Satiniques Deliver Smooth Sounds
BY DOUG AVRAM
FOR THE TIMES-JOURNAL October 01, 2007
PORT STANLEY:
Smooth as satin, the DooWop harmonies and musical stylings of The Satiniques opened a series of performances on the weekend at the Port Stanley Festival Theatre.
Once word of their impending performances went out, the three shows originally planned sold out so quickly that another was added.
Fans loved their selections and the opening performance was filled with a joy for their music that touched everyone in the audience. There were hit songs from the 1950s, 60s and 70s,
and while the melodies were reminiscent of the original artists, the Satiniques added their own unique touches to each song.
High energy, tight harmonies, and an obvious love of their music had the audience swinging, toe-tapping and humming along.
The songs that were featured in juke boxes and on the radio, heard in school gyms at sock-hops when the Baby Boomers were in high school were brilliantly brought to life at the PSFT.
They performed songs from the Beach Boys, Elvis, the Platters and the Beatles, to name a few.
Joe and Ann Loebach of St. Thomasand Rick & Donna Prichard of Komoka formed this musical group with a specific age range in mind.
The music is deliberately geared to the 40+ audience and the response to their performances proved that it is definitely a hit with their select audiences.
Four talented singers with voices that blend so smoothly, very personable performances, colourful costumes and delightful, warm and witty banter brought out the feelings the evening
was designed to evoke.
It was called MALT SHOPPE MEMORIES and it certainly was that to the pleasure of all who attended.
The Satiniques are smooth and classy in their performance, in their warm personalities, in their high energy and joy in singing and especially satin-smooth in their sound.
Doug Avram is a freelance writer for the St. Thomas Times-Journal.. His Theatre reviews appear regularly in the T-J
CITY LIVING, FUN STUFF, EDITORIALS, COLUMNS, LETTERS
Pages C1 - C12 Wednesday March 23, 2005
Joe and Ann Loebach, Rick and Donna Pritchard are The Satiniques, a group of local performers working towards performing on an International stage.
Their goal was to star in their own show
And these Londoners, all music lovers, are on their way as The Satiniques
By JULIE BELL The Londoner
What do a retired engineer, a tech advisor, a small business owner and a retired postal service employee
have in
common besides being from London?
If you ask Joe Loebach, it's The Beach Boy's, The Platters, ABBA, The Beatles and more.
We have a great passion for music. We love to perform and get people's toes tapping," he says.
So Mr. Loebach, the retired engineer, and his wife Ann, the retired postal employee, came together with small business owners Rick Pritchard and his wife Donna, and decided to create a musical act that would knock the socks off an audience.
And so were born the Satiniques.
"The four of us came together and decided we all had the same goal. We had all been in various musical groups for a while, and we wanted to do something a little more serious," Mr. Loebach says. "We wanted to create a group with great dedication."
They set to work choosing songs, coming to the conclusion that some golden oldies would have audiences dancing in their seats. Hits from the '50s, and '60s are injected with The Satiniques' style as the four sing and dance with every bit of heart and soul they've got.
Mr. Loebach speculates the group has spent more than 4,000 hours practicing and preparing.
"Well, when you talk about it that way it sounds like a job," Mrs. Loebach says. "But it's really more of a hobby. There's a lot of work involved but we have so much fun doing it."
The group kept at their practicing and strategizing for a year, working with a professional choreographer to get their jumps and jives just right, a voice coach to get the perfect pitch, and putting their heads together to come up with the perfect name.
"We wanted something that would portray our smooth sound. We kept playing with the word satin, and eventually came up with The Satiniques," Mr. Pritchard says.
As the pieces of The Satiniques puzzle started coming together, the group began setting their sights high.
"Once we began to put this product together we thought, what a great thing if we could take this dream of singing for people, not only locally but perhaps nationally and internationally, and turn it into a reality."
That dream, he says, is coming true thanks to a little persistence and a lot of dedication. The group's musical career hit an interesting high note recently, according to Mr. Pritchard.
On a trip to Panama in January, the group was holding their regular bi-weekly rehearsal and they soon had an audience.
"We were rehearsing outside of our hotel with our microphones and our little radio and a crowd of people started to gather around us. People started asking us who we were and where we were from," Mr. Pritchard says.
The following day, thanks to the interest of their fellow guests, the group members found themselves rehearsing on the resort's outdoor stage using their sound system.
