The Province from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 21

Monday, June 20, 1377 -province 21 ENTERTAINMENT Harmonium of Quebec Showcase of art in Britain Subtle and sophisticated 4 WcT tar, or basic rock, or a synthesized ostina-to figure, they say it simply; when it needs to expand beyond the limitations of any particular mode they expand it by capriciously shifting momentum and texture, by gradually, almost imperceptibly gathering intensity, or by turning to an entirely different form of musical expression (they are equally comfortable with romantic classical orchestration, pure folk, pop jazz and funky rhythms) and their versatility and intelligence are such that each transmutation and extension is entirely graceful and eloquent, never unnecessary or affected. Languid, melodic themes develop, surface and subside, patterns grow organically, harmonies weave and coalesce in elegant configurations, close and bright or diffuse and mystical, moods phase in and out, dynamics of acoustic and electric sound are beautifully manipulated, energy accumulates to fever pitch and dissolves into luminous, spacey patterns. Continuity and originality of concept, and the technical ability to communicate them with commendable ease and integrity. Perhaps, after all, it's music like Harmonium's that makes learning The Other Language irrelevant. Nonverbal communication is often the truest kind.

By JEANI READ Visions of national unity aside, it occurs to me that it might be worth learning to speak French just to understand Harmonium's lyrics. At least that occurred to me for the space of two hours in the insular, intimate confines of the Queen Elizabeth Playhouse Saturday night, when this remarkable Quebecois group delivered its remarkable concert entirely in French. High-school grounding in The Other Language may be enough to provide occasional flashes of insight into their general thematic territory, but is certainly inadequate for grasping its subtlety and emotional detail which, one trusts, is at least as sophisticated and moving as the music itself. Of course the dimensions of voice and thus words are not Harmonium's primary focus. In fact, it seems no one factor is.

The balance is so fine that the total impact is immeasurably more important than any of its parts. Hearing them is highly rewarding even while being powerless to appreciate the whole scope of their work is often poignantly disturbing. It's just possible that that elusive element in itself adds to the effect of challenge and intrigue they cultivate; but speculation is futile. The experience is an By ART PERRY PAINTING IN BRITAIN 1525 to B75, by John Sonderland, Burns and Mac- Eachern, 256 pages, $37.75. John Sunderland refers to this book as "a brief general And as such, it is quite successful.

Beginning with the Reformation and ending with a hurried account of post-war. British art of this century (less than two pages), Sunderland has presented a showcase or gallery of art, rather than any reinterpretation. Yet the included paintings are, for the most part, well-assembled. Sunderland, Witt Librarian at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, appears most at home in the first few hundred years of his survey: the arrival of Holbein in 1528, the subsequent invasion of artists from the Netherlands, Charles Inigo Jones, Van Dyck, and of course Rubens' famed ceiling at the Banqueting House, Whitehall 0630-35). As a writer, Sunderland is precise and to the point, yet with the scope of his undertaking there is little room for interesting sidelights or anecdotes.

His 50-page essay at the beginning of the book reads as an unbroken commentary on the plates that follow. Sunderland makes only brief critical comments, and again appears to be restricted by his overload of works to consider. The 221 plates are an excellent visual panorama of English painting, and even with its somewhat short-cut evaluations, Sunderland's essay is still a coherent and academically sound view of British painting. The appendix entries of Some Reflections on British Painting an edited SFU's Tracings has exciting and consistently interesting one regardless. Saturday's performance was Harmonium's first appearance in Vancouver.

They have already amassed a considerable following, Anglophone and Francophone, in much of the rest of Canada, and their reputation has preceded them here to the extent that the Playhouse was sold out both Saturday and Sunday. They perform again tonight at Malkin Bowl, at The Orpheum if it rains but it seems unlikely that even the weather would be cantankerous enough to spoil such a potentially delightful evening. Harmonium is seven musicians and singers: Serge Fiori on lead vocals and guitars, Louis Valois on vocals and bass, Serge Locat on keyboards and synthesizers, Denis Farmer on percussion, Mo-nique Fauteux on vocals and electric and acoustic piano, Libert Subirana on flutes and horns and Robert Stanley on electric guitar. The music is crafted of rock, folk, jazz and classical forms, in the progressive tradition of Genesis, lOcc, Yes and Supertramp, but not in the sense of forcible fusion as much as logical, instinctive evolution. It is somehow clean and spare, in spite of its complex structures and ideas.

