Ken Lavigne Christmas Musical Road Show, Wednesday, Dec. 21 Centennial Theatre, 2300 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver. Tickets: Adults: $38, student/child, $18. More info: tickets.centennialtheatre.com.
Music fads may fade, but Bing Crosby will never go out of style.
Crosby’s classic version of “White Christmas” is synonymous with the holiday season.
Seventy years since the song’s release, the crooner’s warm and familiar baritone voice continues to transport listening audiences to Christmases past.
“Just like the ones I used to know,” croons Crosby. “Where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow.”
Nowadays, people are more tuned in to the chiming of their smartphones. Still, “White Christmas” has survived the piracy era and remains the world’s best-selling single – over 50 million copies – for more than 50 years.
Why? Because the song’s simple, heartwarming message – “May your days be merry and bright and all your Christmases be white” – resonates with many people, especially at this time of the year.
Canadian crooner Ken Lavigne captures the golden age of live radio with his Christmas Musical Road Show, which will stop by Centennial Theatre Dec. 21.
Music, merriment and nostalgia will fill the air as the audience is transported back to the 1940s. A lifelong classical singer, Lavigne dreamed of delivering a special Christmas show.
“I’ve always loved the music of Bing Crosby and Dean Martin and some of the great stuff from the 1940s,” says Lavigne, speaking to the News Tuesday, from behind the wheel of his tour van currently crisscrossing the province.
Golden and its welcoming residents have made the Kootenay town Lavigne’s most memorable stop thus far.
“They were absolutely sweet,” he says. “They have a community hall and you really got the sense that this was the community hub and this is what everybody wanted to do, come to the show. It just seemed like a much more living room atmosphere.”
Lavigne and his crew really set the scene for an old-fashioned Christmas, dressing the stage as an old-time radio studio. Sporting a suit and fedora, Lavigne croons such standards as “White Christmas” and “It’s a Marshmallow World” into a vintage microphone transmitting an antiquated sound, and is set against a chalet backdrop with a roaring fireplace in the centre.
With each new song, a moving panorama scrolls through classic winter scenes handpainted by Lavigne along with his kids and crew members. A massive indoor snowball fight, which “people need to come to the show to experience it,” teases Lavigne, “is by far the biggest highlight.”
A founding member of The Canadian Tenors, Victoria-born Lavigne has charmed concert-goers across North America. He notably performed at Carnegie Hall, had an audience with Prince Charles and has collaborated extensively with famed producer and fellow Victoria native David Foster.
“He’s a really delightful person,” says Lavigne of Foster. “And he loves just going to the piano and playing all sorts of stuff. It’s nice to see because he’s had this long career and he still loves it.”
Lavigne woke up on New Year’s Day 2008, deciding he wanted to follow his dream of performing at the prestigious Carnegie Hall and not knowing “how much he was biting off.”
The first thing that came to mind for Lavigne was to call the famed venue’s front office and request a booking. He quickly learned there would be many hoops for him to jump through.
Then they told Lavigne how much it would cost to play at the venerable NYC venue.
“And I swallowed my gum and was like ‘Oh my goodness,” recalls Lavigne with a laugh.
Fortunately, Lavigne was able to fundraise the money and make his dream a reality, in January 2009.
He had a full symphony orchestra behind him and 1,200 New Yorkers in the audience.
“And I just gave the concert of a lifetime. It was an amazing experience,” says Lavigne.
While he often writes his own material, drawing inspiration from his life experience, Lavigne also covers classics such as the late Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
“It’s a song that I have performed hundreds of times and it still gives me chills and I still discover new things about it, the poetry, the meaning of the words and of course the power of the music – it’s palpable in the audience, they feel that,” says Lavigne. “While it’s not a Christmas song, you might find it somewhere in the program.”
The Centennial Theatre show will be the last stop on Lavigne’s Christmas tour and it could prove to be the most entertaining of all with some ad-lib banter.
“I think things might be a little loose on stage on that last show,” says Lavigne with a playful laugh.
