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RUTH BONNEVILLE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
Danny Carroll spent three years at the U of M studying under, among others, Ron Paley, a cornerstone of the local jazz scene.<\/p>\n
During what is expected to be a 90-minute concert, Carroll will intersperse original, neo-classical compositions with anecdotal stories from a professional career spanning six decades.<\/p>\n
One of those yarns may revolve around a certain Billy Joel number that Carroll \u2014 a Rainbow Stage Wall of Fame inductee who has served as musical director for the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Manitoba Theatre for Young People and Winnipeg Jewish Theatre \u2014 has performed more times than he count.<\/p>\n
From 2005 to 2022, Carroll was a weekly fixture at the Hotel Fort Garry, where he tickled the ivories in the main-floor Palm Room, offering everything from jazz to Broadway tunes to light pop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt eventually reached a point where I\u2019d smile and answer \u2018sure, no problem.\u2019 Bizarre but true.\u201d<\/p>\n
It never failed. Every night he was there, somebody would request Piano Man, he says, seated in a coffee shop in the Grant Park area, blocks away from where he lives with L\u2019aura, his wife of 46 years.<\/p>\n
There were even occasions he\u2019d be halfway through the Joel standard already when a guest who\u2019d presumably had one too many would shout out, \u201cWhen this song\u2019s over, can you do Piano Man?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt eventually reached a point where I\u2019d smile and answer \u2018sure, no problem.\u2019 Bizarre but true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carroll, in his early 70s, was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ont. The eldest of four siblings was six years old when his maternal grandmother commanded that he learn an instrument, letting him choose between piano and accordion.<\/p>\n
He was slight of build \u2014 \u201cThree-feet-two and maybe 48 pounds,\u201d says Carroll, still slim as a rail \u2014 so he picked piano, believing he\u2019d never have the physical wherewithal to hoist an accordion.<\/p>\n
There was one problem. His family didn\u2019t yet own a piano, so if he needed to rehearse lessons taught by a nun named Sister Immaculata, he knocked on the door of his across-the-street neighbour, to ask if he could use theirs.<\/p>\n
Carroll was 15 when he helped form a jazz combo called Sacraf \u2014 Sacraf being the flutist\u2019s surname spelled backwards.<\/p>\n
When Sacraf wasn\u2019t booked at one coffee house or another, its members were attending shows by the Fabulous Fugitives, an established troupe led by fellow Thunder Bay native Paul Schaffer, who famously went on to become American late-night TV host David Letterman\u2019s bandleader and sidekick.<\/p>\n
After completing high school, Carroll took what has come to be known as a gap year.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t He landed a job at Chippewa Park on the shore of Lake Superior, a position that, come winter, required him to prepare ice for outdoor skating rinks.<\/p>\n As if it was yesterday, he remembers an especially frigid evening when he lost all feeling in his fingers and toes. That\u2019s it, he declared, as he shivered in the dark, struggling to hold onto his hose. There was no way he was going to do this for the rest of his life, only what options did he have?<\/p>\n His one true passion was music. He talked it over with Sister Immaculata, who had continued to be his piano teacher. At her suggestion, he successfully applied to the School of Music at the University of Manitoba, arriving there in September 1976.<\/p>\n Carroll spent three years at the U of M studying under, among others, Ron Paley, a cornerstone of the local jazz scene since the mid-1970s. Post-graduation, he was hired by a company that ran the MS River Rouge. For two summers in a row, he played piano in a unit that, six hours a day, seven days a week, entertained passengers aboard the popular sightseeing vessel.<\/p>\n He also tried his hand at teaching. Except after a few years of working full-time as a high school band leader, he realized he preferred a stage to a classroom. He switched to part-time, a move that helped pay the bills \u2014 by then he and L\u2019aura had two young daughters \u2014 but also allowed him to pursue other musical avenues.<\/p>\n (Another amusing story Carroll likes to share revolves around the decade he spent playing piano at the Hollow Mug Dinner Theatre, which shuttered in the early 1990s. One night, an audience member approached him between sets to ask if he could borrow his keyboard to sing Happy Birthday to his mother. Carroll was about to say sorry, that was against the rules, when his bass player leaned over and whispered, \u201cErr, that\u2019s Burton Cummings.\u201d)<\/p>\n Robb Paterson was the RMTC\u2019s associate artistic director from 2004 to 2016. Now retired and living in Ottawa, Paterson was introduced to Carroll in 1992 when Carroll played piano for a Winnipeg Jewish Theatre play he was directing. They got to know each other better the next year, when the two of them were involved with Rainbow Stage\u2019s production of Fiddler on the Roof.<\/p>\n \u201cIt reached a point where we were golfing together regularly and one day on the course, Danny said he wanted to take me for lunch to pick my brain about composing for theatrical productions,\u201d Paterson says. \u201cWe went to the Sals (Salisbury House) at Pembina and Stafford, and he handed me a cassette of original music. A short time later I was hired to do a show at MTYP \u2014 I think it was Pippi Longstocking \u2014 and I brought Danny in to put a band together and to compose incidental music, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBesides his talents as a musician and musical director, he was also great at building a sense of community.\u201d<\/p>\n Paterson describes Carroll as an \u201cidea machine\u201d who proved invaluable for crowd-pleasers such as RMTC\u2019s It\u2019s A Wonderful Life and Rainbow Stage\u2019s Beauty and the Beast.<\/p>\n \u201cBesides his talents as a musician and musical director, he was also great at building a sense of community by coming up with all these fun contests to keep morale up during the long rehearsal process,\u201d Paterson continues. \u201cTrivia was usually involved and he would reward winners with so-called Danny Bucks, which they could trade in for prizes at the end of a run. And don\u2019t get me started about the puppet shows he did in the pit at curtain call that only the actors could see. Those were always hilarious.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll was in rehearsals for a new show at RMTC in August 2018 when, returning to his vehicle one afternoon, he collapsed to the ground, clutching his chest. Moments later, after a passerby called 911, a first responder informed him he had suffered a heart attack. He was recovering in hospital when, having recently turned 65, he asked himself what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. The answer: record an album of original songs, something he\u2019d never taken the time to do.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t It was a lengthy process \u2014 the pandemic was definitely a factor \u2014 but in August 2023, Carroll released Keys for Transformation, a 12-track CD one reviewer described as \u201cgenre-blurring works (with) elements of classical, new age, jazz and electronica.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what a kick it was to finally have an album of my own,\u201d he says, noting he continues to write music and hopes to head back into the studio to begin work on a followup album in the not too distant future. (No, it won\u2019t include I\u2019m So Lonely \u2014 a maudlin ballad he wrote as a 13-year-old that \u201cwent on for eight pages of hand-written lyrics that thankfully burned in a garage fire, years ago.\u201d)<\/p>\n These days Carroll stays busy performing at seniors complexes, mixing in songs of his own with well-known selections by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. That has led to other opportunities, including a show in January at The Leaf, where he partnered with vocalist Aaron Hutton.<\/p>\n Additionally, he reserves room on his calendar for a beer-league hockey team, for which he patrols right wing.<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\tDish<\/p>\n Every Second Friday<\/p>\n The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney.<\/p>\n
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\nCarroll (centre) with his jazz quartet at a performance at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1980.<\/p>\n
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\nProducing an album of original songs was a \u2018kick\u2019 for Carroll. His album, Keys for Transformation, was released in 2023.<\/p>\n