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Thursday night I attended the 5th installment of the CTV Pops series at the NAC  titled
“Mysterioso: Music and Magic” and a magical night it was indeed. The evening started
in the Oasis Lounge just outside Le Cafe at 7pm where the bloggers who were invited to
the Thursday night performance were treated to Chef Michael Blackie’s hors dourves from his new
menu at Le Cafe and delicious Ontario VQA wines. Among the highlights was the 2008 Lakeshore
Red, Palantine Hills Niagara VQA wine, the Mushroom macchiato which was a delicious soup served
in shot glasses, and the Digby sea scallops. We received our tickets for the performance
and then made our way upstairs to take our seats. A quick note here as the NAC is now
high tech sporting laptops made available for easier typing (some of us are thumb challenged!)
and wi-fi for those of us who only had iTouches and no cell phones. One of these days I’ll make
a jump into the ’90′s!

I want to make a quick statement here about the NAC in general. I grew up in Ottawa and the
NAC has always been an important part of my life. I know that these days saying that tends
to make people think I grew up as part of the upper crust of Ottawa, but I didn’t. I am
middle class through and through and I always do my best to make people see the NAC the way
my Father taught me to see it, a centre for the arts for the people no matter who they are.
I can still remember the joy in my father’s voice as he would tell me about going to the NAC
and at the same performance he would see one couple decked out in their finest black tie
tux and evening gown and then look over to the other side and see a couple wearing jeans!
The NAC is for everybody and that is what I saw on Thursday night, Dad would have been proud!

The performance was even better. Jack Everly conducted the NAC orchestra and given that they
only had 2 rehearsals (which were done earlier Thursday!) they were magnificent. The music
was matched perfectly to the magical performances and the addition of the Theremin was
priceless. Joseph Gabriel mesmorized us with his slight of hand work that had all of us
wondering how long did he have study to do that? After the performance we had the chance
to ask him and we discovered that he had been doing this since he was 9 years old! Next up
was the hilarious team of Les Arnold and Dazzle. Les kept us mystified while Dazzle kept
us in stitches! They are the perfect father, daughter team. We were also treated to the
amazing vocal gymnastics of Christina Bianco who did a pefect impersination of Barbara
Streisand and Celine Dion just to mention a few.

Intermission gave us an opportunity to take a breath and wonder how they were going to top
what they had already shown us. Once we were back in to our seats the orchestra gave us a
world class performance and then Jack Everly even got into the magic act as well. The final
act of the evening was David and Dania. Their performance topped anything we could have
expected and then some especially with the quick costume changes by Dania right before
our very eyes!

After the performance we were treated to an opportunity to speak with Jack Everly and
Joseph Gabriel and ask a slew of questions. The opportunity to get the behind the scenes
information was impressive. Mind you we didn’t find out how they perform the majical
acts, but, discovering that all the music played by the orchestra had been taken from
prerecorded music and transcribed over 5 months just for this performance was mind blowing.

The NAC has evolved over the last 40 years. It isn’t the exclusive club that people have
come to think it is at all. On Thursday night I saw an audience made up of people from
all walks of life who were there to enjoy a great show. The NAC is the people’s arts
centre. I am very proud to be a part of it.

Tags: David and Dania, Jack Everly, Joseph Gabriel, Le Cafe, Magic shows, Mysterioso, NAC Orchestra

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 at 10:59 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.