On Sunday, Dec. 14th the Mary Webb Centre for the Arts in Highgate hosted a full house for Serena Ryder’s Merry Myths Tour. The concert was sold out for months and the audience was certainly happy being part of that evening of truly amazing music.
The concert started with the duet Lydia Persaud on vocals, ukulele and percussion and Christine Bougie playing steel guitar. Lydia has an excellent voice as she performed her own songs. She told how Serena had helped her learn to play the ukulele which was a unique sound for the songs that they performed. Christine’s guitar provided great background accompaniment to Lydia vocals. The audience was truly appreciative of these two fine musicians. Lydia and Christine are also part of Serena’s band.
After a short intermission, Serena and her band began to play and had the audience under their spell as soon as they started to play and sing. She sang a very unique version of “The Christmas Carol”. In between songs, Serena told stories about how she grew up in a small town of about 1000 folks, playing vinyl records with her dad, (Handy Andy). Along with Lydia, she sang one of Lydia’s songs from her album that came out during COVID. Serena’s version of “I’ll be Home for Christmas” continued to mesmerize the audience. During this song, Serena took her microphone and went around the concert hall, inviting members of the audience to join in the performance, not always happily! Great fun. Everyone was standing up for “Waking Up” and singing along to “It’s no Mistake”.
When he welcomed everyone to the concert, music Director Peter Garapick took a short poll of where people had come from to be part of this show. There were a lot of them who had never been to the Mary Webb Centre and many travelled quite a distance to hear Serena, They were certainly not disappointed. Serena and her band totally enthralled the audience who continually showed their appreciation. It was a concert to remember.
Thanks to Gray Ridge Egg Farms for sponsoring this concert.
l-r: Christine Bougie and Lydia Persaud
l-r: Brian Kobayakawa, Lydia Persaud, Christine Bougie,
Davide Di Renza and Serena Ryder