing “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman” (Carole King), and the three of them together are a pretty impressive sight. I was hoping there would be more of that in the second half.

As I mentioned above, often the orchestra doesn’t get a whole lot to do on the nights where there are singers and dancers in front of them. I don’t mean they’re not playing, I just mean they are only lightly showcased. Often the conductor throws them a bone and they do one or two instrumentals to show off, but they aren’t usually true showcases for their talents. Tonight’s “bone” was “Pick Up the Pieces” (The Average White Band), and you’ve heard it a thousand times for TV shows and movies probably without having any idea what it was. Here is a version on Youtube:

But for a “bone”, it was kind of fun to hear the orchestra play it in full.

Katrina did the lead for “I Love Rock and Roll” (Joan Jett) with the other two handling backup duties, and while Katrina was trying to sell herself as the “rocker”, I was still feeling like she was reminding me of someone I’d seen before. And it suddenly hit me, because I’d read her bio at the start of the show. She wasn’t just IN the show “Rent”, she played Mimi. For those of you who aren’t obsessed with the show like I am, Mimi is basically a very young-looking 19 with the possibility that she is lying about her age, dancing in a strip club (it involves a lawn chair and handcuffs apparently), and hooked on drugs. She is extremely immature despite claiming to be otherwise, and her sole purpose in life is to feel good (hence the drugs). Her big number? She is a “cat” who wants to go out and “howl at the moon” — “I want to go oouUUTT tonight”. And one of her signature moves is to dance really hard and shake her legs like she can’t sit still, along with a staccato singing voice. Which is EXACTLY what it looked like Katrina was doing. An older version of Mimi singing rock songs. And why I was seeing her as familiar — I hadn’t seen Katrina before, I was seeing an echo of the Mimi character.

And while I like Mimi, I wouldn’t want to be friends with her. She’s shallow, immature, flighty, etc. Not what you’re looking for in a “power ballad singer”. But I digress.

Next up was a solo for Katrina, “These Dreams” (Heart). The song slows it down a bit, a bit more of a softer ballad. And out of NOWHERE, comes this fantastic voice. She did an AWESOME job of it. No Mimi, no playing like a wannabe 30-something ex-rocker chick, just Katrina singing normal. Freaking awesome version.

The next three were quick hits…Shayna doing an okay job with “Best (Simply The Best)” (Tina Turner), Cassidy doing a good job with “I Feel The Earth Move” (Carole King), and Cassidy again giving a solid rendition of “You’ve Got A Friend” (Carole King) with okay audience sing-along for some of the verses.

Katrina came back out, I was hoping for another awesome song, and we were back to Mimi doing “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” (Pat Benatar). The horns were great in the song, while the string section seemed mostly along for the ride.

Then Shayna closed out the solos with “What’s Love Got To Do With It” (Tina Turner). It wasn’t the best song she did all night, and I wondered if part of it was the repetitive nature of the second half of the song. She just seemed to fizzle a bit. Might just be me.

And then the finale.

All three came out and did “Proud Mary” (Tina Turner) with all three of them taking a turn as lead vocals (Shayna, Cassidy and Katrina). Great way to end, including for the obvious encore.

So overall, a much more enjoyable evening than the last time where we saw a scat version of the Dreidel song. 🙂

NAC Pops – Holiday Swing

The PolyBlog
December 9 2018

Andrea and I went to see one of the National Arts Centre (NAC) Pops series last night entitled “Holiday Swing”. As the name suggests, it is a “swing” / big band version of Christmas music. While the series is almost always a good time, it is much improved when Jack Everly is conducting himself as opposed to designing the overall program for the year. Unfortunately, in that regard, it was not Jack, but Byron Stripling performing as conductor, trumpet, and vocals.

I confess that I’m not a big band aficionado, nor a jazz specialist, and was not familiar with Byron Stripling directly. You can see him online in a popular YouTube video:

His trumpet playing is awesome, but that’s about almost where the kudos end for the evening. The night was so inconsistent, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Overall, there were 14 songs during the night, and the NAC Orchestra was sitting twiddling their thumbs for far too much of the show. In addition to Stripling, jazz pianist/organist Bobby Floyd was joining the orchestra for the evening and his talent is made obvious by his long jams, improvisation and complex mixes. And he’s fun to watch too…in the video below, jump to the 2m30 mark and see how animated his face is while planning. Last night, it was even more so…he reacts to every note.

But as great as he is, after an almost 10 minute solo jam, I was more than ready to see them move on. Later in the show, he did another long session in one of the songs, and again, while impressive, two minutes in and I was looking at my watch.

