Pirates and volcanoes and all that jazz
Source: St catherine standard
At first, Juliet Dunn was scared Somali pirates might scupper her weekend jazz performance with the Niagara Symphony.
Then a volcanic ash cloud grounded flights and left her homecoming plans up in the air.
Oh, and don't forget the sudden bout of laryngitis.
"Wow, you know it was sort of a hard week," said the laughing jazz singer, who lives in St. Catharines when she's not taking her voice on tour around the globe. "I mean, pirates, a volcano and then you lose your voice? That was really no fun."
Dunn and her husband, pianist Peter Shea, are quite literally world travellers -- they've spent the past three months performing on a 200-metre-long luxury cruise ship called The World.
The unique gig allowed the couple to sing their way through vacation destinations like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
But in late April, it also meant cruising through "Pirate Alley," otherwise known as the Gulf of Aden. Merchant vessels using the busy shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea, between Yemen and Somalia, have regularly been attacked by machine-gun-toting buccaneers over the past two years.
A couple of days after The " World left Oman on April 18 -- Dunn's birthday -- a Liberian
bulk carrier was hijacked about 190 nautical miles to the south.
"It was actually pretty nerve-racking. I wasn't sleeping well at that point," said Dunn, who said the mega-yacht spent about two days in waters the crew called "the war zone."
"We had six snipers on board. Well, that's what we called them. They didn't really like to be called snipers, though. They referred to themselves as 'additional security.'
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Luckily, the cruise ship passengers never did see a real, live pirate, although a jittery Dunn was presented with a "pirate birthday cake" along the way.
But as the group floated nervously toward Jordan, news reports came in announcing mass airport closures caused by a major eruption of an Iceland volcano.
As volcanic ash grounded flights all over Europe, Dunn watched on the Internet as chaos overwhelmed the London airport that was supposed to be her last stop before coming home to St. Catharines. Then she lost her voice.
"The doctor said I couldn't sing for a couple of days, so I fiddled around on the drums and tried to stay positive," she recalled.
London's airport backlog -- and Dunn's laryngitis -- improved in time for the songstress to fly back to Canada just a couple of days before the symphony performance.
She said she was determined not to miss it, not even for The World.
"It's an important gig for me," said Dunn, who will immediately wing back to Egypt to rejoin the cruise ship after her weekend performance at Brock University. "When I took the job (aboard the cruise ship), I told them I absolutely had to come back for the symphony show. Otherwise, I wouldn't go."
Dunn originally arrived in Niagara in 2002 to do theatre work with the Shaw Festival. She launched her jazz career in 2005, playing venues throughout the region. The 41-year-old typically performs as part of a trio or quartet, so she jumped at the chance to do a pops concert with the symphony. The big band program, with shows on Saturday and Sunday, is called It Don't Mean a Thing if You Ain't Got That Swing.
"That would be the biggest band I've ever performed with," she said with a laugh. "Those opportunities don't come around every day."
mvandongen@stcatharinesstandard.ca
At first, Juliet Dunn was scared Somali pirates might scupper her weekend jazz performance with the Niagara Symphony.
Then a volcanic ash cloud grounded flights and left her homecoming plans up in the air.
Oh, and don't forget the sudden bout of laryngitis.
"Wow, you know it was sort of a hard week," said the laughing jazz singer, who lives in St. Catharines when she's not taking her voice on tour around the globe. "I mean, pirates, a volcano and then you lose your voice? That was really no fun."
Dunn and her husband, pianist Peter Shea, are quite literally world travellers -- they've spent the past three months performing on a 200-metre-long luxury cruise ship called The World.
The unique gig allowed the couple to sing their way through vacation destinations like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
But in late April, it also meant cruising through "Pirate Alley," otherwise known as the Gulf of Aden. Merchant vessels using the busy shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea, between Yemen and Somalia, have regularly been attacked by machine-gun-toting buccaneers over the past two years.
A couple of days after The " World left Oman on April 18 -- Dunn's birthday -- a Liberian
bulk carrier was hijacked about 190 nautical miles to the south.
"It was actually pretty nerve-racking. I wasn't sleeping well at that point," said Dunn, who said the mega-yacht spent about two days in waters the crew called "the war zone."
"We had six snipers on board. Well, that's what we called them. They didn't really like to be called snipers, though. They referred to themselves as 'additional security.'
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Luckily, the cruise ship passengers never did see a real, live pirate, although a jittery Dunn was presented with a "pirate birthday cake" along the way.
But as the group floated nervously toward Jordan, news reports came in announcing mass airport closures caused by a major eruption of an Iceland volcano.
As volcanic ash grounded flights all over Europe, Dunn watched on the Internet as chaos overwhelmed the London airport that was supposed to be her last stop before coming home to St. Catharines. Then she lost her voice.
"The doctor said I couldn't sing for a couple of days, so I fiddled around on the drums and tried to stay positive," she recalled.
London's airport backlog -- and Dunn's laryngitis -- improved in time for the songstress to fly back to Canada just a couple of days before the symphony performance.
She said she was determined not to miss it, not even for The World.
"It's an important gig for me," said Dunn, who will immediately wing back to Egypt to rejoin the cruise ship after her weekend performance at Brock University. "When I took the job (aboard the cruise ship), I told them I absolutely had to come back for the symphony show. Otherwise, I wouldn't go."
Dunn originally arrived in Niagara in 2002 to do theatre work with the Shaw Festival. She launched her jazz career in 2005, playing venues throughout the region. The 41-year-old typically performs as part of a trio or quartet, so she jumped at the chance to do a pops concert with the symphony. The big band program, with shows on Saturday and Sunday, is called It Don't Mean a Thing if You Ain't Got That Swing.
"That would be the biggest band I've ever performed with," she said with a laugh. "Those opportunities don't come around every day."
mvandongen@stcatharinesstandard.ca
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