The Arts

New West Theatre is blasting back to the ’50s this summer with their latest production “Twist and Shout,” which runs June 29-July 23.

    New West went all out for its ’50s theme this year. It built a replica of a ’50s diner on stage for the band to play behind and the band will be dressed up as soda jerks, said general manager Jeremy Mason.

“The shows all have a very familiar framework, but we like to do something new every year to keep it fresh,” he said.

“And everybody from that generation will remember these songs. And even if you’re not, you will recognize them,” he said.

He is excited about seeing the new cast perform.

 “Just because some of your familiar faces won’t be here this year, it doesn’t mean you won’t see them again,” he continued.

Familiar faces such as Scott Carpenter, Jocelyn Haub and Erica Hunt are returning. However, some of the familiar faces such as Kathy Zaborsky and Mark Nivet wanted to stay in Vancouver and Toronto, respectively, to work on other projects. That opens the door for a lot of new faces like University of Lethbridge graduate Andrew Legg, who is looking forward to the comedy aspect of the new show.

“It’s the ’50s, which is my parents’ era, and a little bit before, the ’50s and early ’60s is a really fun era to tap into for comedy,” Legg said.

He is looking forward to a bit called “Then And Now.”

“For me, my sliding progression is comedy, singing and then dancing. We’ve got a really good choreographer and Jay Whitehead is directing, so that’s what makes it fun.”

Legg is enjoying being part of the cast; he was in a New West Show about 10 years ago and has since spent time working in Calgary, Edmonton and on the West Coast.

“It’s a really talented cast. For me, it’s like coming home. I grew up watching New West,” he said.

“They are very talented and work together well which makes it a real pleasure to entertain.”

He is looking forward to performing in front of the live audience.

“It’s not like being on television or in a movie where you wait around on set and might not even see the finished project. In theatre, opening night is so exciting because the audience is right there and you get to give them what you’ve been working on,” he said.

Veteran Erica Hunt always looks forward to it when New West revisits the ’50s.

“It is a pretty good revue of ’50s and early ’60s pop music,” she said.

She is enjoying working with the new cast members.

“They’re really great, they’re really talented and super nice. I’m happy to be back,” she said.

“We’ve done a lot of ’50s shows, but they are all different. There are different songs, different costumes and different dances. I think we’ll be transporting people back to the ’50s and ’60s.”

Mason said he believes the most important thing for New West is to put on a “high-quality show each year.”

“Hopefully, we’ve captured the era of ‘American Graffiti’ and ‘Happy Days’. It’s an era that is nostalgic for a lot of people,” Mason said.

The show runs June 29-July 23at the Yates Theatre. Find out more on www.newwesttheatre.com.

Tickets are available online or by calling 403-329-7328 (SEAT).

The Allied Arts Council needs artists and musicians for this year’s, bigger and better instalment of Arts Days, Sept. 30-Oct. 2. The deadline to get involved with this event is June 30.
“There will be a broad range of visual artists and music. And we’ll probably add a literary component as well,” said Ashley Markus, Allied Arts Council communications co-ordinator.
She said they have already received quite a few applications that include several new faces.
As anyone who attended this two-day arts party in Galt Gardens last year will attest, Arts Days is a great way for artists and musicians to show off their music and works.
There are three components to Arts Days that will be combined into one wild weekend.
The first one, the Art Walk, matches local artists and their works with local downtown businesses. Artists will have their works on display and may even be creating them right there, so visitors can watch the artistic process unfold. It takes place on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 during the day. Over 50 artists and businesses were involved with the event last year.
The second part of the event is the artisans market, which takes place in Galt Gardens on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.
It is the place for local artists and crafts people to display their wares in their own booths. It will be taking place from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
The fun event for music lovers is the Arts Fest, which takes place in the main gazebo. It has been expanded to three days, from 5-10 p.m., Sept. 29 and 30, and 1-4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 1.
“We’re also looking for buskers and street performers as well as visual artists and artisans,” Markus continued.
Artists can go to the website www.artsdayslethbridge.org and download an application. Artists are asked to provide samples of their work and, for musicians, provide sound clips.
“We just want to see what you can do,” she said.
Because the event has been extended to three days, more artists will be needed.
A new addition this year, is the Rotary Club will be running a beer garden at the Arts Fest.
“I just like seeing the variety of art. It’s just terrific. I also like seeing the variety of people who come out to it. It’s very rewarding. I remember we had one family who was there for the whole thing,” Markus continued.
“It’s nice to see artists reaching out to people and people coming out to support it.”

