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Artscene 21 · Friday, February 15, 2013 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.insideHALTON.com Robert Rotenberg to speak Bestselling Canadian author and criminal defence lawyer Robert Rotenberg will be in Oakville at the Canadian Club of Halton Peel's Dinner Speaker event on Thursday, Feb. 21. The dinner event will take place at the Oakville Conference Centre, located at 2515 Wyecroft Rd. Rotenberg's crime fiction novels, which are set on the streets and courtrooms of Toronto, have been bestsellers in Canada, translated into nine languages and have been published in more than 20 countries. He has published the novels Old City Hall, Guilty Plea, Stray Bullets and Sranglehold. Registration opens at 6 p.m. and the event runs 7-9:30 p.m. Tickets cost $35 for members, $45 for nonmembers and $20 for students. For tickets, contact barrywylie1@gmail. com or 905-827-6302. submitted photo youth for youth: Pianist Annie Zhou, a Canadian Music Competition Prize Winner, will play in Oakville on Saturday, Feb. 23 at an ArtHouse concert. ArtHouse concert features CMC Prize Winner By Dominik Kurek OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF ArtHouse Festival Series is entering its fifth season of providing entertainment in Oakville while fundraising for a cost-free arts program for local children. During this season, the festival will be focusing on the talents of musicians who have gone through the Canadian Music Competition (CMC), including at its upcoming concert on Saturday, Feb. 23. The concert will feature 15-yearold Mississauga pianist Annie Zhou, who is a CMC Prize Winner, along with 15-year-old cellist Daniel Hass, who will accompany Zhou. "I watched Annie grow from about nine years old and she is a young superstar," said ArtHouse founder Don Pangman. "In the classical music field, there are artists who are absolutely so totally connected as humans to their instrument and it's almost as if they're one. She is one of those people." Pangman founded ArtHouse approximately three years ago to provide cost-free arts programing to local children. It has served 350 individuals so far and Pangman expects the organization to reach a total of 500 by the end of this school year. Pangman is also vice-chair of CMC national and chair of CMC's Toronto chapter. "I've got that connection with the CMC, which allows me to work with some pretty fine, young musicians. So, what I thought this year, I'd make my whole ArtHouse Festival Series themed around the CMC and all the different people that are connected with it," Pangman said. An upcoming ArtHouse Festival Series concert will include a performance by such musicians as CMC alumnus and five-time Juno Award winner Liona Boyd, also known as Canada's First Lady of the Guitar. Pangman calls the CMC, a nonprofit organization, a place for young musicians to enter a competitive atmosphere that brings out the best in them. "It's the Olympics of classical music. You're allowing young superstars to perform in front of people and excel at what they do," he said. ArtHouse has also made a change to its mission in an effort to strengthen it. The organization has always provided arts programming to children who could not otherwise attend after-school programs. However, now the organization has altered its mission by saying it is giving priority to the families of children who could not otherwise afford these programs. "It's a big change for us to be public about the fact that we really are working with families that just don't have the financial assets to be able to access the arts," Pangman said. Programming is still available to children at all socio-economic levels. However, the organization has partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Food for Life, Halton Community Housing Corporation, YMCA of Oakville, Children's Aid Foundation and Home Suite Hope. Children from these organizations and other referrals will now be considered as front-of-the-line applicants. Pangman said this has always been a consideration, but when ArtHouse was founded, he just didn't have the connections with these organizations as he does today. "We're just realizing there are so many young people in Oakville where there are just no opportunities for these young people to have access to the arts after school," he said, adding that ArtHouse is strengthening its mission by focusing on children at these organizations. ArtHouse also added programming to Burlington this past year. Pangman encourages families to bring their children out to the Feb. 23 concert, which will take place in the black box theatre at Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre, located at 2302 Bridge Rd. He wants children to come out and see what can be accomplished by hard work. "There's thousands of hours devoted to do what these people just love to do and that's perform," he said. "They're training to be professionals. The way they will build their confidence is through performance in front of audiences... It does so much for their growth, their confidence. And it's an opportunity to see some of these future stars and how hard they work to get to where they want to go." The concert will include classical music, mostly by Ludwig van Beethoven and Frédéric Chopin. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $25. For tickets or more information, call 905-467-8551 or visit www.arthouseonline.org. Show wants your art Whole Foods Market is hosting its bi-monthly art show and has a call out to artists to submit their works. The deadline is Monday (Feb. 18) at 2 p.m. Whole Foods is inviting local up-and-coming artists with paintings to submit their pieces for its upcoming group show. The show, titled Fruity, will run March 3 to May 5. Art submitted for the show must incorporate fruit in any medium. People can also submit pieces for solo shows with artworks with such themes as landscape; agricultural; markets; food, fruit and vegetables; fish and poultry; flowers; and organic. For a solo show submission, individuals need enough paintings to fill the gallery. Those interested in participating are asked to submit three highresolution, jpeg-format photos to artist@dawnangela.com.