The Brandon Sun from Brandon, Manitoba, Canada • Page 17

17 THE MANDON SUN, TfawttfW, Winnipeg composer branching out feyCONKAD cattle train to Montreal and eventually travelled to Boston and New York looking at music schools. He finally settled on Indiana University because it was large and offered most musical disciplines and after four years was graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree. He returned to Winnipeg and began working in theatre, but had a nagging feeling he should look further into modern symphonic composing. So he went to Switzerland and studied under the distinguished French conductor Pierre Bouiez, a champion of modern music. Davies feels the experience simply bolstered his belief that he had to base his music on more substantial roots, Those elements will he found in his Beowulf rack opera, which he fervently hopes doesn't follow the path of his only other venture Into the recording field.

Several years ago he composed the score for a well-received planetarium show called The Beginning and End of the World. The company went bankrupt. Davies went ahead at his own expense and produced a record of the music, with a large orchestra conducted by Skitch Henderson. Distribution faltered, however, and If you want a copy the composer will be glad to hear from you. It'll help clear out his basement.

writer Betty Jane Wylie in the production, which will be released in a three-record set this fall by Daffodil Records of Toronto and eventually emerge as a stage production. The composer's other big project this year is a major piano concerto commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the coming of the Mennonites to Manitoba. He said it will be a virtuoso piece "in the great, traditional style." Davies is popular with the Winnipeg Symphony because he sometimes plays in the orchestra and because his compositions please the other players. Symphony general manager Leonard Stone said he has, in effect, become the orchestra's "unofficial composer-in- I bBr IH aaaiaaafl as a musical theatre composer first and a symphonic composer second. And most of his success thus far has come from the theatre.

For example, in 1973 he was responsible for the scores and musical direction of five theatre productions in Winnipeg. This year he turned down work at the Manitoba Theatre Centre, where he spent a period as musical director, because of other projects. They include a rock opera, a piano concerto and A Short Symphony, which received its premiere Feb. 9 from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Can a composer make a living entirely from his craft in Canada, and especially in Winnipeg? Variety is the answer for Davies and his output includes symphonic, theatre, children's musicals, rock operas, radio drama and documentary and even pizza jingles.

But even such a potpourri doesn't guarantee financial success and it is doubtful that many composers make their entire living through writing. Davies is like most; he has been known to play piano for the symphony, in bars and with an acid-rock band. His wife helps by working and this year it's needed because of his latest project a large-scale rock opera called Beowulf. Beowulf, the oldest known English saga, is set in Scandinavia and concerns the exploits of its namesake hero in fighting water monsters and dragons. The poem contains an exciting amalgamation of pagan and Christian rites, and possibilities for epic musical effects.

Davies is working with WINNIPEG (CP) When the dean asked the second-year university pre-med student why he had misted five straight weeks of French classes, the pupil searched to find an acceptable excuse. "Because I needed money," he said forthrightly. And with equal forth rightness, the dean replied: "You're out!" That short scenario was the turning point in Victor Da vies" musical life. Being thrown out of the University of Manitoba at 22 forced the decision to become a composer. Previously, pressure from his parents and relatives to be "something better' than a musician had kept him at his medical studies.

The irony came later when Davies discovered that if he had told the truth about working night and day on a university variety show, the dean would have understood. Davies is a pragmatic, likeable person, with an infectious air of open laughter And that's one way to describe his music, both symphonic and theatre. He eschews dissonance for tuneful melodies, unless he sees a definite need and then only in small doses. He has a healthy respect for audiences, especially in view of the current problems being experienced by symphony orchestras. "I feel the modern composers that are writing 'bleeps and bloops' are not trying to please people, and that doesn't help the symphonic situation," he commented in an interview.

The Winnipeg native, now 34, describes himself PHIL OCHS He was not a child prodigy, at least in the classical sense. When he was about five, Davies' parents signed him up with a door-to-door violin lesson salesman and he attended giant classes in downtown Winnipeg. "I didn't like the smell of the rosin and 1 didn't like the feel of the violin," he recalled. "And I hated the scrape, scrape, scrape." The next year he switched to the piano and except for some brief work on the bass and the guitar, the piano has been his instrument. In his teens, Davies worked with a band which played mostly polkas and where "you worked about 1,000 hours for $3, until your hands bled." But that led him into such areas as big-band and jazz music and he even had his own high school band called The Kools.

After his brief medical fling at university, he rode "t-Mj" roofTwot, "TflpNt-: CwsAn CflMW Swiff. 1 APRIL IS CANCER MONTH I IN MANITOBA I The Brandon Division HOUSE CANVASS will be held fhe week of APRIL 22 27 MiMiUAlUiW "-tlMfc, Ml. lea 10, IMMmmMMMs 9nm4n, aM H7-OSH. Phil Ochs returns tical to the mood of protest and social inequality surrounding Greenwich Village a decade ago. "The only thing that worries me now is that I'm not writing," Ochs said during a recent one-week stint at Toronto's River-boat coffee house.

"But I've reached the point where I realize that I never by IAIN MacLEOD TORONTO (CP) After three years of wandering, fulfilling his ambition to visit every country before he is 40, Phil Ochs, veteran protest singer and one of the fathers of the modern folk movement, is back on the concert-hall folk-club circuit, rekindling memories of his Flower Girl and Changes. The reason behind his return is, he says, political, "I was in Nigeria when President Nixon fired Cox and I said that's it. Nixon has got to go. I bet $500 that he'd be ousted and I have come back to protect my bet." Ochs also proved that his songs have stood the test of time. He has written little in the last few years and his present repertoire consists of the songs that made him famous during the mid-60s.

