Calgary will step back in time on Feb. 13 when some of the stars of the ‘88 Olympics gather together for a 20th anniversary celebration at Canada Olympic Park.
Joining legendary British ski jumper Eddie the Eagle Edwards will be Jamaican bobsleigh team member Devon Harris, figure skaters Elizabeth Manley and Tracy Wilson plus David Foster, composer of the Games’ theme song.
A free “giant public celebration” will include a retro party, skiing, a fireworks display and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. Members of the public are being encouraged to wear their ‘88 Olympic clothing to the event, which is being organized by the Calgary Olympic Development Agency.
“CODA wants to give everyone, especially the thousands of volunteers who gave the world the ‘best ever’ Olympic Winter Games, the opportunity to relive the magic of 1988 by coming together once again before handing off the torch to our neighbours in British Columbia,” said CODA president and chief executive Guy Huntingford.
“Hosting the Olympics changed this city, province and country forever. This landmark anniversary is an opportunity for us to celebrate our roots, but also to showcase the important role (our) facilities continue to play in providing Canadian athletes with the critical tools and resources needed to achieve excellence each year.”
Eddie the Eagle Edwards, who became the first man to represent Great Britain in an Olympic ski jumping event, will take in the festivities while on a 10-day tour of Alberta with his family.
Harris, one of the bobsledders immortalized in the Hollywood movie Cool Runnings, will also fly in from New York, where he works as a motivational speaker.
The retro party, which will be held Feb. 13 from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., will kick off a two-week celebration as CODA showcases its facilities at COP. The Olympic Oval is also hosting a 20th anniversary celebration on Feb. 18. A Papa John’s Family Day will feature free public skating from noon to 4 p.m.
U2, Patti Smith, 50 Cent, John Legend and Josh Groban contributed to the soundtrack of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Yes, Josh Groban — he of fresh face, lyrical baritone and last year’s best-selling album, the holiday-themed “Noel.”
Sundance, the annual orgy of independent cinema that runs through today, usually attracts alt-rock and acoustic up-and-comers and edgier pop stars. You’d be hard-pressed to find a name familiar to Middle American moms.
But they sure know Groban, 26, the best-selling artist of 2007, who is set to perform both an intimate acoustic show and a big-ticket charity fundraiser in Park City, Utah.
Q. So, Sundance.
A. What am I doing there? People know that I do big. You know that I can go off, I just did a 10-month arena tour, a big extravaganza: big orchestra, huge ordeal. I so love the idea of going into a room with a hundred people and just myself on a piano and a guitar and bass, and just kind of breaking down some of these gorgeous melodies.
Speaking of movie music, you perform “The Prayer” (from 1998’s “The Quest for Camelot”) with Celine Dion on “The Woman in Me.” Isn’t singing with Celine Dion essentially how you got your start? 10 years ago, filling in at the last minute when Andrea Bocelli couldn’t make it to L.A.?
That kind of was my first-year relationship with (producer) David (Foster): “Here, kid. Let’s see what you can do.” You know, just throwing me into ridiculous situations where I had to fight hard not to lose it, not to lose it altogether. But that time period, and certainly that day, was a great learning experience for me and really laid the foundation for what I have been able to achieve after that.
In 2007 you were the top-selling artist. “Noel” was the top-selling CD of the year and is now the longest-running, chart-topping Christmas album, breaking Elvis Presley’s record of four weeks.
I really feel bad about that. But he (Presley) has got me beat in so many other areas that I’ll take it. Thanks, Elvis. No, but it was an enormous record to beat.
Michael Buble never said he was the “new Sinatra.”
No one from his record company ever said it. His producer David Foster might have said it, but he was too smart to say it to the press.
No, the Buble-as-new-Sinatra phenomenon is completely a media creation - one that was followed closely by angry pronouncements within the media that “Michael Buble ain’t no Sinatra.”
Some critics even say this fresh-faced kid from Vancouver isn’t fit to shine the Chairman’s shoes, were he still alive and needing shoes to shine.
Let’s look at this closely.
On stage for a soldout show at Rexall Place last night, Buble doesn’t have any mob connections that we know of, never threatened to give anyone a knuckle sandwich and was never quoted referring to a woman as a “skirt.”
