Showplace Performance Centre in Peterborough continues to celebrate its 20th year with an impressive line up of musical events in early 2017.

Whether you’re into opera, musical theatre, R&B, pop, classic rock, alt-rock, or Celtic folk, there’s something for all musical tastes.

Below is a selection of upcoming shows in February and March you won’t want to miss.

Some Enchanted Evening on Sunday, February 5 at 3 p.m.

Four of Canada’s finest operatic singers will come together on the Showplace stage during Canada’s sesquicentennial to celebrate 150 years of musical theatre and operetta with “Some Enchanted Evening”.

Tenor Ben Heppner, soprano Rebecca Caine, mezzo-soprano Jean Stilwell, and bass-baritone Gary Relyea — under direction of pianist/music director David Warrack — will perform selections from Die Fledermaus, Carmen, The Merry Widow, Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Phantom of the Opera, and Les Misérables.

If you love opera and musical theatre, you’ll want to spend a Sunday afternoon enjoying these superb performances.

Tickets are $55 and are available at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

George Olliver on Friday, February 10 at 8 p.m.

George Olliver is a Canadian musical institution who shot to stardom as the lead singer of the now legendary 1960s’ R&B band Mandala, with top 10 hits like “Opportunity” and “Give and Take”.

Audiences have been raving about his great soulful voice and dynamic stage show for years. His extensive touring over the years has brought him international success, having performed on tours with such bands as The Who, Rolling Stones, and Cream. He was nominated for a Juno Award for Best R&B/Soul Recording in 1987 for his record Dream Girl.

VIDEO; George Olliver performing at Because It’s Buzz

George will be performing in the intimate Nexicom Studio. Tickets are $32 and are available at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

Steve Michaels: Aloha on Saturday, February 11 at 8 p.m.

Elvis fans rejoice! Award-winning tribute artist Steve Michaels will appear on the Showplace stage to perform Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite — Elvis’ triumphant 1973 concert production — note for note, song for song, and word for word.

The concert features Steve singing 28 classic songs in one evening, including “See See Rider”, “Burning Love”, “My Way”, “Johnny B. Goode”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Hound Dog”, and many more.

Steve is known for his exciting stage presence, authentic costumes, and electrifying charisma. This is a show for all ages!

Steve Michaels – Aloha

Tickets are $48 ($45 for seniors). You can get them at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

Royal Wood on Tuesday, February 14th at 8 p.m.

This is a perfect concert for Valentine’s Day! Lakefield’s native son Royal Wood returns to Showplace to perform tunes from his latest record, Ghost Light, as well as his other hits.

Royal really needs no introduction, but if you’ve never seen him perform live before, you’re in for a treat.

An accomplished singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, Royal was named Songwriter of the Year by iTunes in 2008, nominated for a Juno Award fore Songwriter of the Year in 2011, and his record We Were Born to Glory was nominated in 2013 for the Adult Alternative Album of the Year Juno Award. His music has been featured in several film and television productions, including Grey’s Anatomy.

VIDEO: “Good To Be Young” – Royal Wood

Long-time fans will also enjoy hearing tunes from Royal’s latest record Ghost Light. Exclaim! calls the album “sunny, breezy folk-oriented pop” suited for Top 40 radio but which “doesn’t forsake inventiveness in pursuit of broad appeal”.

Tickets are $34.50, available at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

Classic Albums Live: The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers on Friday, February 24th at 8 p.m.

Classic Albums Live, one of the most popular series at Showplace, returns with a re-creation of 1971’s Sticky Fingers, widely regarded as one of the best albums by The Rolling Stones.

The professional musicians of Classic Albums perform the entire record live on stage, cut for cut and note for note, including hits such as “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses”.

VIDEO: Classic Albums Live Promo

Tickets are $35.50, available at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

Classic Albums Live returns to Showplace on April 8th with a performance of Are you Experienced, the 1967 record by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. If you purchase both Classic Albums Live shows as a package, you save 10%.

The Piano Men starring Jim Witter on Saturday, March 11 at 8 p.m.

The Piano Men is a critically acclaimed musical show that takes you on a time machine through the 1970s.

While pianist Jim Witter and his band play the classic hits of Billy Joel and Elton John — year by year and hit by hit — the era’s news headlines, people, fashion, cars, TV, movies, and pop culture memorabilia are displayed on a giant screen behind the performers.

VIDEO: The Piano Men starring Jim Witter

In this fundraiser for Showplace, you’ll hear tunes such as “My Life”, “Candle in the Wind”, “Rocket Man”, “Just the Way You Are”, and many more. Jim’s personal memories and easy-going on-stage presence add to a remarkable evening of nostalgia.

Tickets are $45, available at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

Matthew Good on Tuesday, March 14th at 8 p.m.

