Harping on Fun: Christian Chalifour's Musical Game Show

Theme Song Singers: 00:00:00

In a land of sunshine where the palm trees sway there's a special show to brighten up your day from rockin festivals to Broadway dreams. Tune in with Bonnie G. It's The Desert Scene, The Desert Scene with Bonnie G.

Meet the stars and feel the beat from the Coachella Valley is the place to be for all the culture, fun and harm I need The Desert Scene. yeah. With Bonnie G.

Howard The Announcer: 00:00:38

Mutual Broadcasting welcomes you to the desert scene featuring conversations with the people who make culture, art and entertainment happen in the Coachella Valley. From local theater to live music, art exhibits to cinema and beyond. The desert scene is presented by El portal mexican restaurant in Cathedral City.

Now here is your host, Bonnie G.

Bonnie G: 00:01:01

And welcome to the desert scene.

Have you here and very happy to welcome to the show Christian Shalafour, who is a very talented harpist musician, also a buddy of mine I've known for a while and through Eric, and he is hosting this really fun event. Sounds like fabulous family fun with the friendly forest Philharmonic. Say that fast three times. Hi Christian, how are you?

Christian Shalafour: 00:01:23

I'm just fine. And make sure they know that Philharmonic is spelled with an f to match all the other F's.

Bonnie G: 00:01:27

Yes, it's wonderful. So musical game show. Name that tv tune. So this is just, sounds like such a fun event. How did this come to be?

And was this your idea and how did it all,..

Christian Shalafour: 00:01:40

You know, those who. have known me the 30 years I've been here in the Coachella belly know that I can't, I just can't do a straight concert. There's no way. So I always come up with weird gimmicks and ideas and this has got to be the strangest yet.

I will admit it came from watching too much. When the pandemic hit four years ago, it was suddenly found myself watching a lot of me tv and tv land.

And so naturally it's impossible to avoid shows like leave it to and greenacres and Perry Mason and you name it. Right like that.

Then when I realized I was doing this concert October 19 and Idlewild as a farewell concert because I'm moving lock, stock and barrel to Mexico. I even sold my heart last week. More on that later. And yeah, so I said, well, how about if we do this as a musical game show where you are?

ut game shows from either the: 1950

So my twelve piece orchestra has doubled now to be 24 piece orchestra. I have two fabulous guests. Wayne Bryan, who I got to work with in the fantastic, reimagined CB rep, and Derek Lewis, who will be singing as well.

And everybody knows Derek, of course.

Bonnie G: 00:02:59

Absolutely, absolutely. He's been around for. What a fun concept. And by the way, this is the Desert chamber Orchestra in association with Spirit Mountain retreat.

And this is going to be the Spirit Mountain retreat Garden on Oakwood street in Idlewild. Tickets are $10. That's such a deal. $5 for children under twelve. And so tell me exactly how it works. So when you start out. So do you start out okay?

You play four notes and they guess the show. Tell me how the day evolves.

Christian Shalafour: 00:03:30

Okay. Well, just to kind of kick it off and get people interested.

And there'll be an advance telling everybody to make sure they brush up on their tv trivia and all that before they show up. When they arrive, they'll be given a name tag so that we can read their name from a distance of hopefully no more than 5ft.

And they'll be answering a trivia question. And if they get it right, then the orchestra plays a happy major chord and if they get it wrong, they play a horrible dissonance chord. And then they.

Before we even do any is we're gonna play two medleys of show tunes, I guess you could call them, except they're tv show tunes. And that'll be just to give people an idea and remind them of some of the shows.

And then I'll make it clear, though, that all of the questions and the four note guessing game will not be using any of those 14 songs you just heard. So then we.

I mean, when you start digging back into the early sixties and fifties, you can find some pretty obscure things like, dare I say, the real McCoys. Or maybe lassie. Make room for daddy.

You know, shows like that that started back in the fifties and often came from radio shows like Terry Mason and I see.

Bonnie G: 00:04:43

Tell us about the grand prize. This sounds like a fun trip.

Christian Shalafour: 00:04:48

Okay, well, and this has a backstory that's too long to go into to tell, but it turns out this place I'm moving to is just paradise. I've known about it for the whole 30 years I lived here. It's called a he ic, or if you prefer, the j's, to the x's.

st town in Mexico, founded in: 1529

g at sea level or below, it's: 5000

been flocking there since the: 1970

So this is, I figured this is my, I'm 73 years old. This is my final page in my chapter in my life. I want to. I want to go play there and enjoy. Then there's music, arts. I've never seen so arts.

ou go for a breakfast taco at: 07:00

So I figured, well, gee, at that price I can fly down to people who win the prize and all expenses paid and they'll enjoy. It's Guadalajara is what we're talking about. It's south of Daraba, 45 minutes.

Bonnie G: 00:06:30

Okay, that sounds great.

Christian Shalafour: 00:06:32

That's the grand prize.

Bonnie G: 00:06:34

Excellent. All right, let's gonna take a quick break here. We're talking to Christian Chalofer on The Desert Scene. We'll be right back.

