Sunday, May 8, 2011

SKAL at Lougheed House


I do love performing at Lougheed House, Calgary's most beautiful and best-maintained grand Victorian house. The Mission Room, so named for its design style, is like a drawing room for post-dinner entertainment and is absolutely perfect for a cosy, sophisticated evening with a Victorian atmosphere. Rather makes you want to gather around a grand piano and sing civilised songs. (Luckily they actually have a Steinway in the room, just in case.)

A couple of weeks ago Lougheed House hosted an evening's food and entertainment for local members of SKAL, an international tourism and tour-operators' professional organisation. Blane Hogue, the executive director of the house, had been given the mandate of providing 'an evening of magic and mystery' for the guests - none of whom had any advance idea of what the night would involve, and he called me in as their surprise entertainer.

And what a group! Forty-odd extroverts seated in the little room, post-dinner and post-wine and obviously in a gregarious and participatory mood. I'd met many of them earlier in the evening during the cocktail hour as I did some close-up strolling magic, and they were definitely in the mood to enjoy themselves. Ah yes, a good time was indeed had by all.

One of them, Julien DeSchutter, kindly emailed me a few photos last night that he'd taken during the evening, which I'm posting here.

3 comments:

  1. Damn, the things I miss by not being in Canada. It's too bad there was no video taken of the performance--the pictures really make me want to see it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll be doing some more shows there over the next while so I'll try to get a video clip or two!

    ReplyDelete
  3. FANTASTIC!!!! I can't wait for the video clips to start Malcolm!
    Can you add a video clip of the bunnies too?

    ReplyDelete