Chad Wolfe demonstrates his fiddling skill Saturday night as he performs with the North Bay Symphony Orchestra at the Capitol Centre.
Chad Wolfe demonstrates his fiddling skill Saturday night as he performs with the North Bay Symphony Orchestra at the Capitol Centre.
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The weekend was drastically cold, but the North Bay Symphony Orchestra was able to warm things up by including local fiddlemeister Chad Wolfe in its latest concert Saturday evening.
And Wolfe’s fiddling and stepdancing certainly caused the audience to burst into a spontaneous combustion of applause.
Gems from the Silver Screen was the theme for the show, with the orchestra playing musical selections from movies including South Pacific, Fiddler on the Roof, The Sound of Music and Dr. Zhivago.
While the symphony performed admirably, it was Wolfe and members of his dance school who absconded with the show in the end.
Wolfe didn’t appear until about two-thirds of the way into the program, soloing in Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ on the Ritz.
His second number was a cute bit of fun called Draggin’ the Bow, from the traditional dance suite The Park Bench.
In this segment Wolfe is sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper when dancer Suzanne Boland comes along and tries to attract his attention via tapping.
Musical accompaniment is provided by fiddlers Nathan Smith and Bourton Scott and pianist Anne Smith
The piece is highlighted by Boland’s effective facial gestures and her high energy.
We next see Wolfe part way through Johan Pachelbel’s Canon in D, as he skillfully wends Kohler’s Hornpipe into the baroque masterpiece.
Ten of Wolfe’s students then
joined him on the stage for his trademark original composition Fiddlefied, the clickety-clack of their tap shoes resonating, it seemed, throughout Northeastern Ontario in a rousing finale.
The entire sequence was arranged by composer/arranger Mark de Sousa, who also teaches music at Widdifield Secondary School.
de Sousa also arranged the orchestra medley from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, which featured two up and coming North Bay talents, soprano Brittany Shallow and tenor Raymond Gauthier, in the beautifully sung duet All I Ask of You.
The evening began with the Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld, by Jacques Offenbach, easly recognizable as the theme usually associated with French can-can dancers.
It's also been injected into a few Bugs Bunny cartoons, but I digress.
From Paris it's off to the other side of the world and the South Pacific Symphonic Scenario, featuring the music of Richard Rodgers. Some of the greatest compositions of all times are included in this musical: Bali Ha'i, This Nearly Was Mine, Cockeyed Optimist and, of course, Some Enchanted Evening, perhaps the most stirring love song ever written.
The orchestra also performed the Blue Danube Waltz and selections from Oklahoma and Titanic.
On a frigid winter night, no one could have asked for more.
