Tag Archives: performance

NAC Pops show – 80s Mix Tape

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
January 12 2020

This was outing #6 of the year (following 1 OLT, 2 NAC, 1 hockey game, and 1 Gladstone) to see the NAC Pops show called “80s Mix Tape” with conductor Stuart Chafetz and singers Julie Reiber and Bryce Ryness. The show was a collection of 21 songs from the 1980s performed by the NAC orchestra, with 8 instrumental versions and 13 with lyrics. The full playlist (with two extra songs) is at the bottom.

The show kicked off with the instrumental version of The Final Countdown (Europe), and it was good, but not amazing. A nice light opening. They then went directly into a song with the female singer, Call Me (Blondie). I felt like she was doing a pop lite version of the song, no real grit, and the version I’m used to from Blondie has more deeper tones behind it. Or so I thought. However, you’ll see in the playlist version below, my memory might be off because it isn’t much darker/deeper in tone than the version I heard last night.  » Read the rest

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NAC Pops show – The Music of John Williams

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 19 2019

My wife and I enjoy the NAC Orchestra shows, particularly the Pops, and if it wasn’t for simple cost and logistics, we’d sign up for them every year. Instead, we pick and choose the shows we want along with some others. With 17 shows across multiple venues, this was outing #2 this year. The theme for the night? The music of John Williams, namely from all his soundtracks of the greatest hits of films.

Up first was the Main Title from Star Wars (1977), and it’s a great blockbuster opening. From there, they slid into Superman March from Superman (1978). Just those two alone would be worth the price of admission for some people, including me.

After that, they went through The Flight to Neverland from Hook (1991), excerpts from Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Cowboys Overture from The Cowboys (1972), and Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). They’re all good, and the Cowboys Overture has that big epic Western feel to it.  » Read the rest

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OLT play – The Ladies Foursome

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 8 2019

My wife and I have invested heavily in shows for the coming 2019-20 show across multiple venues. For Ottawa Little Theatre, they have nine shows planned for the season, and if we hadn’t went with lots of shows elsewhere, I’d probably have signed up for 5 or 6 of them. Instead, we held ourselves to just two. The first was from Norm Foster, a sequel to a previous golf one called The Foursome which we saw back in ’07. 

Generally, we love Norm Foster comedies. Some funny, some farcical, almost always enjoyable, and most of the castings and shows have worked. He’s probably my second favorite playwright after Dan Needles who created The Letter from Wingfield Farm and six sequels, and my favorite general playwright. I was just looking at his website and he has 52 plays listed. Holy doodle, I had no idea there were that many.

We saw the original show, The Foursome, about four college buddies coming home for a reunion and a round of golf.  » Read the rest

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#50by50 #14 – See a play at Ottawa Little Theatre (OLT)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 29 2017

I’m not sure I was an unbiased viewer of tonight’s live performance — Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ottawa Little Theatre.

Some of you may remember back in the day when my lovely bride and I were married at that theatre. We had been season’s tickets subscribers in the past, it was near our old neighbourhood, and we were looking for an off-beat venue. It was perfect for us. So we kind of have a special place in our heart for the old girl. And this year we are season’s ticket holders again. We missed the first play, but I really wanted to see this one. So much so that we changed the tickets to a more convenient night as next weekend is a bit busy.

Why was I excited? Because it’s Arsenic and Old Lace, duh.

I know, I know, you probably don’t even know AOL as anything other than an internet provider that old people used to use.  » Read the rest

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#50by50 #08 – Go to the circus (Volta)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
August 26 2017

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to see five different types of live performances. The first one was for an NAC Pops concert with the Tenors. However, this past Saturday, I went to see a performance of the Cirque du Soleil called Volta, located across the river in Gatineau.

I had seen one CdS performance previously, way back in 1997 or so, and it didn’t excite me. But it’s progressed since then, and Andrea wanted to go for her birthday too, plus Jacob’s never been to a circus or performance like this. All together, it was a no-brainer even if the tickets are not cheap.

Interestingly too, the location is directly across from my office at work and my window overlooks the parking lot where the tents were set up. A mere few weeks ago, the “lot” wasn’t even a full lot. The whole zone is an active construction site, and yet they finalized it, paved it, and put the anchors in the ground for the installation of the tent.  » Read the rest

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