As I write this it is the second day of the new school year. This is the 9th year I did not have the preschool jitters accompanied by the sleepless night(s) before the school year began. However, it does represent a change in routine and the inception of many activities.
By far the most important and most exciting is that my eldest son, Joseph, who has lived in Germany for 15 years now, comes home for a visit with his wife and our grandson. We will spend a glorious month with the infant and there is no doubt tears will be shed when they return to Germany in four weeks’ time. But in the interim, we will have wonderful chats, great experiences and we may spoil our grandson… just a little bit.
But back to the arts, as that is the focus of this column.
A week ago, I had the pleasure of attending the final Chatham Concert Band (CCB) performance at Tecumseh Park. It was even more fun because Joni’s horn choir, The Three Rivers Horn Choir, was a guest performer that evening. The number of French horns varies from 6 to 12 with each gig for this ensemble. On this evening, there were 6 horns on stage. A few cool things happened that night. I was asked to assist the ensemble in rehearsal by conducting them. It was great to exercise those muscles, 4 years of training in university and over a decade of teaching music means the muscle memory came back instantly. Far more exciting was the guest who travelled from London just to hear the horns.
Ron George is the horn prof at Western and he has been there for decades. We were reminiscing and determined that I have known Ron for over 45 years. I met him when he was a young instructor at a music camp I attended while in high school. He taught at Western when I was a student and he lived in Sarnia and knew all of the music teachers in the area until a decade ago.
Ron was, by far, the most qualified to judge, evaluate, critique the evening. I did not see him during the horn choir as my back was to the audience while on the stage, but I sat beside Ron for every other chart and Ron is what you hope every musician is like as an audience member: he was, at 70, as energetic and thrilled to hear the music as a 7-year-old. Many times I witnessed Ron joyfully clapping along to the music of the evening and he would turn to me with a truly authentic and joyful look and declare, “Isn’t this great!”
The icing on the cake for the horns is that Ron has offered to join them for a future performance if his schedule aligns with their performances.
After the performance I spoke with CCB and 3 River’s horn player Veronika Redfern, a co-founder of the choir with Joni, and noted that the band was missing a tuba player. She explained why and jokingly asked if I wanted to play.
Short story is, Joni and I discussed it and decided we would like to join the band until Christmas.
So, for the next few months we will rehearse on Mondays with the CCB, Tuesdays with WCB, Wednesday with LCB and that’s not all!
Our quartet, The Gavin Warren Oktoberfest Quartet has been rehearsing through the summer in preparation for the fall. Gavin, Joni, myself and Bill Hainer on euphonium will be doing this for the third year. In our first year, we played one gig, at Glasstown Brewing here in Wallaceburg. Last year we had 8 or 9 gigs and this year we currently have 21 performances. Our first gig is Sept 12 and 13 at the International Food Festival in Chatham’s Tecumseh Park from 3:30 until 4:30 both days. Joseph and his family will be there for one of the shows and will introduce us in German.
I will post our other public performances in my next column in case you want to take in a show. Listening to Gavin fly around the clarinet is worth the effort! All of our public performances after the food festival are in Sarnia.
We still have to sort out a date for our quintet to rehearse and Joni is singing with Pat Lee’s choir for the Christmas season.
After the Christmas season we will shift to one concert band, 3 Rivers and the quintet. Why? Because next week we are holding auditions for a play presented by the Lambton Law Association. The play, Chronicles of Sarnia, is written by Sarnia native Matt Murray. Matt is also the son of the founder of these fundraising ventures, a long-time Sarnia lawyer, the late Bob Murray. I will direct that show and Joni will stage manage. Every other person involved is a lawyer. We begin rehearsals in January for a May production.
Stay tuned for more info on that as well.
If you see Joni and I wandering around with huge smiles on our face in the next month, you can bet we had some time with our grandson! Fun final fact: we had our friend Terry McConnell arrange lullabies for horn and tuba.
Photo, from left: Joe Kuhn, Vicki Cooledge, Sarah Huang Chiezzi, Ron George, Joni Yazbeck, Jackie Koncovy and Veronika Redfern.
