IN CONCERT
What: Three Knights With a Tenor featuring Ken Lavigne
Where: Church of the Advent,510 Mount View Ave., Colwood
When: Friday, May 11, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $30 at the Church of the Advent office; $35 at the door
Note: Lavigne also performs Three Knights With a Tenor twice on Saturday (at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.) at Chemainus United Church
Ken Lavigne only had a few directions in which he could turn for his new project paying tribute to musical knights of the British Empire.
The Chemainus singer’s voice isn’t best-suited for the Rolling Stones, so Sir Mick Jagger was out. And the Kinks aren’t stylistically his bag, so Sir Ray Davies wasn’t in contention, either. Lavigne eventually found some musical kin, who just so happened to be three of the biggest in British history: Sir Elton John, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sir Paul McCartney.
The result is Three Knights With a Tenor — the classical tenor in the mix being the sweet-singing Lavigne.
“I used to boast that, because I trained classically, I could sing anything. But these three have particular phrasings that they do, and vocal styles that are totally unique,” Lavigne said. “If you try and emulate it, you come out sounding wrong. It’s just weird.
“You have to take some time and make the songs your own, because if you’re not going to do them as people have heard for years on the radio, they had better be awesome.”
Lavigne, who trained at the Victoria Conservatory of Music and has performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, knows McCartney’s music by heart and has tackled the famous works of Webber in the past, but John proved to be the tougher task. “He’s so idiosyncratic, and does these octave leaps,” Lavigne said. “He’s the maestro of mid-tempo melancholy.”
By doing several medleys, Lavigne is able to offer quite a robust setlist, with 25 songs in all. In some cases, he has taken the most memorable bits of a song and combined with others of the same ilk, giving fans maximum exposure to three great catalogues of music. Backed by a small ensemble, Lavigne will perform staples from John (Rocket Man, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and McCartney (Oh! Darling, Hey Jude), along with selections from Lloyd’s core catalogue of stage musicals, Evita, Phantom of the Opera and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Lavigne is five dates into his tour of Vancouver Island, which began in Comox on April 27. When the final three dates, which include a stop Friday at Colwood’s Church of the Advent, are over and done, Lavigne said he will revisit the songs and decide which ones will make the cut for a Three Knights With a Tenor album that he is planning.
Original material is always ideal, but for a singer such as Lavigne, who is known across the province for his deft handling of historic classical-music compositions, the well of new classics being written is shallow, indeed.
“As a classical singer, unless someone is writing new pieces specifically for you, you’re kind of a glorified cover artist, in a way,” he said with a laugh.
“You’re singing stuff that has been down a pretty familiar path for a while. But when you do it right, it can be powerful.”