El Portal Mexican Restaurant: 00:06:41

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Join us for live entertainment on Friday evenings and consider El Portal for your next special occasion with our catering services. Visit eatatelportal.com for more details and discover why El Portal Mexican Restaurant has become a culinary gem in the desert. El Portal, located one block south of Ramon on D Palm and via Olivera.

Bonnie G: 00:07:41

And we are back on the desert scene with Christian Shalafour, who is a wonderful, wonderfully talented harpist and host of this fabulous event. Coming up Saturday, October 19. Fabulous family fun with the friendly forest Philharmonic Philharmonic spelled with an f musical game show.

une which sounds so much fun.: 02:00

So let's. I want to go back just a little bit. How long have you been playing the harp?

Christian Shalafour: 00:08:17

I started October of: 1977

Bonnie G: 00:08:22

And what made you just lean towards the harp as your instrument?

Christian Shalafour: 00:08:26

I had no interest in it whatsoever. I was working in Alaska's largest music store in the mid seventies.

I kept seeing the ads on tv for this guy named Lloyd Lindroth, who also, hands down, was liberace of the harp. And we're talking pop and jazz harp here.

You know, there's plenty of harpists in the world, but pop and jazz harpist narrows it down to maybe less than 100 worldwide. And I went to see him and he's playing laser beams and smoke blown through the strings.

He's playing big things like, oh, slaughter on 10th Avenue and Rhapsody Blue and bridge over troubled water. And it was too much the first time, so this can't be real, you know. So I go back on a quiet Sunday night and I look up to him.

I said, would you show me how you do that? And he must have sensed that I was serious. He finished his last set.

We put the COVID on the harp, go down to his room, open the door at the Golden Lion Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska. And lo and behold, if there are two more harps sitting there in the room he had just bought.

The pear harps are made in pairs because there's so much gluing and drying. Time involved. Two people, about four months to six months to build one harp or two pair of hearts. And he bought the pair from MGM studio.

So these are the very harps that would have recorded gone with the wind and Casablanca and all the films of that era. So he sat at one and I sat at the other from two in the morning until noon the following day. I don't remember one.

And I said, I gotta have one of these and the rest is history.

Bonnie G: 00:09:59

A couple questions. I mean, harp isn't. It's not like, you know, walking in with a guitar or just sitting down a piano. You gotta schlep that thing around that.

How difficult is that?

Christian Shalafour: 00:10:11

Well, if I did it correctly, it would be more difficult. But I'm usually on the road so much and gigging so much that it's simply they come in these monstrous trunks that weigh 200 pounds themselves.

And the women who played got real tired in the eighties and nineties. And they asked the heart benzies, can you come up with some other way for us to move these things?

And so they came up with transport covers and you put them on and it's perfectly safe for moving them in a vehicle locally. And I keep the trunks around, though, because it answers that question, you know, how do you move something like that?

So my harp trunk, an empty, unopened harp trunk, is always part of my set dressings when I'm doing a concert of my own.

Bonnie G: 00:10:55

How much does the harp, harp weigh? Normally?

Christian Shalafour: 00:10:59

80 pounds on the average for concert grams. It's six foot one, six foot two, and priced anywhere.

Now, I bought my original one for just under $7,000, including the trunk, that model is now 35,000. And the trunk, if you want it, is another three.

Bonnie G: 00:11:17

So, yeah, so they're only. Only 80 pounds. I was thinking it was more than that.

Christian Shalafour: 00:11:21

It seemed they look like they're people see the gold leaf ones and they figure they must be made out of solid gold. Yeah, right.

Bonnie G: 00:11:30

What other unique challenges are there? I for harpists, for playing?

Christian Shalafour: 00:11:35

If you're coming from piano, this is really easier. First of all, you only, you don't use the pinky on either hand. They tried right up until about Mozart's time.

And so all the patterns are done with the thumb and the first three fingers. So you only have eight notes at a time, possible instead of ten like you have on piano. Also, it's like a piano only. Take away all those black keys.

Don't need them. It's like the white G's of the piano only unless you want those notes, then your feet start getting busy.

You have seven petals at the bottom, and I never knew that, and most people don't because usually it's a woman in the long, flowing gown and her dress covers.

Bonnie G: 00:12:14

You don't see them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christian Shalafour: 00:12:17

So I just figured, well, you know. Okay, so I always tell people in Palm Springs series, how many of you envisioned a woman in a long, flowing green dress with red auburn hairs?

Well, if it helps, if it makes you feel better, I used to be one.

Bonnie G: 00:12:30

Well, it's. I mean, and I've heard you and Christian is wonderful, and it's a beautiful instrument. So again, I would highly suggest you check this event out.

Saturday, October. Desert Chamber Orchestra in association with spirit mountain retreat.

Fabulous family fun with a friendly forest philharmonic and it benefits the Spirit mountain retreat name. That tv tune. Sounds such fun. Well, thank you, Christian, for being here, and thank you for coming up with this fun event. It should be a great day.

Thanks so much.

Christian Shalafour: 00:12:59

Thank you so much. I'll leave you with one quick cue.

Bonnie G: 00:13:02

Dun dun dun dun bewitched. That was easy. Okay. Thank you, Christian. We'll talk to you next time. And we'll see the rest of you the next time. On The Desert Scene.