Both Frank and Michael plundered the ever-expanding great American songbook, brought lounge music to a wider audience and both are/were greatly appealing to women, and it remains to be seen if Buble is going to coast on his legend for the last 20 years of his career like Sinatra did, but Buble also writes some of his own material.
Now I’m not here to diss Frank and risk chin music from the heavens, but let’s just put this in perspective. This style of music is not going to go away.
There will always be a new version of Fever, a revised take on Come Fly With Me, a fresh approach to Summertime.
Every generation has a designated crooner and Michael Buble just happens to be this generation’s. I’m sorry. But that’s just the way it is. If you’re going to complain, complain about the generation.
Moving on, there is no denying Buble’s God-given gift in the vocal department. His voice is aural silk. His smoky glances are capable of unhooking a woman’s bra from 100 metres. He is so cute you just want to pinch his cheeks.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
The man has it all.
Backed by a small, very tight orchestra, the show was an effortless demonstration of vocal perfection balanced with Buble’s rakish sense of humour.
Being of quick wit and ironic mind, the singer treads a fine line between having fun with the lounge jazz idiom and making fun of it, as if three minutes is the longest he can stand being sincere.
Some of the songs were practically cliches themselves - Fever, Call Me Irresponsible, Always on My Mind, Me and Mrs. Jones, the latter stealing thunder from area crooner Alfie Zappacosta, who did his jazz version of the tune years ago.
Doing songs like this in a suit like that, maudlin is never far away.
Buble did his best to keep the mawk at bay with frequent pranks and pratfalls.
For example, following his performance of the big, gooey hit Home - one for the ladies, by the response - Buble sent one out to the men.
Cue campy Elvis impersonation on That’s Alright, Mama and a spirited rendition of Y.M.C.A. by the Village People.
The guys in the horn section doing the moves was a nice touch.
Then it was back to wowing the audience with another heartbreaking ballad or swinging romp.
Buble worked the crowd like a master.
No, I have no problem with Michael Buble being called the new Sinatra. If he keeps this up, we’ll be talking about the new Michael Buble in 40 years or so.
It takes a real mensch to bring an opening act who might upstage you - so Buble brought seven singers who can each sing circles around him, an a capella group from Brooklyn, N.Y., called Naturally 7.
This was a weird one.
Slightly precious, but unbelievably skilled, the singers called what they do “vocal play,” which doesn’t begin to describe the remarkable array of sounds they generated - including uncanny reproductions of drums, bass, electric guitar, Hammond organ, DJ, you name it.
Taking time to prove it was all human voices with detailed demonstrations kind of brought the show to a grinding halt, but it’s preferable to having people think there was a real band behind the curtain, or worse, that they were lip-syncing.
Material was a surprise, too, tending towards artfully mangled Simon and Garfunkel and Mr. Mister, believe it or not, along with a gospel number on which the Almighty sounds a bit needy: “Say that you love me, that there’s no one above me.”
The climax of the set was a mind-blowing version of In the Air Tonight. Seven black guys in white suits making Phil Collins sound sublime - there’s something you don’t hear every day.
There’s Michael Bublé, Josh Groban … and William Joseph.
William who?
All are protégés of David Foster, the Victoria-born music producer blessed with an ability to transform relative unknowns into easy-listening titans.
Joseph, 29, is the latest to get the Big Foster Push. Indeed, Foster’s so keen to tout Joseph, he contacted the TC offering to chat about the pop-pianist from Phoenix, Ariz.
So we did.
Foster says Williams is playing Vancouver Island dates (Victoria, Nanaimo, Courtenay and Campbell) as part of a Western Canadian tour to hone the pianist’s concert chops. In a sense, this tour, wrapping in Winnipeg on Jan. 30, is the equivalent of an off-Broadway run — the U.S. and international market being “Broadway.” Travelling with a small band, it is Joseph’s first tour as a headliner.
“This is a great training ground for him to get prepared for what’s about to come,” Foster said this week.
The producer compares Joseph’s situation to that of the pre-fame Bublé. At Foster’s suggestion, Bublé fine-tuned his live act during a five-night run at the 75-seat Cinegrill club in Los Angeles’s Roosevelt Hotel. Bublé went on to sell more than 10 million albums … and capture the hearts of middle-age women worldwide.
