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Given the opporruniry 10 hear some familiar film music that they love, played well, many begin to realize that it is far more interesting and exciting than rhey thought. Barnum and Royer plan to do the same program every year for rhe next few years. using rhe materials that Ron has put together for the teachers to help them prepare their classes. Because the show was written specifically for grade 7, there will always be a new audience every year. So, yes, there are financial challenges, but John Barnum is optimistic about the future of symphony orchestras. "If I didn't believe there was a great future I wouldn't be excited about doing what I do and by the potential: there's a whole world of music out there to be explored and mastered. The whole process of taking someone's composition and working through it is so satisfying for conductor and musicians, and ultimately for the audience. , . MARY Lou FALLIS, PRIMA DoNNA ExTRAORDINAIRE After a couple of rounds of telephone tag I caught up with Mary Lou Fallis in her teaching studio at the University of Western Ontario. Her schedule was packed, so we arranged to talk on Sunday evening after she got back from singing in John Tuttle's Evensong Choir at St. Thomas 's Church. '"I love singing in that choir because it keeps my sightsinging up. We rehearse from 5:00 to 6:30 on Sunday, and then sing the service. Besides, singing in choirs is how I started. and is something I've always loved to do." When we:: talked I asked her about ht:r new show, "Primadonna does More with Less." a commission from the Guelph Spring Festival. ''There are:: several reasons for the name . . , she explained. ''My menior and friend . Anna Russell, once said to me that as I got older I would have more confidence in what I had to say and would need less in the way of costumes, props and sets." She added that it is much nicer to travel light and to have minimal set up to do before the show. '·Another aspect of it,·· she says, "has to do with the image of the fat opera singer and the whole dynamic of voice, weight, food, love and passion. I could sum that part of it up as 'the fat lady goes on a diet."' Her partner in the project is her artistic collaborator of the last seven years, Perer Tiefenbach. "I'm so glad he's come into my life, we have good stage chemistry and I have absolute trust in him." The fact that he is not only an accomplished pianist but also a composer and an actor makes him the perfect partner iq her creative and performance activities. "We're now just about finished creating the show, which will have both familiar music and original music by Peter. We will be rehearsing it over has a message. "My other shows have been about serious music with underlying humour; this show is funny wirh an underlying message." In the course of the conversation she revealed how seriously she has been taking humour. "If you go into the theory of humour," she says, "you realize that there is a very fine line between laughter and tears, humour and hostility." The "Freudian slip," she points out, is a lapse into hostility. Often what the funny person on the stage is doing or saying are the things you can't yourself do or say out of fear of arousing hostility. Laughter arises as the barrier is relaxed and the line is crossed." "To be funny is difficult. If you press too hard, it goes tlat, and if you don't go for the jugular it goes flat. Humour lies somewhere in between, and that can vary a lot from city to city and even audience to audience." She gives me an extreme example of that from a "Primadonna" show she gave at the now closed Kingston penitentiary for women. The show concluded with the "encore," "Home on the Range," which would have been hilarious to a big city audience out of its sheer incongruity. What she didn't know until after the show was that "range" is the next three weeks and then perform jail slang for the cell block. The it in Guelph. It will definitely be hot off rhe press!" While the show is funny it also number left her audience in tears, but f6r this unexpected reason. CONTINUES NEXT PAGE Men Choir under Mikhail Turetsky April 3, 7:00PM Orchestra Toronto A Ukrainian Celebration April l 0, 3:00PM Tafelmusik Elizabeth Wallfisch, Violin April 12, 8:00PM Ballet Jorgen Canada "Cinder
