OCR Text |
Show The Nenspaper Wednesday April I, 1 98 1 Page H5 ...join the family! McL AIJST FAMILY DUKB k BAND Bluegrass at its best 1 r 0 9 0 Anna Spiess exhibit to open atKAC "Prairie Country 1981" A new, one-person exhibit featuring the works of Utah painter Anna Spiass will open Sunday, April 5 at the Kimball Art Center. The exhibit will feature a number of paintings in a variety of media by the Bountiful-based Bountiful-based artist. For the past 30 years, Anna Spiess has been one of the area's most prolific artists. She has produced hundreds of paintings and has continually experimented experi-mented with different styles and techniques. Her paintings paint-ings have included everything every-thing from abstracts to landscapes. The landscapes of Utah, the Northwest and Canada have been recurring subjects of her paintings. Not surprisingly, sur-prisingly, she considers herself to be a "Western" painter. Mrs. Spiess has exhibited "throughout the state. She has had exclusive showings at the Bountiful and Salt Lake County Libraries, Li-braries, Dewey Moore Gallery in Salt Lake, Bountiful-Davis Art Center, Barnes Bank in Kaysville, Farmers State Bank in Bountiful, the Feye Gordon Gallery, Waldport, Oregon, the Minot Gallery, Minot, North Dakota, and the Simple Craftsman Gallery in Georgetown, Colorado. A reception honoring the artist will be held in the art center's main gallery April 5 from 3 to 5 p.m. The reception recep-tion is free and open to the public. The exhibit will be on display through April 30. 1981. Thursday, April 9th . . OGDEN with the Shupe Family Fiddlers & the Oquirrah Ridge Drifters, 8 pm -$r Ogden High School Friday, April 10th . . SALT LAKE with the Peewee Pickers, Bittercreek, & the Sunshine Cloggers, 8 pm ic Highland High School it tickets: Family of Folk 12 00 L Adults $4.00 Children $3.00 Tickets available at all ZCMI stores. Intermoumam R,mj" ;i i Music in Salt Lake and Don and Ollie's Music in Oqdcn George Shearing gives concert this weekend When an interviewer asked George Shearing if he had been blind all his life, he answered, "Not yet.", Behind the esoteric label of "jazz pianist" lies a man of wit, and warmth. Shearing has been a major, ..pianist, , arranger,!' and composer the jazzliellojcyearsj and his appearance this Saturday night with Brian Torff at the Yarrow-Holiday Yarrow-Holiday Inn has to be considered one of the major music concerts of the year. He came to fame in the late '40s as the leader of the George Shearing Quintet a then-unusual combination of piano, vibes, guitar, bass, and drums. Their recording of an old standard, "September "Sep-tember in the Rain" produced a new tranquil sound in jazz. The record and the group became a classic. Many people still think of him as the leader of a quintet, quin-tet, but actually Shearing broke up the group in 1978. His sound as a pianist was too often swallowed up by the other instruments. The quintet was nice, he told reporters, but after 29 years he was running on "automatic pilot." Shearing said, "The quintet has broken up now, and I hope it's dead forever." At the age of 62, Shearin still is experimenting. His tune "Lullaby in Bird-land" Bird-land" a jazz classic is remembered in the quintet version. But the pianist plays it now with elements of Johann Sebastian Bach. "It's almost as if the tune were written by Bach," he told a Salt Lake Tribune reporter, "except that instead in-stead of treating him as a devout Lutheran, we treat him both as a devout Lutheran and a beer-drinking beer-drinking German, which, you know, he was." The Shearing Quintet is now the Shearing Duo. His other half is bassist Brian Torff, who some critics say has a uncanny ability to anticipate an-ticipate Shearing and follow him along on his harmonic detours. "Torff does everything imaginable with his electrified double bass. It walks, it talks, it runs, it cries, it leaps and yet it tingles and sings..." Shearing was born on August 13, 1919 in the Batter-sea Batter-sea area of London. He was congenially blind, the youngest son of a coalman-one of the English working class content to work for menial wages because "the boss is good to me." Shearing's exceptional ear drove him to seek something better. He struggled to overcome his handicap, venturing out into the world without cane or guide-dog. (On one occasion, he stumbled into a seven-foot-deep hole.) As a youngster, he found he could duplicate a song on the family piano after ft hearing : it. on the radio., . Although,,! ., his formal , education in music was enough to win him several musical scholarships, his need for money led him to playing piano in a neighborhood neigh-borhood pub. He joind Claude Bampton and his All Blind Band, a government-sponsored group, whose theme song was "I'll See You In My Dreams." Shearing recalls the night one musician's glass eye popped out on the bandstand. "There we were, 16 blind guys on the floor looing for this eye." Shearing progressed in the '30s from supper clubs to BBC performances to air raid shelters. Ironically, he grew in popularity during World War II. as he played for huddled Britishers suf-' fering through the blitz. During that time, he also met and married Trixie Bayes. (He was divorced in 1973.) He traveled to America in Theater meet 1947 with high hopes of achieving the success he had found in England. Instead, he earned a living playing intermission piano for Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. 