Ahoy! Bands

Both Davidia and String Effect were supported by a nice little trio on keys, bass and drums: Gordon (aka Gordo) Porth and the Pacific Showband. They impressed me mightily with their support. This was concentrated reading, staged stops and starts, harmony lines against voice, surprisingly effective keyboard parts and I only noticed one toyish synth tone. The band performed other nights as a ballroom dance band. I also caught Gordon playing a few other gigs. One was a staged musical murder mystery trivia quiz where he played snippets of songs for the audience to guess at. The other was a popular but only moderately well-attended classical piano concert entitled From Bach to Billy Joel. Gordon is a perfectly competent classical pianist and played a range of short tunes from JS Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Chopin, Grieg, Debussy, Gershwin, Morricone and a rag to finish off from Billy Joel. It was a touch of class although interrupted by cocktail shaking and phones ringing and even chatter, but it was a nice change. I met bassist David and drummer Adam later in a bar and commended them on their reading. Nothing difficult: Adam said it was much easier than the Schoenberg and Mahler he normally plays (!). David’s bass was wonderfully precise and I liked that he knew all the right riffs and fills for the pop tunes they supported: no faking here. The Pacific Showband comprised Gordon Porth (keyboards) with David Fiore (bass) and Adam Mamula (drums).

We all liked the piano man, Ged (pronounced with a soft G as in Jed) Scott. He was another musical Englishman (lots of English entertainers on this cruise). This was standard piano bar performance with a decent voice, a rack of tunes and a facility with the chord charts. The piano bar repertoire touches on jazz but doesn’t always match the fake books. I was surprised that he didn’t know of a favourite of the jazz repertoire, Alone together, but he played numerous other standards, latins, soft country, modern songs and the like, and managed plenty of other requests. I was relieved when he limited his take on American pie to the first verse repeated (as he said, almost no-one knows any more, anyway), and I was truly impressed by his obvious knowledge of the Italian language when he sang several Neapolitan songs. I liked his slightly detached English presence and his nicely stretched high notes. And his new wife, Nectar, sat in for a capable rendition of Whitney Houston one evening. We spent most nights with a cocktail and Ged before dinner.

I counted at least three grand pianos and noted that at least Ged’s was a Yamaha. Garnette performed solo piano in the atrium each evening on another. She’s a performer with a huge repertoire (2,000+) that she could reel off with ease. I was also impressed when we had a chat with her while she was performing. That’s a professional muso for you. But I was still surprised to hear Wayne Shorter’s Footprints, but then I noticed one of the off-duty bassists had requested it and I saw the Real Books 6th edition vols 1&2 ready to do duty. She told me she also sings piano-(wo-)man sets and she did a set with drummer Adam late in the cruise where they both sang and harmonised.

The other performers were more in rock tradition: a duo, a pop-rock quartet and a DJ but I only touched on this scene. The Fidelity Brothers were a duo playing the soft-rock covers like Margaritaville (appropriate given the propensity for cocktails on ships) and Heart of gold. Southern Comfort was a quartet of vocals, guitar, bass and drums playing a range of popular covers. They had a decent vocalist with a surprising range of vocal tones and a decent guitarist. They were both nice bands despite the requisite repertoire of popular often-classic rock. There was a DJ called DJ Moo but I didn’t catch him spinning disks in the Attic.

Ahoy! Features

One feature artist in the theatre was Davidia, a capable singer of an uncertain age (two divorces, two children) and a cougar act. She’d been introduced variously as “the queen of the high Cs” and a performer who sang it all, from the ‘50s to today. Megan and I dreaded that a singer may ignore song before the rock era but we were pleasantly surprised to hear of her operatic background and to hear a few snippets of the Magic flute and Nessun dorma along with Bohemian rhapsody and the pop repertoire. Davidia was quite an odd but amusing mix of full-ranged voice, loving mother (we saw pics of her two kids), voluptuous single with lively patter and sultry entertainer. I really liked her show.

Another feature act was a crazy, straight man-funny man classical husband-and-wife pairing called String Fever. Like Davidia, these were trained performers from the fine music tradition but their act was anything but. The zany one was Brenton, the violinist husband; the straight one was Jackie, the cellist wife. Now, these were decent players. I enjoyed their competence, their sense of rhythm and melody and countermelody, her sense of cello as accompanist, their correct intonation and strident playing and their harmonised singing. Apparently they’d played together under the famed George Martin as conductor at the Opera House for a show called All you need is the Beatles. I later heard that they played in the Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra and I’d believe it. But this show was anything but staid. They did dedications to Andre de Roo/Rieu, snippets of 30 Beatles tunes, a piano/vocal take on Elton John (“that’s when I fell in love with him” Jackie said in humourous despair) and finished on features from Beethoven’s Song of Joy in English. All whacky and over the top, but clean fun and nicely done, with arranged backing from Gordo/n and his Showband. Maybe my mind was becoming soft from cruising by this time, but it’s good humoured, Aussie-entertaining and I enjoyed it. String Fever are Brenton Edgecombe (violin) and Jacqueline Edgecombe (cello).

Davidia

String Fever

Ahoy! Shows

It’s been a break for CJ and a cruise to celebrate a significant birthday for my Mum. This one was to the South Pacific, by P&O lines, on a ship called the Pacific Jewel, and was quite different from the last cruise I’ve reported here. Perhaps it’s the line or the South Pacific location or the Aussie (and Kiwi) passengers with their casual and unpretentious interests. This cruise had no string quartet and only a very minor classical piano presence, but there was some decent popular entertainment that I am happy to report on this cruise of shows.

We saw four major musical theatre performances. One was called Girt by sea with an obvious Aussie cum Bondi theme and a Countdown segment with Skyhooks and Masters and various other 60s/70s or later Aussie stalwart songs. The second show had a Pirates theme with audience involvement and an oddly unrelated segue into Elvis with a Chitty-chitty-bang-bang reprise (!). The third was Away to the Circus with locals called up as performers and acrobats as acrobats and even a mother and baby elephant. The fourth was Do you wanna dance and covered a range of dancing styles. I was further back for this one and realized how much I’d enjoyed a front row seat for the others, even well to one side, which had been a far more intimate and involving experience. It may also be that this show was more devoid of story, more just a variety presentation of dance styles: Viennese waltz, wartime jive, Spanish paso double, that strange modern take on Irish jigs and electronica. The songs were fewer and the story less evident. Still, there were skills and style a-plenty so I enjoyed it despite the distance. They all had their musical twists and frequent pop-culture references. My descriptions may sound strange, but the shows all worked and were entertaining and I have great respect for the performers. The same cast of 2 singers and 6 dancers (2 also sang) performed four major shows over 10 days with recorded music in a well-lit and amplified theatre. It takes 2 months onshore before the shows are ready, so these performances are not lightweight even if their themes are. Given copyright mania, no pics were allowed so I’ll otherwise limit my reports. The key singers were Gemma Zirfas and David Randall and they were supported by the drearily named but very capable Pacific Entertainers, Adam, Dean, Gemma, Natalie, Tuesday and Mark.

Circus is the rage these days and this cruise had its own acrobats. Five acrobats (four male, one female) performed as the Pacific Cirque in the atrium or outdoors when weather allowed. This was juggling, acrobatic flips and rolls, incredible feats of strength (and bodies to match) and various high acts – trapeze, silk, ropes. All impressive and muscular feats and trust from one performer to another and done without nets or other protection. It’s an old art form and impressive.