Foster believes Joseph might achieve the career he envisioned for himself before becoming a wildly successful producer, overseeing sessions for Celine Dion, Michael Jackson and other stars. Both men share a love for playing cinematic pop piano with classical flourishes. On his debut disc, Within (produced by Foster), Joseph plays his own pop/neo-romantic pieces alongside adult-contemporary reworkings of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir and Kansas’s Dust in the Wind.
Foster first encountered Joseph in 2003 at a charity event honouring Muhammad Ali. Joseph’s previous manager, Gregg Ostro, introduced the pianist to Foster. Joseph says all he imagined was shaking Foster’s hand and giving him a demo recording.
Instead, at Ostro’s suggestion, Joseph was also invited to play the piano. The musician immediately knew it was a make-or-break opportunity.
“It was exciting and horrifying all at the same time … I was scared out of my mind,” Joseph recalled. “But I was just trying to contain my excitement and play it cool.”
Foster was tremendously impressed with the pianist’s rendering of his original song Within (the title track of his album). The producer gave Joseph the high-five, then invited him to be the opening act at the charity concert, headlined by Rod Stewart and Reba McEntire. That performance went over well, too.
“I knew it was a big deal,” Joseph said. “But I didn’t know how big of a deal it was.”
Foster then invited the pianist to his Malibu studio to record Within for his 143 Records label, now operating under the Warner Bros. umbrella. The pair are collaborating on a followup disc, recorded with a 72-piece orchestra.
Joseph performed in Victoria last April as the opener for Il Divo. Just like the Il Divo gang, Joseph is a good-looking, clean-cut young fellow. While this is great for marketing purposes, handsome dudes who deliver easy-listening music are often a target for critics — something of which Joseph is well aware.
“Sad to say, the world relies a lot on image,” he said. “[But] the No. 1 thing should always be music and talent first.”
For his part, Foster is under no illusions about the road to stardom. Even if the whole package is there — the right look, the right song — it’s still a long way from playing soft-seaters to selling out sport stadiums.
“It’s a challenge,” Foster said. “But it’s a challenge I’m right on top of. I love it.”
There are a lot of people in Vancouver music circles who still remember David Foster as the wiry guy with big hair playing keyboards for Skylark on their 1972 mega-hit, “Wildflower.”
He was a 23-year-old Victoria kid, and even then, quite noticeably and prodigiously talented. When he waved from the window of his southbound VW van and said he was off to conquer America, not many doubted him.
In no time, he got session work with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart and Hall and Oats — not to mention the Beatles — and the upward climb had begun.
Fourteen Grammys later, should Foster put his imprimatur on an emerging talent, it’s prudent to pay attention. Think Michael Bublé. Hell, think Josh Groban, whose Foster-produced Noel record was the biggest seller in the U.S. last year, moving 3.7 million copies — and it was released only three months ago.
Foster, as you might guess, is invited to many galas and he’s a regular at the annual Celebrity Fight Night star-fest in Phoenix, Ariz., the benefit dedicated to a variety of charities, most notably Muhammed Ali’s Parkinson Center. Seats are $5,000 US minimum and they raise five or six million in a single, talent-gorged, black-tie evening.
Three years ago, rehearsing for the event, Foster was approached by someone from the Boys and Girls Club about a local young man in his early 20s, who they had helped out with piano lessons a few years earlier. He just wanted to look at Foster’s piano. That was it. So, as the band tuned up, this good-looking young fellow named William Joseph stepped up and Foster said, “Hey, go ahead, play the thing.
“And the guy sits down and he rips this kind of classical piece that he wrote,” Foster recalls. “That night, I was supposed to open the show with my little “Winter Games” song that I wrote in ‘88, which I love but I keep using it to open all these shows because I haven’t written anything better. So I said, ‘Tonight, you open the show.’”
As Joseph remembers it, about 10 seconds into the piece — it’s called “Within,” the title of his current album — Foster got the attention of the band and began conducting them to join in with the piano.
