The City of Thompson has released preliminary information on its lineup for Thompson Concert Series 2010-11.
The only pricing and location information released last week was "six concerts once price: $100." Tickets go on sale Sept. 1 at the recreation centre. "I will get the location, ticket price info shortly," Chris Sharpe, the City of Thompson's culture co-ordinator, said in an Aug. 10 e-mail.
In recent years, the series has been held in R.D. Parker Collegiate's Letkemann Theatre. Last year tickets were $25 for event or $100 for a ticket package for all five events.
First up this year is on Sept. 25 is 22-year-old rhythm and blues artist Danny Fernandes, who won the 2009 MuchMusic Video Award for Best Canadian Pop Video of the Year for "Private Dancer."On Dec. 4, Don Amero, a singer-songwriter from Winnipeg is in town. Amero won for male artist of the year at the 2009 Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards for his CD Deepening.
In the new year, classical music soprano Martha Guth and baritone Tyler Duncan, top prize winner at the 2007 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition in London, soprano Martha Guth and baritone Tyler Duncan, with collaborative pianist, Erika Switzer, are here Jan. 21, followed just four days later on Jan. 25 by India-born Kiran Ahluwalia, with her blend of fado, Saharan African blues and jazz, bring a modern ghazal style into a contemporary global context. She won the 2004 Juno Award for Best World Music album.
A month later on Feb. 25, Nashville-based country performer Crystal Shawanda arrives. Shawanda is a full-blooded Ojibwe from the Wikwemikong reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario. By the time she was 11 she was playing gigs wherever she could. She signed with RCA Records Nashville in 2007, quickly releasing the single "You Can Let Go."
The traditional concert series wrap up show on March 12 will see the Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC) make their annual Thompson winter stop as part of the regional tour, this time with the comedy Wingfield On Ice.
As the first frost comes to Persephone Township, Walt and Maggie Wingfield are prepared to welcome new life to their farm - she's expecting and he's nesting. Alarmed about old feuds that divide the neighbours and disturb the tranquility of the community, Walt tries to reconcile strained relationships. His attempts to mend other people's fences are met with a resistance as stiff and cold as the weather itself - and the biggest challenge to all of them is looming on the horizon.
This slice of rural life is the fifth of seven in the Wingfield series, which follows stockbroker-turned-farmer Walt Wingfield, in a mythical township north of Toronto. While performing in the series for over 25 years, Rod Beattie has won three best actor awards.
The Manitoba Theatre Centre, based in Winnipeg, is wrapped up the City of Thompson's concert series for 2009-10 with Robert Chafe's 2002 play Tempting Providence, originally commissioned to be a "portable" play to be performed in Newfoundland and Labrador's senior citizen homes and schools, written as a series of episodes that chronicle the early years of Myra Bennett's life in Daniel's Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Next winter will mark the 33rd consecutive year the MTC has gone on regional tour. In 2009, MTC brought to Thompson Theresa Rebeck's one-character play, Bad Dates, starring actress Precious Chong, daughter of Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong fame, as Haley Walker in a monologue by a Texas woman transplanted to New York City. MTC also took the play to Churchill, making their first stop there in 17 years. MTC brought Rope's End, Doug Bowie's bittersweet 2006 comedy came to Thompson Jan. 29, 2008 as part of its annual regional tour.
Last year, Thompson-born violinist Steven Tsitsos kicked of the City of Thompson's concert series.
In November last year, Bancroft, Ontario's Everything Fitz, led by Paddy Fitzgerald, patriarch of the fiddling and percussive step dancing clan with roots in the Canadian old-time fiddle tradition, which besides Paddy, includes 16-year-old son, Tom, mother and wife, Pam, percussionist Pat, 21, son and brother, and daughter and sisters Julie, 20, and Kerry, 19, made their second visit to Thompson with a stage show combining variety of musical styles from Celtic, bluegrass, western swing, to entertaining novelty tunes and choreographed step dance routines. Julie, Kerry and Tom are all champion fiddlers and provided intricate three-part fiddle harmonies as well as solo improvisations on fiddle and mandolin.
The Borderlanders touring quartet - made up of Canadian singer-songwriters Sylvia Tyson and Ron Hynes and their American counterparts Gretchen Peters and Graham Isaacson - wrapped up the musical portion of the City of Thompson Concert Series for 2008-2009 in January 2009. That series kicked of Oct. 30, 2008 with country music star Shane Yellowbird, followed on Nov. 12, 2008 with an evening classical music program offered by pianist David Moroz and saxophonist Allen Harrington.