Richard Amery
For the Sun Times
“Yarn bombing” is all about beautifying drab, grey, concrete urban spaces and maybe even bringing smiles to a few faces.
While Lethbridge resident Jo-Ann Matvichuk can’t take the credit for beginning the phenomenon known as “yarn bombing,” “guerrilla knitting,” or “yarn storming,” she can take at least partial credit for “International Yarn Bombing Day,” which took place around the globe, June 11. Locally it was among the highlights of the Lethbridge Craft Jamboree a series of activities surrounding the Lethbridge crafts and arts scene.
 What is yarn bombing?
“It’s just being creative. It’s not difficult to do. Because living in an urban centre, there are a lot of drab, grey concrete spaces. We want to make them more colourful,” she said adding she discovered yarn bombing through a Facebook group and various blogs from other bombers.
Basically participants knit or crochet items to dress up things like chain link fences, tree tops, abandoned buildings, bus shelters, traffic light poles and buttons with hand-knitted cozies, skirts, and even hand-knitted monster feet to place around light poles
“I started small with a bunch of little two-inch ladybugs which I put on a display of artificial flowers at Michaels. I just left them there and took a picture of them,” she said. That was a year ago.
Photography is an important element of yarn bombing as the results go on a variety of websites including her blog http://www.purlgurls.blogspot.com/.
She expanded to knitting a colourful seat cover for one of the downtown bus stops.
“It stayed there for a month, so that shows people must have appreciated it,” she continued.
On Saturday, she and a group of friends yarn-bombed a variety of locations including a chain-link fence near her son’s school, the Chinese National building downtown and a lot more. She has since done about 20 yarn-bombing projects.
Her biggest work was seen just this past Sunday, coincidentally, right after International yarn-bombing day on the reality show “Wipeout Canada,” which was filmed in Argentina.
“I was a competitor on the show. Every contestant has a character and my character was called the ‘knitting ninja.’ To make a long story short, they called me on my s---, so I  knitted a cozy for one of those big red bowls. It’s probably six by eight feet around,” she said adding she wanted to put it on the bowl herself, but due to liability issues, the show’s organizers got professional divers to do it.
Her family is supportive of her yarn-bombing activities.
“My husband sometimes raises his eyebrow about it, but realizes how much I enjoy it, but my eldest son Jarius is my substitute helper, when my posse can’t make it. My youngest, Jobe, doesn’t quite understand it,” she continued.
While yarn bombing requires a lot of preparation to create the works, there is also an adrenaline rush from doing it.
“If I can get a smile out of people because of it, then I’m happy,” she said.
“I think it’s the creativity and the bizarre colours transforming otherwise grey and drab urban landscapes,” she said deciding what she enjoys most about it.
She said it surprisingly wasn’t tough to co-ordinate the worldwide event, thanks to the magic of social media. Bombers will follow blogs like Matvichuk’s who will in turn follow their followers as well as inadvertently through sites like ravelry.com, where knitting and crochet enthusiasts gather to exchange patterns and ideas, then the news spreads by word of mouth through the world wide web.
“I had a bout of insomnia and was talking to a friend online and asked her what if we were to all put one day aside and do this. So I started a Facebook group. I remember how excited I was when when it hit 100 likes; now there are close 3,000,” she said.
 A friend in Austin is going to post films and photos of the activities.
“It is really popular in Europe, especially Germany and it is big in Canada and the United States,” she said.
“We have people half way across the world taking part in Australia and New Zealand involved. And they will be done by the time we start, so we won’t have to wait until Sunday to see what they did. So I’m very excited about that. We even have people in Israel and Egypt where you just don’t do something like this.”
Yet she is a recent recruit to the art of knitting and crocheting.
“My mom used to do it. But I wasn’t interested. I grew up on a farm in northern Alberta and was more interested in being outside helping my dad,” she said.
She rediscovered it about eight years ago.

