| For a while there, back in the fall, it looked like there might be some frightening parallels between Calgary and the fictional town without music in The Mysterious Maestro.
Had the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra not settled its strike, the lack of a symphony might have made the city awfully quiet for some. Among them would be performer Onalea Gilbertson, whose company Dandi Productions has been collaborating with the CPO for four years. Together they’ve made classical music accessible to the youth of the city in shows based on Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and in other symphonic-theatrical presentations.
Now they’re creating their own work, The Mysterious Maestro, which follows the fate of one inquistive youngster as she attempts to discover the strange secrets of a town where music is forbidden.
"It sort of picks up where the Pied Piper left off," says Gilbertson. "It’s about a young girl who comes to a town where there’s no music, everybody smashes rocks, no one’s allowed to whistle – it’s awful! We play that up... so that we get the sense of some kind of mystery."
The show was written by the Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s Judd Palmer, who worked with costume designer Tara Kozak to create the ornate costumes and puppets. Thus, the visual element of the piece is just as important as the music, although it is the score by Dave Pierce and Donovan Seidle that holds the work together.
The two composers contributed three new pieces of their own and re-orchestrated many classical compositions to complement the story.
"We’ve taken bits and pieces of the classics, the most recognizable parts, but we’ve put little twists and turns into them," says Pierce. "So the musicians are always thrown for a bit of a loop. This is music that they’ve played for 20 or 30 years – they could do it in their sleep, and all of a sudden...."
As long as the CPO can continue working with contemporary composers, and finding new ways to attract audiences young and old, there is hopefully little danger that this city will ever be without its symphony again. |