His appearances still are topped with such classics as Flower Girl and Changes and the atmosphere is virtually iden- Last year, we set upa new $150 m'mm "sm iseueauctioninat I to most Canadians.but almost knew where the songs came from in the first place and I don't know why they're not coming now." I Nonetheless, Ochs, at 33, I continues to break records on his current North American tour which I includes appearances in Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. In Toronto, I crowds, many in their 30s, (illed the tiny Riverboat. Ochs himselthasjost of his Even today, the songs are captivating and relevant. The humor, too, is still there. "This is the last one, folks.

After this I'll be looking for ladies and drinks." i Ochs' previous comeback in 1970, was less successful, culminated in what many considered a disastrous attempt to play rock 'n' roll at New York's Carnegie Hall. The concert was interrupted by a bomb scare, there was no intermission and towards the end a power failure ENDS TODAY PfirfflHi AI MO ami 9 Ml. Wl I kf il I Roar once agam wrm me originaimovie cast SatiwrM SmS hST MbnL BKUmllt UIMMItjMI MlIOiSH UWUXIUHG UKU 1 COkxavOELUXE-FANAViaON SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT Starts Tomorrow half a million people forgot to take it. disrupted the music. If you earned less than $5,000, you're entitled to 3 of what you earned as a deduction if you earned $3,000 last year, you can claim 3 of that, which is $90, as your Employment Expense Deduction).

Where is the Employment Expense Deduction explained in my guide? It's Item 4 in the Income Section and it's clearly labelled "Employment Expense Where do I enter it on my form? On Page 2, the one that deals with "Summary of Income and It's near the top of the page in the section labelled "Income from and you enter the figure on the line numbered 05. Is anyone allowed more than $150? No. $1 50 is the maximum allowed, no matter what you earned. Just 1 remember that if you did earn a Probably because it was new and we didn't tell you enough about it, you forgot to take advantage of it. And of course, when we ran across the oversight on your return, we corrected it and made sure you did get it.

(Which also explains why a number of people received a refund that was more than they expected.) Anyway. This year remember to deduct your $150 Employment Expense Deduction, because if we don't have to correct it on your return, we can process it faster and.in turn, get your refund to you faster. Who does it apply to? Almost every employee who worked for any length of time last year. There are very few exceptions to this, which are outlined in your Guide, Item 4, but by and large it's for everyone who was employed. Does everyone get an automatic $1 50? ochs looks nacK and laughs.

"I remember when I appeared in my gold suit. No one in the audience could believe it. What I was trying to do was relate the intellectual social mood with working-class music. I was being outrageous and it worked as far as I was concerned. But the promoter was almost ruined." An album cut from the Carnegie Hall concert was rejected in the United States because, the record company felt, it went against everything Ochs had done in the past.

The record, Gunfight at Carnegie HaH, recently has been released in Canada. "After the whole Carnegie Hall scene was over, I said to heck with the music business and took off to visit the world," he said. "I find travelling more amusing than singing songs." Ochs also looks back in BBSMBnlI TwunToTmHDON ox w. 10 man pJ TONIGHT THROUGH SATURDAY "WATUKt" All May Attend Its about the first time you fall in love. XC.

salary last year, as an employee, pJTJyou're almost certainly entitled to the deduction, so taKe it. Actually, it's calculated at a rate of 3 of your employment income, to a total of $150. Which means that if you earned $5,000 or more, you automatically get $150 and you don't have to bother calculating anything. Together, we can get it done. 1 1 1 'Jeremy! Revenu Canada Revenue Canada I ON THE SAME PROGRAM Taiation Impet Robert Stanbury, Minister Robert Stanbury.

mimstre APRILAID iLUOn KASTNER ueseni: ROBERT f. IBWJ Ftn ELLIOTT GOULD THE LONG GOODBYE' INCOME TAX com If laughter at the folk music purists who said in the early '60s that his songs would lose their value over the years. "But look, the customers are still here, I'm still here and everybody's having a good time. I know the protest movement was a fad but the songs written then still make their mark today." Professionally, Ochs says his best years were between 1984 and 1967 although, he adds "I'm having the time of my life now. "You could say there is a Phil Ochs revival now, but I'm determined not to get caught up in the music scene like I was before lying around Hollywood getting bored and feeling sorry for myself.

I plan to spend three months of every year travelling the world," Your Guide is always ihe best answer, Read ii. follow it. Believe it. II shou Id sell you what you need to know, and how to figure things out. Write to your nearest District Taxation Office.

Explain your problem as clearly as possible and include all information. (And your return address. will answer your letter as quickly as possible. Some people prefer to talk it over in person. And that's fine, loo.

If you 're one of them, and have a problem with your Income Tax, drop by for free help, Face-to-face, The add ress for you own District Taxation Office is below. If you're still confused, call. Your own District Taxation Office number is below. And on Monday and Tuesdays phone line art open 'HI p.m. If you live outside the office area, call the Operator and ask for ZanKh 0-4000.

Remember, calls ace free, and the service is there for you. Watch this newspaper. From now through mid-April, we'll try to give you as much additional help as possible, in print, about spec if ic problem areas. When you see something that applies 10 you, clip ihe ad tor reference, and use it when you're doing your own return. II should help.

Revenue 391 York Avenue, Winnipeg, Man. R3C OPS 985-4240 "OAKS" 7:30 "JtREInT" p.m. "iTE" :50 p.w..