Peace Arch News: String mentors return to Surrey – with a swing

Back in the 1990s and 2000s – and early 2010s – the Semiahmoo Strings youth orchestra was a force to be reckoned with in White Rock and South Surrey.

The dynamic mentorship of ensemble founders, professional musicians, and former White Rock residents, Carla and Harold Birston, left a lasting impact on the musical community.

And their concerts – in which their students excelled, to a virtually professional level, in a broad and challenging range of idioms – are still fondly remembered here.

The Birstons (Carla violin and Harold cello) moved to Vancouver shortly after the ensemble celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2014 – to concentrate on their teaching responsibilities with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School.

But they’re back in the area this Sunday at 4 p.m. for a special concert at Surrey’s Bell Performing Arts Centre (6250 144 St.).

Presented by the VSO School of Music, Enchanted Brilliance: Strings, Swing and Stardust will combine the high school-age students of the string group Sinfonietta, conducted by Carla (also the school’s String Studies director), and the VSO School Big Band, conducted by Daniel Hersog, with professional violin and vocal talents.

Swing will definitely be in the air for this 90-minute Mothers’ Day extravaganza.

Arranged and curated by Harold, the concert promises to be a typically Birston experience, bridging classical technique and swing feeling, in a selection of movie and popular themes, along with Broadway and jazz standards originally recorded by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

The ages of the musicians in the upcoming concert are generally between 12 and 18, Birston said, although there are also some 10 alumni participating.

“This concert has been a dream of ours for years,” Harold Birston told Peace Arch News.

But there was a certain degree of serendipity in bringing it all together in this instance, he noted.

When another venue was unavailable and the Bell Centre was open for the date, he recalled, VSO School president and CEO Angela Elster suggested the basic idea.

“She said ‘Can the school do something with, perhaps, a jazz theme? And can Harold do the arrangements?’” he recalled.

Birston, as a seasoned arranger and composer and a jazz and movie-music aficionado, doesn’t have to be told twice to start planning that kind of program.

First first up for the concert is his 2018 Suite Francaise, arranged as a tribute to three great French jazz violinists, Stephane Grappelli, Pierre Blanchard and Jean-Luc Ponty.

Played by the Sinfonietta, augmented by a pianist, two guitarists, a bassist and drummer from the big band, it will feature legendary Vancouver jazz and classical violinist Cameron Wilson as soloist.

“He’s been very enthusiastic about working with these young musicians,” Birston said.

“In fact he’s asked whether he can sit in with the strings for the entire show!”

Then it’s on to a suite of music from the James Bond films Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, including thematic scoring as well as the classic title songs performed on the soundtracks by Shirley Bassey and sung in the upcoming concert by Diana Agasian.

It is music with personal significance to him, Birston explained.

“One of my favourite gigs was when I played in the orchestra when Shirley Bassey did a Vancouver concert in 1997,” he said.

“The first song she did was Goldfinger and the second was Diamonds Are Forever,” he laughed.

Agasian, who first worked with the VSO groups right after she graduated high school, has since completed studies at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and graduate work in Vienna, Birston said.

“She was great when we first heard her, but now she has even more maturity as a performer,” he said.

She will also be featured in Sinfonietta’s performance the original Nelson Riddle arrangement of the Nat King Cole classic Unforgettable, another song with personal significance, Birston said.

“Carla and I were both in the orchestra when Natalie Cole appeared in Vancouver in 1991, singing the song as a duet with her dad’s recording.”

Sinfonietta will also team with members of the big band for the 1974 Barry White disco hit Love’s Theme – with plenty of scope for guitar wah-wah pedal and string flourishes in Birston’s arrangement of the original orchestration by Gene Page.

“I originally planned this as a fun, kitschy piece, but I actually fell in love with it,” Birston said.

The VSO Big Band itself will be spotlighted in three instrumental charts; jazz giant Benny Carter’s Paseo Promenade, Alan Baylock’s El Abrazo, and director Hersog’s own Unravelment.

And then they will join forces with Sinfonietta on the original recording arrangements of Come Fly With Me, Too Marvellous For Words, Without A Song, Summer Wind and New York, New York (Frank Sinatra) and That Old Devil Moon (Tony Bennett) with professional vocalists Steve Maddock and Leo Teixeira.

“These are the original charts by such great arrangers as Billy May, Marion Evans, Nelson Riddle, Sy Oliver and Don Costa,” said Birston.

“When I discovered that they were all available online I couldn’t believe it. The arrangers are really the stars of these pieces – their introductions, their backgrounds (for the singer), their creativity.”

Maddock and Texeira, both thoroughly versed in the idiom, will provide their own sparkle singing solo and in duet, Birston said, rather than mimicking Sinatra or Bennett.

“Steve does his own thing, but he’s very much in the style,” he said.

“That’s also true of Leo, who actually trained as a classical counter-tenor, but sings this material as a tenor.”

The school’s big band leader Hersog, a trumpet player, has also been a great collaborator on the concert, Birston said.

“He’s got a great respect for the music, and he also gives great pep talks,” he said.

“The other day I heard him telling the musicians, ‘You have to hear this music and you have to nail it – it’s in everybody’s DNA.’

“And the jazz students have been great, they’ve worked hard through a lot of rehearsals.

“I think all the students get what an opportunity this is, and they’ve been loving playing these charts.”

Birston also said it’s also fun, in middle age, to see his own early musical tastes validated.

“I used to say these songs are going to last, and it’s great to see they have not lost their lustre. And when you get to hear this music through the students’ boundless enthusiasm, it’s even better.”

Tickets, starting at $19, are available online from vsoschoolofmusic.ca/event/strings-swing-stardust/

See the article on Peace Arch News.