If what they want to say can be said simply, with voice and acoustic gui now bears his name. Consequently, the idea of dramatizing his life sounds good, particularly in light of the biographical data that is brought out in the script The Fraser family were an intriguing bunch. Simon's family were of the upper echelon of the North West Company and the man was under considerable social pressure. While no one involved with this production seems to have exactly made up his or her mind about the man's character, intriguing little hints creep out. We see a simple, good-intentioned but rather dim-witted man who, although fiercely loyal to the "establishment," is quite vilely manipulated and misused by it We also get glimpses of a remarkable incompetent His biggest success was actually a mistake.

His commission had been to travel down the Columbia River, but he made a mistake and wound up on the Fraser. It wasn't until he had reached its mouth that he discovered that he had travelled down the wrong river. Several years later, he led a unit of militia against William Lyon Mackenzie's forces, but never managed to get to the fight. On the way to the battle, he fell into a ditch, seriously injuring his leg. It has been said that the common trait of Canadian heroes is that they are losers.

Whether or not one sees heroic dimensions to Simon Fraser, no one can deny that the unfortunate man was a loser. At his death, he was a pauper. His daughter Harriet was no longer able to keep the family farm intact and his son John, who had gone west to write poetry that would give his father the acclaim he had been denied, committed suicide. The story of Edmonton looking ahead to $lm opera season potential the Fraser family seems richly endowed with dark and mysterious overtones. The problem with Tracings, however, is that it has not yet managed to get much further than simple biography.

That's the problem, with historic drama. Is it history or is it theatre? Granted, informing us of ourselves is what good theatre is all about But while historic drama may give us past information, that is not the same thing as really informing us of ourselves. Because we're alive now, we're in the present tense. History is in the past tense. In order to prove theatrically effective, historic material must somehow make an immediate connection between the past and now.

That connection is still missing in Tracings. There are times when it almost works. The characters who are not drawn directly from the history books (a voyageur, an Indian woman, a Metis and a young, street-class girl) are created with a palpable feel of believable humanity to them. Unfortunately, that is not so true with the characters from the historic record. They are creations full of factual data, but little life.

Still, one can at least get a sense of potential from this evening of theatre. The story contains the germs for fine drama. With more fostering and nourishing, they could sprout into something quite excellent and it is those little teases that give Tracings, in its current shape, a validity beyond the mere passing on of historic information. It's probably well worth its low, $2 admission price. Trac- lugs runs at omiuu riaaci umiujiij Thursday through Saturday night.

Duke. Lucia Freud's Girl series of quotes and Biographies and Notes to the Plates are well-researched additives to the book as a whole. The Edmonton association received its first grant from the Canada Council in 1966 and one from the Alberta government the following year. It now relies heavily on these two sources for funds. Gross income from ticket sales reached a record $335,000 during the last season and the rest of the income was from the three levels of government and fund-raising activities, including an extremely active opera guild.

Production expenses were estimated at $611,000 but were kept under $600,000 by sharp pencil work in the administrative office. An indication of rising expenses is next season's budget of $736,000, with $892,000 in 1978-79, while 1979-80 is expected to be "over a million." Now definitely in the "big leagues" of opera, Edmonton is one of four Canadian members, with Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, of Opera America, whose members must have produced at least three operas a year for the previous three years. It was from its association with this organization that the city was able to obtain its sets for its most recent production, Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment, which starred Beverly Sills. For 1977-78, the Edmonton association will make use of a set from Dallas for Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, and the national arts centre in Ottawa is the source for the set for the season's second production, Mozart's Don Giovanni. Verdi's Trovatore will have the same set used in Edmonton in 1970.

In Calgary, Southern Alberta Opera Association, which operates in the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, has set a 1977-78 budget of $450,000, only part of which will come from ticket sales. Brian Hanson, general manager of the Calgary-based group, says opera is the most expensive art form to produce, with hundreds of people needed just to get it on stage. "When you have only three productions a year, it isn't possible to give repeat performances. The sets and costumes have to go into mothballs for a few years until the audience is ready for a revival." Hanson said Calgary will be hamstrung by the federal policy of giving grants based on the previous season in Calgary's case, only two productions were presented last year. "Since we have expanded to three productions for the first time, we'll have to wait another year before the grant is in line with actual costs." affairs department, the Montreal dancers began their nine-country Latin American tour in Argentina where 13,500 attended performances.