“And the next thing I knew, I’ve got this world-class band playing along with me and I’ve got David Foster next to me conducting and I’m praying in my head, ‘Please, don’t mess up.’ It was quite a moment. When I finished, everybody that was in there setting up started applauding and David gave me a high-five and he said, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘I wrote it.’ Then he said, ‘Tonight you’re going to open the show.’‘What was that?’ I said, ‘I wrote it.’ Then he said, ‘Tonight you’re going to open the show.’So we had another run-through and I had to run home, change and come back that night and perform. I’ve never been more scared in my life.”
Much like the Skylark-era Foster, Joseph was a young, precocious talent, but hadn’t yet busted out of Arizona. He played the organ at Phoenix Coyotes games, did corporate gigs and got work every Christmas at a local mall where he played seasonal music 12 hours a day. But right away, Foster saw something. “His music was like Josh Groban without the vocals, just a little edgier, but still the Il Divo, Josh Groban camp. I like to call it ‘popera’ but everybody hates that term.”
In no time, Joseph was signed as a Warner recording artist and had his debut recorded and ready in two months to join up with the Josh Groban tour. He lived at Foster’s Malibu house (this was just before the Foster family’s unfortunate Princes of Malibu reality TV show), recorded the album and hit the road. Since then, he’s also been out opening for Il Divo and Clay Aiken. Joseph’s Vancouver show is part of his first headlining tour.
Still to come is a tour of Canada’s East Coast this spring and there’s a good possibility of a tour to China. And what would Joseph be doing these days if not for that fortuitous meeting with David Foster?
“Restaurants and weddings.”
Here’s a video with William Joseph performing “Kashmir” at MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2004.
Music specials haven’t fared well in primetime lately, but that’s not stopping CBS from tuning up a pair of hours top lined by Celine Dion and Garth Brooks. Dion will star in “Celine Dion: That’s Just the Woman in Me,” a mix of greatest hits and new duets from her current album. Josh Groban and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.I.Am will guest on the special, which lensed Saturday at L.A.’s Wiltern Theater.
CBS has slotted the Dion special — the singer’s first since wrapping up her five-year stand in Las Vegas — for Friday, Feb. 15, at 9 p.m. (check local listings).
On Jan. 25, Brooks will headline “Garth Brooks: Live in L.A.!,” which will chronicle the first of Brooks’ planned five concerts over two days. Spec will originate live from the Staples Center, with CBS airing the hour at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
With the WGA strike putting a premium on original programming, the Eye seems to have decided to ignore the recent ratings performances for concert specials. It’s not too much of a gamble, however, given that Dion and Brooks both fit squarely in the CBS demo.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, Josh Groban’s “Noel” sold almost 3.7 million copies, way ahead of the second-place “High School Musical 2″ soundtrack, which sold just under 3 million copies.
It marked the first time a seasonal album topped an end-of-year chart and the first time a seasonal album has sold more than 3 million copies. Singer Josh Groban had the best-selling album of 2007 in the U.S. and he was also the biggest selling artist of 2007, with his total catalogue reaching sales of more than 4.8 million.
The Eagles had the best-selling album by a band with “Long Road Out of Eden.”
The most popular digital track was Soulja Boy’s “Crank That,” which made it to #21 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Best Songs of 2007.
The U.S. Top 10 Albums of 2007 were:
1 Noel / Josh Groban 3,699,000
2 Soundtrack / High School Musical 2 2,957,000
3 Long Road Out of Eden / Eagles 2,608,000
4 As I Am / Alicia Keys 2,543,000
5 Daughtry / Daughtry 2,497,000
6 Soundtrack/ Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley 2,489,000
7 Minutes To Midnight / Linkin Park 2,099,000
8 Dutchess / Fergie 2,064,000
9 Taylor Swift / Taylor Swift 1,951,000
10. Graduation / Kanye West 1,892,000
The top selling artists of 2007 were:
1 Josh Groban 4,835,000
2 Hannah Montana 3,854,000
3 Eagles 3,583,000
4 Carrie Underwood 3,231,000
5 Rascal Flatts 3,129,000
6 Alicia Keys 2,699,000
7 Linkin Park 2,624,000 8 Michael Buble 2,530,000
9 Daughtry 2,506,000
10. Tim McGraw 2,369,000
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