“Beautiful” songs about the ocean will be sung with orchestral accompaniment at a family concert on Saturday (Nov. 3) at Red Deer County’s CrossRoads Church.
The 16 featured singers include John Reischman, Steve Fisher, Bob Evans, Jim McLennan, Carolyn Harley and Red Deer’s own Morgan McKee, They will be accompanied by 13 chamber musicians from the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra in a concert of original songs from the new CD Everybody’s World.
The album was created as a companion to a children’s book that sprang from an environmental thesis about ocean pollution.
The thesis was compiled by Calgarian Renay Eng-Fisher, who completed her Master of Environmental Education communications degree through Royal Roads University in Victoria.
Recalling her own kids’ interest in the creatures they saw during visits to the Vancouver Aquarium and the Calgary Zoo, Eng-Fisher decided that young people were the perfect audience for a message of conservation.
Without nine-to-five jobs or other work-a-day duties to pull them in different directions, children have more time to focus the environment, she said. “They are the stewards of our future.”
Eng-Fisher’s tale, Akai and Mamoo’s Ocean Adventure, was co-written with fellow Calgarians Irene Herremans and Holly Speers.
It’s about what two orca friends discover when they decide to explore the ocean.
Eng-Fisher also lined up some musician friends to write and then record songs based on a conservation theme for the book’s companion CD. Each singer/songwriter came up with his or her own interpretation.
Among the original songs is Find My Way Home by Cindy Church, about whale sonar, Saltwater Rhapsody by Eng-Fisher and Carolyn Harley, about noise pollution, and Oh, The Oceans by Paul Rumbolt, about exploring the seas.
“When songs strike a passionate chord with people, instill environmental values and a healthy respect for animals, the earth has won another friend,” said Eng-Fisher.
Red Deer Symphony Orchestra music director Claude Lapalme wrote one of the CD’s three instrumental pieces, which will be performed at the 8 p.m. concert at CrossRoads Church (on 32nd Street as it continues west of Hwy 2).
Tickets are $35 ($25 children 12 and under) at the door or from www.pumphousetheatre.ca (click on Red Deer).
The $15 book and $20 CD are available at the concert, or can be ordered on-line through www.natourasjourney.com.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com