Company officials say about 20,000 saw the group perform in the Brazilian cities of Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo and Rio. Later, the company headed for its next stop, Peru, minus prima ballerina Annette av Paul, who had suffered an ankle injury. She flew back to Montreal for treatment Walter Santos, director of Ailus Promotions, the company making arrangements for the Brazilian part of the tour, was delighted with results. "This was our first all-sold-out ballet tour," said Santos who has been bringing ballet troupes to Brazil for five years. The success of the Canadians was even impressive because in some of the Brazilian cities they had competi- Grand By ROBERT COLLING Canadian Press EDMONTON The Edmonton Opera Association, completing another season of money-making activity, a rare achievement in the arts, is looking ahead three seasons to its first $l-million budget.

The milestone is forecast for the 1979-80 season, which probably will be expanded to four nights for each of four operas with a fifth production also possible. There would be two matinee performances featuring all-Canadian casts in place of the international stars now brought in for main evening shows. The additional performances are necessary because the association for the first time reached 100-per-cent attendance in its just-ended season. Plans call for one additional performance in the 1978-79 season for each of two productions while two others will retain the present three-night format. With a solid base from its beginnings in 1963, Edmonton has been the key member and head office of Opera West, an association organized to share casts, sets and expertise in the production of major opera.

The other members are Winnipeg, Vancouver and Calgary. Portland, and Seattle, are associate members. With only 47 per cent of the association's income coming from ticket sales, the storing and renting of sets is an important part of the business of staying afloat financially, says Lorin Moore, Edmonton administrative director. For example, the set for Norma, built by the association in Vancouver at a cost of $28,000, now is being rented out. Moore said set manufacturing and storage faculties, which could be shared with theatre and ballet groups, are urgently needed in Edmonton.

Another example of co-operation, vital to keep costs down, is a co-operative effort by four opera companies to build the complex set needed for Verdi's Attila. The opera was first seen in North America at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C., and the Canadian premiere will be in Edmonton the final production of the next season, which starts Sept. 29. The $30,000 cost of the set was shared equally by the Kennedy Centre and by the opera associations of Edmonton, Philadelphia and Cincinnati. Revenues from all sources ticket sales, government grants, and corporate and individual donations must be increased to meet the higher budgets of the future, Moore said in an interview.

One of the worlds 3 great vodkas. By BOB ALLEN Before saying anything about Tracings the Fraser Story, the show currently running at Simon Fraser University's Studio II, it must be noted that it is considered a "work in progress" (the program notes are quite specific about that) and I saw the public unveiling of the progress made thus far in a fairly elaborate theatre experiment being conducted atop Burnaby Mountain. It has been under way for six weeks and involves playwright Sharon Pollock, who was commissioned by SFU's Centre for the Arts to "dramaturge" a "collectively created workshop production at Simon Fraser University." I know. Dramaturge is a noun, not a verb, but those are the words used in the Centre for the Arts announcement. Mark it down to academia's love affair with impressive-sounding jargon.

What was probably meant was that she was being commissioned to write scenarios and serve as script consultant. The collective, which includes some SFU students plus members of Theatre Network, a young professional company from Edmonton that is theatrically concerned with the creation of a "network of awareness among people of a common cultural heritage," have been working under the direction of Theatre Network's artistic director, Mark Manson. Tracings is what the collective has come up with in the last six weeks. Further work on the script will continue until the production closes Saturday. And, we might add, it definitely needs it, although considering what it is, there is a surprising amount to appreciate in Tracings.

The principal drive behind Tracings is to put us in touch with our past. There is a lot of truth to the statement often made that, as a country, we lack mythic, historic heroes. With reference to Simon Fraser, the average British Columbian probably knows next to nothing about this man who was the first white to travel the entire length of the major waterway that Retirement not in plans Associated Press NEW YORK Mary Martin, still as perky as Peter Pan and as bouncy as Nellie Forbush, says, "I would never say I was retiring, because everybody comes back again and again and does something." As far as returning to Broadway for a musical comedy, she says she hasn't decided yet. But "I can't keep on saying no or maybe to people all the time because that becomes a bore." The ebullient songstress left Broadway in 1968, the street she had dazzled for three decades. Busy since recovery from private grief, travelling and writing her memoirs, Miss Martin recently returned to New York for a one-performance show in tandem with one of her famous show business friends, Ethel Merman.

