Tickets that Fell from the Sky

Roch Voisine (pronounced Rock)

Miranda’s mother gifted Richard, Miranda and me with some tickets to the “Roch Voisine: 25th Anniversary as an Artist” Concert. 

The possibility of upgrading the tickets to include the pre-performance meet and greet wasn’t there, for the tickets only came into our hands about an hour before the concert began.

 And I had to go to the internet to find out who he was and what kind of music I would be listening to. The tickets were just under $100 so I knew this was a better choice than the free entertainment I had scheduled for the evening.

Richard and I pretty well drew a blank on the titles of the songs, but the Epcor centre was full of fans who knew every piece. I was looking around for a programme.  There wasn't one.  This is the kind of concert where clapping from the audience begins at the first few bars of a song and there was lots of calling from the audience to the performer, sometimes in the form of catcalls. I spent a lot of my evening watching the tenor who was doing the back-up in many of the songs -- Roch should never get rid of that guy...always there with exactly the right tone and volume.

I came to learn Roch Voisine recently authored Living out My Dreams, Canada's Olympic Team theme song for the Sochi Winter Olympics. I was even drawing a blank there. By the end of the concert I could hum "Kissing Rain", "I’ll Always Be There" and "There’s No Good Way to Say Goodbye". So the concert was a success for me.  Three new songs and an enjoyable evening's entertainment.

I tried to get Richard’s cell phone off of him so I could wave it in the air. I have seen groupies do it in London and I wanted to join in with the Calgary crowd. He just gave me a look and put it back in his pocket.  Of course we had to help with the standing ovation at the end of the concert -- at least by standing because everyone else was block our view.  I clapped, but I was more interested in the whole body language of the music lovers, whole groups of them waving their hands high in the air, synchronized amongst themselves and with him.

 Our biggest adventure for the evening was trying to get a parking ticket from the vending machine. We were fifteen deep waiting fora turn to get a ticket  extracted and punched.  I didn’t know that cash was so out of fashion. No use in pulling cash out. The machine accepted credit cards, though there were instructions on how to park using your cell phone.

Now there is a reason to get a cell phone, if ever there was one.

Arta