"We attracted a great crowd, it was amazing," Mr. Loebach adds. "The hotel liked us so much they asked us to open for one of their main shows a few nights later. It was fantastic."
Mrs. Loebach adds that their audience was diverse. "They were from across the globe. We weren't just performing for people from North America. But people from places throughout South America and across the world. Some of them didn't even speak English and they really seemed to love it."
Feeling confident with their accomplishment and rave reviews, the following day the group set off down the beach to another resort to request a stage and some performance time.
"We auditioned for them that night and they asked us how soon we could be back to do a show there," Mr. Pritchard says. "It turns out more people showed up for our show than they had ever had attend one of their own shows."
Before the group came back to Canada from their vacation, the resort offered them a contract to return whenever they pleased, with all expenses paid, to perform their shows.
Although the pay cheque that comes with performing is important in helping to support their hobby, the group says that's not what's important to them.
"It's not like we're getting rich doing this. That's not our intent. We're doing this because it's something we all have a passion for. It's our dream," Mr. Loebach says. "It's just so exciting for us to see that our dream is coming true.
"I have to say, it's kind of fun when you're at a restaurant eating dinner and someone comes up and recognizes you. That tiny bit of fame is pretty exciting."
Dawson Winchester's The View From Here
Monday July 10, 2006
St. Thomas's BEST KEPT ENTERTAINMENT SECRET
Thousands of people traipsed the midway at St. Anne's Festival one week last month, but somehow most of them missed the Wednesday evening appearance of the singing Satiniques.
Too bad, so sad! Y'all missed a wonderful two-hour performance by four very talented local entertainers. You really did!
Some folks arrived after the show had started, but by my count the audience never exceeded 50 people at any given time. And that is a pity. The quality of the Satiniques performance deserved an
audience of, say, at least 200, which would still not half-fill St. Anne's Centre. But, seated up around the stage, it would have afforded the quartet a larger, more responsive audience.
Mind you, it wasn't that those in attendance were unreceptive to the Satiniques song and dance routines. It was just that even a standing ovation by 50 or fewer people in a venue as large as St. Anne's is
something akin to a few drops of water splish-splashing into an empty swimming pool.
During intermission half way through the Satiniques show I had a chance to chat with local Leprechaun Cliff Maxwell -- for a long time one of St. Thomas more entertaining entertainers -- and we both
bemoaned the sparse turnout for the Satiniques. Cliff suggested that had the group been booked for a night other than Wednesday the audience might well have been larger. (Something the entertainment
powers-that-be at St. Anne's might want to consider for next year.)
So lets talk about the Satiniques. For those who haven't seen them in concert, a brief primer.
The Satiniques were born when Joe and Ann Loebach of St. Thomas and Rick and Donna Pritchard of Komoka joined forces in 2003. Although the four had sung together in several other groups in the
past, they had never performed together as a quartet.
For starters, the Loebachs and the Pritchards arranged a recording session to check out the compatibility of their voices. They found the soprano voices of Ann and Donna were so well matched that
at times they sounded like one voice. Rick's tenor voice and Joe's baritone/bass also complimented each other very well.
At this point the real work had just begun. The group decided their target audience would be the 40-plus age bracket and that fast-paced tunes of the 50s & 60s would be the music on their playlist.
Then came what eventually amounted to thousands of hours of rehearsal. The rest, as they say, is history. A high-energy show that features, among others, the music of the Beatles, the Beach Boys,
the Bee Gees, ABBA, the Chiffons, the Platters, the Mamas and Papas and the McGuire Sisters. Rock 'n Roll, Doo Wop, Country, Swing and Pop. They do it all! Internationally the group has performed
in Panama, Central America, and Cancun.
You can catch the Satiniques in St. Thomas July 12 at 1:30 p.m. at the Annual Seniors Picnic at Pinafore Park. They make a return visit to Pinafore on Sunday evening, Aug. 27 in the new Bandshell
at 7 p.m. (Mark it on your calendar.)
The best way to keep track of upcoming performances is on their website, which is constantly being updated.
www.satiniques.com.
What has been, up to now, St. Thomas’s best kept entertainment secret will hopefully soon become one of St. Thomas more widely known entertainment groups.
FOR MORE INFORMATION on The Satiniques:
Phone: (519) 633-1713
E-Mail: greatsingers@sympatico.ca
Dawson Winchester is a St. Thomas freelance writer. His column appears Mondays in the T-J. You can e-mail him at dwinches@sympatico.ca.