Canadian rock musician Matthew Good comes to Showplace to celebrate the release of his new EP, I Miss New Wave: Beautiful Midnight Revisited.

Matthew was the lead singer of the Matthew Good Band, one of Canada’s most successful alt-rock bands of the 1990s (they broke up in 2002). In 1999, the band released Beautiful Midnight, their most commercially successful album. It sold over 300,000 units in Canada alone and won the 2000 Juno Award for Best Rock Album.

VIDEO: “Suburbia” – Matthew Good

In the years since, Matthew has pursued a successful solo career and established himself as a political and mental health activist. Recently, he recorded new versions of selected songs from Beautiful Midnight and has released them as an EP. On his current tour, he’ll be performing Beautiful Midnight in its entirety.

Tickets are $49.50, available at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

As an added bonus, when you buy a ticket, you’ll receive an email with a code to download a digital copy of I Miss New Wave: Beautiful Midnight Revisited.

Next Generation Leahy on Sunday, March 19 at 3 p.m.

Most people have heard of Leahy, Lakefield’s famous Irish-Canadian musical family who have been recording and touring since the 1980s (originally The Leahy Family, they rebranded as Leahy in the late 1990s and subsequently won two Junos, for Best New Group and Best Instrumental Artist, in 1998).

Next Generation Leahy is, as the name implies, the next generation of the musical family. One of the original members of Leahy, Doug Leahy, together with his wife Jennifer and six of their eight children, are keeping the family’s musical traditions alive through music, song, and dance.

VIDEO: Next Generation Leahy at the 2016 Mariposa Folk Festival

In a Next Generation Leahy show, fiddle, cello, french accordion, piano, singing and (of course) French-Canadian step-dancing all find a place on stage. With their parents leading the action on stage, the children — ranging in age from 5 to 13 — bring to life the high-energy and infectious Celtic music people associate with the Leahy heritage.

The Leahy children are all accomplished multi-instrumentalists with a level of musical mastery rarely seen in a group so young, and they have the remarkable ability to enamour audiences of all ages — making this the perfect show for the entire family.

Tickets are $39 for adults, $35 for seniors, and $30 for students. You can get them at the box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough), by phone 705-742-7469, or online.

Looking for something different? There’s lot more happening at Showplace this year than what we’ve listed above!

Make sure to check out the new Winter/Spring 2017 program and visit www.showplace.org, as new shows are added throughout the year.

If any musician still needs validation of the importance of always giving your best when performing live, Josh Fewings of Mayhemingways has a story to share.

In August 2014, Fewings and bandmate Benj Rowland performed at the Peterborough Folk Festival. Unknown to them, Juno Award-winning recording artist Joel Plaskett was in the Nicholls Oval Park crowd, later catching up with the Peterborough musical duo at a festival after-party.

“He dug us,” recounts Fewings, noting Plaskett invited him and Rowland to drop by his Dartmouth, Nova Scotia recording studio the next time they were down east. They eventually did just that last year, with Plaskett then catching their act in a neighbouring Halifax pub.

The @MAYHEMINGWAYS @CarletonHalifax . Go see this band. pic.twitter.com/DnL41iqBa3

— Joel Plaskett (@joelplaskett) June 10, 2016

With studio work completed on Solidarity, an album written and recorded with his father Bill, Plaskett looked to touring the new music in 2017. Some 1,200 kilometres distant, Fewings’ phone buzzed.

“Joel asked if we were free in March and April,” Fewings says. “The only thing we had planned was to do a little tour of Europe, but we only had three or four gigs booked so we cleared our calendar.”

“Him asking us (to tour) so out of the blue is mind blowing. He has a really good band (The Emergency) but this tour is about the album with his dad and he wanted a different approach on it. Anytime someone like Joel Plaskett asks you tour, that’s a good day.”

With Solidarity due to be released on February 17th, the 20-stop cross-Canada tour begins on March 15th in Truro, Nova Scotia. So far, the only show in the Kawarthas is on Wednesday, May 3rd at the Academy Theatre in Lindsay (tickets are $34.50 and can be ordered at www.academytheatre.ca or phone 705-324-9111. For all the tour dates, visit joelplaskett.com/tour/

As well as backing up the Plasketts, Mayhemingways will open each show, with lead singer Rowland switching between accordion, banjo, guitar, and tenor guitar (while holding down the bass using foot pedals) and Fewings on drums, percussion, and back-up vocals. This allows the duo to produce a big sound for their mix of originals, traditional tunes, and covers, all with distinct Cajun, blugrass, country, and Celtic influences. They’ve been described as folk-rock, alt-country, and “fuzz-folk”.

“The Mayhemingways are great,” Plaskett tells me in a phone interview. “They make a real racket for two guys. And I mean racket in a good way. I thought it would be a neat fit.”

VIDEO: “Altantic City” by Bruce Springsteen, performed by Mayhemingways

The new record and tour with his dad Bill is a new direction for Plaskett.