The group opened with What Child is This and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and while both were okay, they were not spectacular. Or maybe it was just that by the time Floyd finished, I had forgotten what came before. Enjoyable, sure; impressive, absolutely. Needed, no.

The third song, Blue Christmas, was divided into three sections, an opening that was mainly the trumpet, a middle section with Floyd highlighted on organ, and an ending with everyone (whole orchestra). The opening “third”, with just the trumpet, was freaking awesome. The song is MEANT to be “blue” / sad…and so many turn it into a content-less upbeat tempo. Stripling did it totally downbeat and blue, and as I said, did an amazing job.

Then we came to the fourth song. I Have A Little Dreidel. When I saw it on the program, I said to Andrea, “Well, that should be interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a jazz/big bang version of the Dreidel song.” I was not optimistic, but I thought, okay, it’s on the program, might be okay. And if it had been just a jazz-y / Big Bang version, and they moved on, I’d probably just think “meh”. But when he threw in a few scat verses, it went from “meh” to “WTF?”. It was ridiculous.

The fifth song was Angels We Have Heard On High. I was raised Catholic, and I never knew that the song had a different name than the tune underlying it (a hymn simply called Gloria…when I was growing up, I only ever saw it listed as Gloria in excelsis Deo – Glory to God in the Highest). It started fine, and then I have no idea where the song went. It was unrecognizable to me for a good portion of the version.

Silent Night was fine, and I was looking forward to the last song of the first half, Go Tell It On the Mountain. Stripling did the vocals, and it was just lacking some oomph. My impression of the song is that it works best as truly a “celebratory” song — it should be practically raising the roof, literally singing it out on the mountains, which is how a few gospel versions do it, even if most contemporary recordings (at least on YouTube and iTunes) tend to treat it as this slow almost mournful hymn. This was somewhere in between.

For those keeping score at home, those 8 songs ran a full hour. Sure, there was some talking and announcements, but most of those songs wouldn’t normally run over 3-4 minutes on their own, so you can see how much “padding” there was in each song.

After the intermission, Sleigh Ride, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, The Skater’s Overture, and even White Christmas were rather “ho hum”. Certainly nothing to write home about, unless it was “Meh, listened to some average music.”.

And then the full orchestra did O Holy Night. Just plain wow. There’s a version online of orchestra and trumpet by Adolphe Adam, and about the 1m10s point, it sounds like the version the orchestra did. I felt the NAC version was a bit faster version, and I liked it more, but the strings were uplifting.

The next song up was one I was looking forward to…Amazing Grace. Now, I’m willing to accept that some people can’t do justice to the song with the lyrics, sure. And there is no “one way” to sing it. It is as individual as the artist. Even if you love the song, you might not like every version, including the Oak Ridge Boys version at George Bush’s funeral last week. But no matter whether you prefer one that is heartbreaking or uplifting, fast or slow, male or female singer, I am hard-pressed to think of any preference that would have been satisfied by the version they did. With a large Bobby Floyd organ solo in the middle, it was unrecognizable for good portions of the song. If I hadn’t heard the basic opening and ending, or read the program in advance, I would have had NO idea what the song even was that they were playing. It was THAT badly done. Individual styling is one thing, destruction of a classic is another.

The show ended with Joy to the World, which was okay, nothing special.

The program promised at the end of the show there would be a “surprise” that would have everyone dancing in the aisles. And when the show ended, all the musicians rushed off stage left, taking their instruments with them. I assumed they were going out to the lobby to play while some busked for the Snowsuit Fund or Food Bank charities they support. I have no idea. No opportunity for an encore, no idea where they went, and when we went outside, we didn’t see them playing anywhere nor hear them. I have absolutely no idea what the “surprise” was supposed to be unless it was “Surprise, we sucked tonight and we’re leaving before you throw rotten fruit and vegetables at us!” and the dancing in the aisles was because it was over.

Extremely disappointing. Stripling did a couple of stock jokes about bad audiences, but after the intermission, he thanked everyone for coming back in as he said that the night before, a lot of people left at the intermission. While that is often a stock phrase rather than a true story, I actually believed it was possible. If this was their third night and they had tweaked anything to get it right, the other nights must have really sucked.

But the wonky part is that in the end, it’s still a night at the NAC with a great orchestra and live music. And O Holy Night was beautifully done, as was any of the smooth trumpet playing by Stripling. So despite my ranting above, I come out only a little bit below my wife’s take, which was that overall she enjoyed it. Too bad the rest of the program didn’t match those few gems.