Two ladies with incredible powers to move us were the focus of this past weekend’s Kamloops Symphony concerts.
While Joni Mitchell can tell it like it is, Sarah Slean goes beyond. Add in the emotional impact of a very capable orchestra and you get, as one audience member said afterward, “the feeling of floating. “
There is a lot to unpack from this program.
It helps to look up the lyrics and to hear the full version of Lamento.
Perhaps do this while still recalling Slean as something like a water nymph rising from a pond on whisps of air. Her swaying body, the outreached arms, the dress flowing onto her bare feet — they did it.
Some of the highlights include, certainly, the faltering, fading line of Chrisos Hatzig’s Lamento: “Remember me, remember me, but forget my fate.”
The loss of a lover has so overtaken the one left behind that she is no longer able to cope. Her mind has unraveled.
On the lighter side of dark, there were spooky twists of wrists and fingers depicting Napoleon crawling out of his grave to lay judgment on all tyrants (one in particular?).
Also, Slean’s philosophy that it is right for everything to end as, without ends, there is no meaning — and humans are meaning-seeking creatures.
There was also Mitchell’s iconic Both Sides Now, delivered by Slean, and her encore, There’s Nothing But the Light, which, fittingly, points to a way out of despair.
We were well treated.
Next up for the KSO are the Thorgy & the Thorchestra concerts on March 31 and March 21. All the details are online at kamloopssymphony.com.
In the meantime, there is more music this week.
The Kamloops Community Band presents Play Like the Dickens on Wednesday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m. at Kamloops Full Gospel Tabernacle, 1550 Tranquille Rd. in Brocklehurst.
The Kamloops Festival of Performing Arts Honours Concert is on Sunday, March 18, at 2 p.m. at Sagebrush Theatre, at Munro Street and Ninth Avenue in Sagebrush/South Kamloops. Information on that concert is online at kfpa.ca.