Deciding to do that show took a lot of will power "because I hadn't sung for four years." "Coming back was almost traumatic," she said, recalling her despondency over the death of her husband-manager, Richard Halliday in 1973. They had been married for 32 years. "He was always there and this was my first work moment without him. I've always been able to say I can do it no matter what, but during that time I just couldn sing, not hum, nothing. "And finally I said 'This is just I've hit lots of walls and many pits land I've never been afraid." Doing a show to benefit the theatre-music collection of the Museum of the City of New York was suggested last September, which turned out to be the psychologically right moment At about the same time, Miss Martin had a polyp removed from her vocal cords and "now everything vibrates again properly" with return to the higher vocal range of youth.

She vows to take better care of her voice and "not belt the way I did." "That crowing in Peter Pan is what screwed it up." with a rose, 1947. What this book may lack in being unprovocative, it gains in its visual and authoritative high points. Plain, simply delightful By JEANI READ It used to be Humphrey and The Dump-trucks. Humphrey went away, which was something of a surprise and disappoin-ment to his fans. But the three Dump-trucks that are now carrying on the tradition Michael "The Bear" Millar, Michael "Earnest" Taylor and Bob "Cat" Evans seem to be doing so with undiminished spirit and zest, and their audiences are enjoying them in similar fashion.

The threesome from Saskatoon, who play a nifty assortment of instruments from guitars, dobro, banjo and string bass to autoharp, gut-bucket bass, washboards, kazoos and coconuts, and who harmonize and kibbitz and sometimes yodel with comfy, companionable warmth and good humor, performed at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Friday night a light and entertaining concoction of vintage and original country, '30s rags, bluegrass, western swing, trucker-type tunes and musical parables. There are songs about routine RCMP checks, lost loves, broken dreams, old-time dance crazes, plane rides. There are waltzes and Ukrainian wedding dances. There is Hot Corn, Cold Corn and You Bring Out The Boogie In Me and Ophelia. There is nonsense and there is some excellent, pretty, light-bright playing.

If they are an acquired taste, and certainly nothing you would care to spend your entire life listening to; they are a comparatively easy one to acquire and an easy one to spend a brief summer evening with. Strung together on long and rambling narratives from Evans, vocally dominated by the unassuming, pleasant style of Earnest and physically by the large and benevolent presence of the daguerrotype-bearded Bear, The Dump-trucks are, plain and simple, a plain and simple, completely inconsequential (their "message song" is Little Orphan Annie) but completely delightful bit of musical diversion. Adept at their instruments, adept at their harmonies, toting with them this playful bag of tricks and this obvious affection for their music, they will probably never get anywhere except into the whimsical corners of a lot of people's hearts and one suspects there is probably nowhere they'd rather be. I 1 tion. Their appearance coincided with tours of the Moyseiev and Tahitian ballet troupes.

Santos attributed much of the success to extensive promotional work. "Well in advance of their arrival, we received plenty of promotional material from Colin Mclntyre (company general manager) and the Canadian embassy in Brazil so we were able to obtain widespread press and television coverage prior to the performances. "The fact the Canadian government sponsored a trip of two Brazilian dance critics to Montreal resulted in full page stories which made the company known Les Grand Ballets now has a well-established name here "and could easily pack the houses in Brazil and probably in other Latin American countries if it were to make another tour in future." LMm Grand DukeThe judges jh were panels of taste testers, Pepe yu wn eniy onnd vnrllca. caen8e(J two world emu ium urana uuKe as smootn and Iieht as the world's best." Enjoy the best. .7 0 -iSS, i-iiey 4 Dancers relax after rave reviews Reuter RIO DE JANEIRO Members of Montreal's Les Grand Ballets relaxed briefly on the famous beaches of Rio with the applause of audiences and the plaudits of critics still echoing from their performances in Brazil.

"Canadians end tour with theatre overcrowded," headlined Rio's daily Globo in its review of the company's final performance here. The audience "was deeply moved by this marvellous troupe, proving once again that the Rio de Janiero audience can appreciate a good quality ballet spectacle," declared Globo. All performances were sold out during the company's five-city Brazilian tour and scalpers were getting up to $100 for $50 boxes. In some theatres, extra seats were installed in the aisles and in others enthusiastic dance fans bought standing room. Sponsored by the Canadian external 'WW:.