“It’s strange for me to not bring my band on the road with me — it’s a huge part of what I’ve done,” Plaskett explains. “But I wanted this record to be about my father and me. If I have the band there, the expectations are for the show to end up in a big rockfest. With my dad, that’s not the end game. I want to be able to control the dynamics, with a more acoustic presentation. I pick the points where the electricity is there.”

And the 42-year-old Plaskett has generated a lot of electricity over the last 24 years as a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. His initial foray into the music business saw him serve as lead singer and guitarist for Halifax-based Thrush Hermit and, in the late 1990s, drummer for Neuseiland. After both bands broke up, that’s when things really fell into place for the Lunenburg native.

Fronting The Emergency, Plaskett earned a Juno Award nomination in 2002 as Best New Artist — a nod earned via critical acclaim for the trio’s debut album Down At The Khyber. Follow-up album Truthfully, Truthfully brought commercial success the trio’s way.

All the while, Plaskett kept hard at it as a solo artist as well, recording four albums in total, the latest being 2015’s The Park Avenue Sobriety Test. And the plaudits kept coming his way: five more Juno Award nominations and a win in 2010 for Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Three, as well as numerous nominations and wins at the East Coast Music Awards.

VIDEO: Bill & Joel Plaskett – Solidarity Album Trailer

In 2016, a project that been percolating for some time finally got his full attention.

“My dad has been an inspiration but also someone I learned from when I was younger,” Plaskeet says. “I’d been wanting for awhile to document what he does and sort of collaborate with him.”

“Since I’ve become a parent, I feel the clock ticking a little bit. Becoming a father myself, I realize the connection I have with my dad is powerful. He’s still very able-bodied, but he’s in his seventies now and neither of us is getting any younger. So it was ‘Let’s make a record together.’ It’s something I’m really lucky to be able to do. I’m hoping this may be the first of several records we do.”

Describing his father as “a good singer and guitar player in his own right,” Plaskett says the album features songs written by both himself and his dad.

“It’s definitely a folkier side of what I do. My dad and I share a love of folk music; English stuff from the 1960s and 1970s. There are influences that we share. It’s folky in its instrumentation but it’s also got a little political undercurrent, social commentary, stuff like that. We recorded the album during the run-up to the American election. Not that we were writing about that, but that was sort of the backdrop.”

“The song Solidarity isn’t a political song per se but, to me, the title and what it represents sort of ties in to my and my dad’s story. The verses are little vignettes from our lives. The older I get, the more my own politics creep into my writing. At the same time, it’s not all about that. There are love songs on the record too.”

While touring is nothing new for Plaskett, touring with his dad is — and that has both father and son excited for what lies ahead.

“My dad and I playing music together is something real,” he says. “I’ve had people tweeting me that ‘I bought tickets for me and my mom’ or ‘for me and my dad’. My 20-year-old self probably would have thought that’s not very punk rock but, where I am in my life now, it makes me happy to hear that.”

Not lost on Plaskett is how fortunate he has been to prosper in a business where fame is often fleeting at best.

“I don’t have a back-up plan. I think that’s why I’m still playing, to be honest. I don’t have an education to fall back on. My education is basically my experience playing music and writing songs, and learning how to perform them live and putting on a strong show. The fact that I’m able to carve out a living is really a blessing. To be able to include my dad in that is even better.”

VIDEO: “Hunter Street Blues” – Mayhemingways

On January 16th, the Plasketts will welcome Fewings and Rowland back to their Nova Scotia studio where they’ll rehearse for the tour. For Fewings, there’s a sense that “a cosmic alignment is happening” in terms of Mayhemingways’ good fortune.

“I like to think it’s been pretty well earned from playing as much as we can since we got together,” says Fewings, adding, “Even if this hadn’t come about, we would still feel very good about what we’ve done.”

Ahead for the duo, prior to the Plaskett tour, is a February trip to Alberta to record tracks for a new album — a follow-up to their 2016 critically acclaimed debut album Hunter Street Blues.

Meanwhile, for Plaskett, post-tour will see much more of the same: writing and recording with the addition of exploring “something more conceptual” with his friend and songwriter Shotgun Jimmy. But the tour with his dad, he says, is currently at the centre of his universe.

“I love playing gigs,” he says. “It makes me feel more connected to people. It makes me feel like I’m part of something. There’s a shared energy. It feeds my ego too — don’t get me wrong, but it has a lot to do with not feeling so alone in the world.”

Reminded that Lindsay’s Academy Theatre, where he’s played before and will again on May 3rd, lays claim to a resident ghost, Plaskett isn’t concerned.

“I heard that. I sort of believe in that stuff, so I’m ready. Bring it on.”

That’s a sentiment no doubt shared by many who are anxious to experience his new tour with his dad Bill and Mayhemingways.