1 Then his friend, noted jazz critic Leonard Feather., i suggested a session with four, other musicians: vibraphone player Marjorie Hyams; guitarist Chuck Wayne; John Levy on bass; and Denzil Best on drums. Their version of "September in the Rain" made musicial history and the group became the George Shearing Quintet. Shearing became famous for his "locked hands" technique, in which he plays identical chords with both left and right hands. He didn't discover it, he admits, but it was he who commercialized commer-cialized the method. He is noted for taking familiar tunes from Erroll Garner's "Misty", to Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" and giving it his own unique interpretation. in-terpretation. But in recent years, a latent interst in classical music has peaked, and Shearing has appeared "with the Cleveland Symphony, Sym-phony, Arthur Fiedler's Boston Pops, and the Utah Symphony under Maurice Abravanel. Shearing has told reporters repor-ters he resents being labelled a "Blind Jazz Pianist," though he can be articulate about both blindness blind-ness and , jazz. Not being .able to see, he said, is not a handicap, it's a nuisance. He has never been bitter about his "nuisance," he said, because it has never held him back. About his music, he has been quoted as saying, "I deplore the part of jazz which constantly tries to be back where it was.. ..I agree that some dingy little bar is still and probably always will be the best place to hear jazz, but there's no reason why it should not be in concert halls. You know, jazz went from the gin mills and the whorehouses all of the way up to Carnegie Hall." Shearing has appeared in Japan, the West Indies, Europe and South America, attracting capacity audiences audien-ces wherever he goes. Shearing's concert this Saturday is scheduled for U p.m. at the Yarrow-Holiday Inn. He also will conduct a master clinic from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Inn. at a charge of $5 a person. Past workshops have discussed the development of jazz piano, and the role played by boogie. Tickets for the 8 p.m. con- . cert are $8 for Kimball Art Outer members and $9.50 .Jor non-members. PARK CITY WB 9 Aft 268 Main St. 649-4146 Now featuring a Country Daily Special Coming Up .April J.'ih h t'lth Norton Ikiftdht Ajinl JOt'.i h I'M joe Connoi! Mm 7th Mary MrGism Jim Ringer Mm ni Asioo) of llio U'fioW mil' 2Hth Josso W inches lor Kat 8r Mickey and The Home Town Band Players lose, but leave smiling The Park City Players came in last place in the finals of the regional theater competition held in Billings, Montana last week. "But," said one member, "I don't think anybody had as much fun as we did." The Players' production of "6 Rms Riv Vu" ranked third in the competition featuring finalists from Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. Mon-tana. But the rival companies com-panies both have been firmly established for several years, in contrast to the Players' nearly two-year existence. First place went to a company com-pany from Sheridan, Wyoming, for their production produc-tion of "Jesse and the Bandit Queen." "It sounds like one of those old-fashioned melodramas," said a Players associate, "but it was a rather off-beat, experimental ex-perimental work." Second place went to the Billings, Montana company for their production of Arthur Miller's play, "The Price." "It was a wild weekend," said Demie Milliken, who was the company's pregnant woman. (No, it wasn't that wild a weekend. She only played a pregnant woman.) While four of the company went to Billings by air, six left on Thursday the 26th by land. "We drove up to Billings in Nancy McComb's car, carrying the set in a 12' x 6' U-Haul trailer," said Demie. When they arrived Thursday night, the company com-pany was left with two days to kill before the competition on Saturday night. "We became experts on breakfasts," said Demie. "And we found the most interesting in-teresting place in Billings was Sambo's." Workshops were held uumife uif two-day festival said Milliken, but the company com-pany was busy rehearsing the play, with a special emphasis em-phasis on keeping the performance per-formance time down to under un-der 60 minutes. (As we explained ex-plained last week, director Don Gomes subjected the two-hour play to a lot of pruning.) And if you think seconds only count in ski racing, get a load of this. According to Demie, "6 Rms Riv Vu" clocked in at 59 minutes, 40 seconds Shangri La Ent. Specializing in u'indow washing, carpet cleaning, janiiorial. nirtinH'iiancp and repair service. Commercial or residential. Free esiiniaies. Licensed and insured. Coll Hob Grieve 649-6887 fciMr.iMrn IfrlMft tmijTtli. tot'-. m day Celebrate Clown Day The Corner Store April 1st Band from 3 to 6 p.m., Dancing Happy Hour all day long j Win hats, t-shirts, money. Don't clown around, f Don't miss Clown Day. I At the Resort Center |