Though their 50th season has just ended, the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra is already excited about their 51st, which begins Oct. 7 with the first Chamber Series presentation.
There will be a variety of highlights throughout the season — selections from popular movies sych as “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” popular musicals like “West Side Story,” opera, a new composition about southern Alberta, handbell choir, the Bridge Bells playing for their annual Christmas concert and symphonic classics, Plus there will be new faces, new performances, new collaborations and special guests including mezzo soprano Sandra Stringer. All that and a performance of Mozart’s popular opera “The Magic Flute.”
“It will be the full experience of the Magic Flute,” said Lethbridge Symphony musical director Glenn Klassen. “The Magic Flute” takes place Feb. 3 and 4 at the Southminster United Church. It is one of many collaborations in the community with the symphony as it is being performed with the University of Lethbridge Opera workshop director Blaine Hendsbee.
“If we were to do these things alone, the cost would be prohibitive. But we can work together to give the community this wonderful experience,” Klassen continued.
The University of Lethbridge opera workshop will be providing the singers, while the symphony, which also includes a lot of university students, will be supplying the music. The symphony features between 50-60 performers from all over the community from students to seniors.
“We always have new faces,” Klassen said.
He is glad to welcome new principal second violin Lise Boutin. She replaces the retiring Maria Geppert.
“We’re thrilled to have her,” he said, noting she has a lot of experience including with the University of Lethbridge conservatory as well as being a sought-after freelancer.
“She will be a wonderful asset.”
Klassen is excited about many things happening this season including pianist Glen Montgomery on March 19 and the winner of the Young Artists Competition this year, timpani player Matt Groenheide. He won the young artists competition, which took place on April 30. The contest is held every other year; however, Klassen was so impressed by the talent each year that he would like to see it take place annually.
“I’m really excited about it, just seeing the talent that we have coming out to it,” he said.
“We have such an amazing talent pool here and it just keeps getting better.”
Groenheide, who is also a member of the Global Drums as well as the symphony, sent in a CD of some of his favourite pieces including Michael Doherty’s “Raise The Roof,” which is sure to do just that on May 7 when he will be helping bring the season to a close.
He will be the featured artist at the symphony’s season-ending performance May 7.
“It was open to any musicians, but most of them are from Lethbridge because it is based in Lethbridge,” Groenheide said.
Entrants submitted CDs of them playing. Winners were chosen in five categories including vocals/singing, piano, flute/woodwinds and percussion, which he won.
Groenheide was immediately drawn to “Raise the Roof,” because of its diversity.
“This piece has a lot of stuff happening in it. On a timpani, they are huge kettle drums and each drum is tuned to a note, so you can play melodies on drums. It’s really different to see. There are strong melodies and also some really bombastic elements and grooves. There’s elements of world music and pop and classical. It’s kind of everything,” he continued.
“Raise the Roof” was one of the pieces he entered in the competition. He recorded it with pianist Graeme Roset.
“The night before the competition, we were pumped about it. But everyone else was playing real well, so there were a lot of ups and downs, worried and confident but it all worked out.”
Norbert Boehm is looking forward to another successful season leading Musaeus, the Lethbridge Symphony’s resident professional string quartet, but can’t choose his most anticipated part of the upcoming season.
“It’s like being asked to choose which one is your favourite kid,” he said, adding he, too, is looking forward to working with Boutin.
He is also looking forward to exploring the impressive amount of music written for string quartet.
“The repertoire for string quartet is so vast,” he said.
Selections from Schubert, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Elgar among many others will be feature throughout the season.
Musaeus also welcomes special guests including the University of Lethbridge Faculty Brass, classical guitarist Dale Ketcheson on March 2 and mezzo soprano Sandra Stringer who opens the season Oct. 7 plus Matt Groenheide who who will be performing marimbas with them on Nov. 18.