After taking the summer off, Friday Night Live (Open Mic Night) returns to Medici’s Gelateria & Coffee House. Drop by 522 Fairview Road (Oliver) on Friday November 1 from 7 – 10 p.m. Kick back on a couch and relax, warm up by the cozy fireplaces, order a mochaccino, and hum along. Feeling the beat? Bring your music and voice and give us a tune!
Stay up to date on the lunch specials by following Medici’s on Facebook (click link)
Tickets for Juno Award and Great Canadian Blues Award winner Ken Hamm are selling like hot cakes! Ken Hamm will be returning for his Okanagan fans on WEDNESDAY, October 30th, and we’re looking forward to another sell-out show. Tickets are limited, get your tickets while they last by clicking this link:
Ken Hamm is a well known acoustic solo musician based in Forget, SK. His playing is influenced by early blues recordings and a love of oldtimey music, resulting in a varied repertoire of original and traditional songs ranging from metalguitar driven hardedge blues workouts to softer dobro and banjo pieces. His main influences include Ry Cooder, Mississippi John Hurt, John Fahey and John Hartford.
Ken learned to play during the 1950s, when guitar slingers like Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Ventures prevailed. In the 60’s, music went through coffeehouse folk and electric rock and clues phases, and Ken was swept up by these influences,playing in blues based bands in Thunder Bay like Tundra and the Bay St Blues Band, and eventually going acoustic with the release on vinyl of Ken Hamm and Friends in 1978.That LP led to a string of positive reviews and nominations in publications like Guitar Player magazine.
A Juno award in 1991 was followed by the Great Canadian Blues Award in 2010.Hamm has recorded 8 CDs to date, the most recent a double disc live collection released in 2006.
After some time in Calgary, and 25 years living in coastal BC,Ken moved to Forget,SK in 2007, and married his wife Heather there in 2009. For nine years they operated a small music store including teaching and instrument repairs
Another combination began when Heather Peat Hamm released Blue Gramma,her first book of prairie poetry and drawings, and now they do some shows together. Ken is also currently involved in producing and recording projects close to home,including an upcoming new solo release slated for 2017.
Avoid temptation after Hallowe’en! The arts council welcomes your donations of leftover candies to add to the goodie bags at the Holly Jolly Oliver concert in late November. We are looking for NON-Hallowe’en-y treats, so you can eat all the orange and black gummies and chewy zombie body parts yourself. Must be commercially produced and individually wrapped, for food safety, and small enough to fit into sandwich baggies.
Your bagged goodies can be dropped off at
TELUS Store at Oliver Place Mall
Hours:
9 – 5 Monday through Friday
10 – 4 Saturday
Questions or other arrangements: OliverCAC @ gmail.com
What could be better than hearing one fine musician on a grand piano? Why, hearing two fine musicians on two grand pianos of course!
That is what the South Okanagan Concert Society is offering when the Bergmann Piano Duo perform at Venables Theatre 7:30 pm, Friday, November 15. Last here in 2013, Marcel and Elizabeth Bergmann were an enormous hit. He from Munich, Germany and she from Medicine Hat, Canada met at music school in Hanover, Germany. They became a couple and started playing together in 1989.
Innovative and versatile, this appealing duo present a masterful achievement of‘brilliance, rhythmic vitality and melodic shaping. Performing internationally, they play an eclectic mix of classical and contemporary pieces including their own original compositions and arrangements. They have won awards all over Europe with their virtuosic dedication and the instincts of professional entertainers. They also have won Western Canadian Music Awards for their outstanding classical recordings.
Tickets for the concert are available at the Venables Theatre website (click link) or at the theatre box office Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10 to 3 pm. Generous sponsors make ticket prices very affordable. Two or more tickets in advance are only $21/ticket. Single tickets in advance are $23 and at the door $25. Youth are almost free’ at $2.50. We want the younger generation exposed to quality music.
As well as performing careers, the Bergmanns enjoy teaching and have been on faculty at Mt. Royal University and the University of Calgary. They work in other capacities in the music industry and promote the Banff Centre for the Arts. At present, they live in White Rock and love the ocean and the natural surroundings there.
Elizabeth says, “There is order, patterns and structure evident in nature similar to that in music. Nature and music feed our souls.” Marcel particularly likes to invent his own arrangements of contemporary repertoire. He enjoys “built-in opportunities for free variations and improvisational elements while still following a well established overall form and structure.”
Don’t miss this event. If the Bergmanns are half as good as the last time they performed here, you will be more than happy! Come and travel where the muse has taken them in recent years.
