Pre-Concert Talk on Seymour & Smythe

Leslie Dala, Rory Haye & Graham Walker

My friend graphic designer Graham Walker and I were prepared to attend a concert featuring a most interesting and difficult work by Steve Reich at the Orpheum Annex on Seymour today. Alas! It was sold out. At the queue before we turned away, we chatted with a tall freckled-faced Scotsman in town with his theater troupe that is performing at Granville Island beginning tomorrow for the Children’s Festival.

On Sunday, May 27th, from 7 p.m - 10 p.m., at the Orpheum Annex Theatre, the Vancouver public will have a chance to enjoy a special production that features music by the most famous living Jewish-American composer Steve Reich, his celebrated composition TEHILLIM,  and also see for the first time in Vancouver, the academic exhibition traveling especially for this occasion from the Bulgarian Embassy in Ottawa - "The Power of Civic Society - Fate of the Jews in Bulgaria during 1940-1944".

This marks the 75th anniversary of an important historical event- the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews during WWII. Twenty four big tableaux tell the story of what happened!

On the program: Srul Irving Glick, Paul Ben-Haim, Ernst Bloch, Maurice Ravel, Steve Reich.

Conductor: Les Dala

Definitely disappointed the three of us walked down Seymour to Smythe. It was there that we noticed a police woman in a big black van stop a young woman (with N in her rear bumper) driving the wrong way on Smythe. It was then that a handsome slim man, all in black, walked toward us. It was Leslie Dala tonight's Musical Director of the evening’s performance at the Orpheum Annex. I introduced him to Walker and our new friend Rory Haye.

Dala asked us if we could read music. Haye and Walker nodded positively. Dala took out the music and started conducting what he called some of the difficult parts of Tehillim. At one point he said something like, “If you get distracted with this you can get fu….”

While we were disappointed at missing the concert we were most impressed with our personal pre-concert talk.

On why Rory Haye is here in Vancouver:

The work is called Poggle and that is a most intriguing name.