Town Talk: Chor Leoni's sweet sounds not so for a neighbour

BEGINS AT HOME: City police arrived at Southwest Marine Drive’s Casa Mia recently to answer a noise complaint. It didn’t involve an ear-splitting party like the ones where beer baron-rum-runner George Reifel had jazz trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie play in the same mansion he’d built in 1932. Chaired by Raincoast Crisps founder Lesley Stowe, this one was the annual dinner-recital at which mostly old-Vancouver citizens raise funds for Chor Leoni. That’s the globally regarded male choir the late Diane Loomer founded in 1992 and that is now led by Erick Lichte. Adding to the choir’s wide-ranging repertoire, members of its four-year-old junior ensemble performed Ubi Caritas. First heard perhaps 1,700 years ago, that chant-turned-hymn was sung in updated form at Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s 2011 wedding. It’s odd that Ubi Caritas, which means Where Charity Is, should have contributed to city coppers calling for hush at an event where charitable work was actually taking place. Even odder that the nameless complainer was disturbed by a famed choir singing inside a solid, 21,000-square-foot house standing in a 1.5-acre estate.

Seen with Christopher Gaze and Chor Leoni singers in 2011, the now-late Diane Loomer attended an at-home recital that didn’t draw complaints.

Broadcaster Gloria Macarenko and conductor Erick Lichte saw a painting of a rose that commemorates Chor Leoni founder Diane Loomer.

ROSE FOR THE OCCASION: Diane Loomer also co-founded the Elektra Women’s Choir and the EnChor ensemble for singers aged over 55. An Order of Canada and UBC honorary doctorate recognized her accomplishments. A flower has been named in her honour. Not the Cypripedium reginae (pink-and-white lady’s slipper) that is the state flower of her native Minnesota, rather a rose developed by Langley-based breeder-hybridizer Brad Jalbert. A painting of it by Gabryel Harrison was auctioned at the Casa Mia event.

SNACK BACKERS: Firefighters were called to John Crook and Erik Heck’s WildTale Coastal Grill recently. But not to quench a kitchen blaze in the Yaletown joint formerly occupied by the burgeoning Glowbal Restaurant Group’s original eatery. They were there to help elementary school students not go hungry. Coordinated with the Vancouver school board, the Vancouver Firefighter Charities organization’s Snacks for Kids program is one of several payroll-aided efforts that benefit those needing support. It discreetly provides nutritious snacks to children who might otherwise go all day without them. Crook and Heck donated all of that day’s dinner sales to the program, along with those from their three Flying Pig locations.

Sonja Picard provided works by herself and 12 other artists to enhance a two-floor, 2,500-square-foot penthouse listed for $4,988,000.

RIGHT ON, MAN: Former Vancouver Sun librarian Kate Bird’s $29.40 book, Vancouver In The Seventies: Photos From a Decade That Changed The City, launched a same-name exhibition at Museum of Vancouver. A Sun report said the book records “a seismic political, economic and cultural shift that would transform the picturesque one-time hardscrabble harbour town into a vibrant modern metropolis that would ultimately become an international model of urban density, green initiatives and ethnic diversity.”

Ron Stern seen in 1975 when he began publishing glossy magazines before becoming a national and international entrepreneur.

Ron Stern’s publications reported on trends and events also noted in former Sun librarian Kate Bird’s Vancouver In The Seventies book.

That was a lively era for other print media as advertising and circulation revenues ensured enough pages to cover broad societal doings. Recognizing this, Winnipeg-raised lawyer Ron Stern acquired the still-nascent Vancouver magazine in 1975 and soon launched Calgary and Edmonton versions. Western and national Magazine of The Year awards followed. As the 1980s yuppie era unfolded, he sold those monthly glossies to eastern publishers and embarked on a quietly spectacular entrepreneurial career. The Stern Partners firm grew to own half of Alberta Newsprint Co. along with several manufacturing, printing and distribution firms, and some 600 garment and furniture retail stores. His and Bob Silver’s FP Canadian Newspaper Limited Partnership also owns the Winnipeg Free Press. No media in our town, though. “Bummer,” as those in Bird’s book might say.

David Yurman International president Carol Penneli opened a boutique in the Holt Renfrew store that benefitted Arts Umbrella.

Then-Vancouver Canucks captain Markus Naslund and wife Lotta admired a David Wilson painting at an Arts Umbrella Splash auction.

UNDER THE UMBRELLA: Another 1970s product is Arts Umbrella, the visual- and performing-arts centre for youngsters that Carol Henriquez and Gloria Schwartz founded in a city basement. It now includes a pre-professional dance company that tours globally and sends graduates to major ballet companies. AU’s fundraisers stay en pointe, too. Recently, Nina Cassils and Ann Goldberg made moolah by chairing an opening of the David Yurman jewelry chain’s in the Holt Renfrew store. Tonight, Oct. 15, the 35th annual Splash art-auction will run at Performance Works, Arts Umbrella’s Granville Island neighbour. Artist and galleries always make high-quality donations, and AU supporters typically enter generous bids.

Per Tuno Grohn, here with son Thor, superintended construction of the artificial-sponge factory that is now Granville Island’s Keg restaurant.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Patrons of Granville Island’s Keg restaurant who soak up a few extra beverages could blame it on the building. According to Eric Green, whose Swedish-born father Per Tuno Grohn superintended the triangular structure’s mid-1940s construction, it originally housed Canada’s first artificial-sponge factory.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
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