The Victoria Symphony with Daniel Lapp & Friends
"A Celtic Ceilidh"
Royal Theatre - Victoria, BC
January 24-26, 2002

If you were looking for some Scottish entertainment in January as part of Robbie Burns Day celebrations, then you were most likely at one of the Victoria Symphony's "Celtic Ceilidh" shows, which ran from January 24-26 at the Royal Theatre. This show featured Daniel Lapp as well as some local fiddlers, bagpipers and other musicians. If you weren't at the show, you missed a wonderful night of entertainment. But I'll do my best to bring you some of the highlights right here.

If you think Scottish music isn't popular, well then you definitely weren't at these shows which were given to 3 appreciative full houses. Brian Jackson conducted the symphony, who were definitely put through their paces having to keep up with the frenzy fiddling of Daniel Lapp. But they seemed to manage quite well. I'm sure it was a treat for them to play a different style of music for a few nights. As well, it was a treat for the audience, whom I would say were predominately regular Symphony show attendees, to hear some new music.

Daniel Lapp was backed up by some of Victoria's finest young musicians. These included Eric Reiswig on Uilean Pipes, Flute and Whistle, Adrian Dolan on Piano and Accordion, Jeremy Walsh on Bodhran and Guitar and Ryan MacDonald (who's actually from Cape Breton Island but currently living in Victoria) on Highland Bagpipes and Scottish Smallpipes.

The Victoria Symphony did several selections on their own, as well as accompanying Daniel Lapp, on tunes which were all arranged from Nova Scotia composer Scott MacMillan.

Now I won't go into naming all the tunes that Daniel Lapp did, as I can't recall them all, but as he announced at the beginning of the night "I've had to learn 40 tunes for this show!" The majority of the tunes that Lapp performed were BC Fiddle Tunes, which he has been collecting for the past 10 years and they will eventually be released in a book. You can keep up to date on this project on his website at www.daniellapp.com

One of the highlights for me was when Daniel brought out several members of the newly formed Victoria Fiddle Society. These fiddlers joined Daniel on 3 tunes Miss Lyall's, Sandy Cameron's Reel and a Traditional Reel. We were also treated to some Cape Breton Stepdancing and Ottawa Valley Stepdancing. If you're interested in learning more about the Victoria Fiddle Society, check out their online kitchen party at www.bckitchenparty.com

There were some moments during the show where some tunes were played that you wouldn't normally think would be. These included "Brigadoon" (or "Hollywood meets Scotland"), the Theme from Titantic ("Celine Dion wasn't physically in the house but you could feel her presence") and to close the show off, there was an audience singalong on "Auld Lang Syne."