Silver anniversary celebrations concert

By Mahes Perera

Black Velvet

It's not often that you come across a duo-husband and wife team - who have held the spotlight in our Western music industry for a considerable period of time. Singers Yohan and Honorine, however, are fortunate that despite all odds they have triumphed through with success. In fact watching them perform Dan Hill's 'Sometimes When We Touch' on a concert stage recently made you come to the conclusion that the song may well be there signature tune. Yohan's rich voice ideally suited for emotional ballads and his wife Honorine's elastic and attractive voice has over the years elegantly mixed and earned themselves a top slot in the music hit parade.

With 25 years of exciting music success behind them Yohan and Honorine will celebrate this 25 years of success with a scintillating concert that will be a reality on the auspicious first day of December.

They started their music careers separately and an unscheduled meeting at the Kotte church brought them together for life.

Question: Twenty-five years is a long time in our music history and this concert is quite naturally going to be a significant one. What have you planned for the audience Yohan?

Answer: The concert which will be held at the Bishop's College Auditorium on December 1 will feature Honorine and me singing the songs we were recognised for and also some special songs that hitherto were not performed b y artistes. We don't want to give out too many details, that would rob us of giving a surprise to the audience! Our nine-piece band Black Velvet will provide the music backing. Black Velvet if you remember won the Observer Golden Clef Award for the Most Promising Band in 1991. The band has come a long way since then and today the band comprises Ayesh Jayawardena - bass guitar/vocals, Dylan Biyanwila - drums/vocals, Udara Jayakody - keyboards/vocals and Vasantha Fernando - guitar/vocals.

Samantha

Melissa

The other participating artistes will be our two daughters Samantha and Melissa, Sohan, Shyami, Yasmin and Marcia and of course we are happy that Donald Pieris and his band Mirage will be guest artistes as well.

Yohan and Honorine with voices that blend in harmony have been entertaining audiences of all ages for the past 25 years.

They were exciting and familiar artistes not only performing regularly at star hotels in Colombo as well on concert stages, but also on concert stages in Melbourne, Gold Coast, Dubai, Seychelles, South Korea, Maldives, Mangalore and other towns in India. Their stop overs abroad read like endorsements in a passport.

It was not a hassle to jog Honorine's memory about her past music cereer. "I met Yohan when he was singing in the choir at the church in Kotte.

I was in the choir as well and when he invited me to join his accoustic band with Dion, I readily accepted and that was the start of our life together. We joined Debbie and the Fireflies and performed at the then Ramada (now Cinnamon Lakeside) for two years and then in 1988 Yohan and I we moved over to the Taj and performed six days a week there".

Q: What was your repetoire then?

A: We sang most of the chart hits which were the rage then. I concentrated on hits by Abba, Irene Cara and songs of that nature while Yohan who was influenced by the music of Lionel Ritchie sang most of the Motown and soul ballads.

Honorine and Yohan

Q: Now 25 years later what's your comment of today's music scene?

A: It's good. There is a remarkable change in the style and structure of the music. The youth are crazy about it and I guess to some extent we have to change our style and select some of the hits that suit our way of singing. We cannot ignore it fully, although I must confess that in the earlier years it was all a different scene. We still remember those songs!

But you can be rest assured that at their concert on December 1, the mixed repertoire of songs then and now and the scintillating vocal harmony of Yohan and Honorine will be memories to be treasured for a long long time.