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Video: Music for the soul through Living Room Live at Creighton Lodge

Once again Creighton Lodge hosted another Living Room Live concert Tuesday night.
Living Room Live
Creighton Lodge hosted Living Room Live trio featuring, from left, Nathaniel Froese (cellist), Nicola Davies (piano) and Jayne Hammond (soprano). Photo by Anastasiia Bykhovskaia

Once again Creighton Lodge hosted another Living Room Live concert Tuesday night.

 

 

 

The trio featuring Jayne Hammond (soprano), Nathaniel Froese (cellist) and Nicola Davies (piano) with a combination of instruments rarely heard but perfectly natural filled the Creighton Lodge room with the beauty of music.

The guests had a pleasure to listen to the professional performance, which also involved a more rare performer – Living Room Live executive director and co-founder Davies, who this time did the piano part.

“I do all the organizing, but most of the times I won’t be playing,” said Davies.

Their wide-reaching program From Ordinary People featured musical stories coming from all over the world. Music by American Previn, Georgian Tsintsadze, Austrian Shubert and many pieces by other great composers were enweaved into the colorful musical quilt of the Tuesday night performance.

Southeast Lifestyles had a chance to talk to Davies about how the Living Room Live organization came together and what they have on agenda.

“At one point I’d been working with Nathaniel Froese for quite a while as a piano-cello duo, and we just decided to do a house concert tour in B.C., so we went and recruited houses, and did this tour route. It was a good experience and we got tonness of positive feedback. We’ve done a couple tours since then,” said Davies.

And then Davies’ college at the University of Manitoba where she works connected her with Lisa Rumpel who also had a keen interest in house concerts. And the Living Room Live started.

“We decided to actually set up tour routes as opposed to just getting classical concerts going into smaller communities,” she pointed out.

Living Room Live brings classical music into smaller communities, allowing people to discover new pieces and sounds in house concert settings.

They have three Prairie tours and one in B.C. planned for this year. Developing the routes was one of the most challenging parts.

“There are people out there who love hosting in their houses and love music, it’s just figuring out how to find them. That probably takes the longest,” Davies said.

Another challenge that the organization has faced since its inception is the lack of funding.

“So far the organizing has been volunteer. The musicians always get paid from tickets, so that’s nice that it’s covered, but organizing is volunteer,” said Davies. “We’ll be looking for grant funding. We want to be able to get the funding so it’s stable to keep moving forward year to year.”

Davies hopes that with consistent funding she will be able to turn Living Room Live into her full-time job and then expand the project further.

For now, Davies is aiming to have an average of 12 stops per tour, and they still have some spaces open for people willing to host a classical concert. So if someone wants to bring the classical music played in a very intimate setting to their community, they are encouraged to reach out to the organizers through the LivingRoomLive.ca.

The next Living Room Live tour will be featuring a classical guitar duo. It will be stopping in Estevan in May. The date hasn’t been set yet.