Saskatoon, Sask.
— As the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra’s concert-goers waited to get into the audience for its new hit, “I Love You” in its new home at the SaskTel Centre, a crowd of people came to greet the orchestra and its musicians.
“It was just a really nice atmosphere,” said Emily Cottrell, who was in the audience with her husband, Dave.
“I like to get to know our orchestra members as well as see them perform, so I like to go to see them at least once.”
The concert’s best new music award went to the Sasktel Centre’s popular rock band, The Roots, whose performance at the arena won the best song category.
The Roots is a four-piece, consisting of guitarist Ryan Davis, bassist Ryan McRae, drummer Matt Purdy and vocalist Alex Coker.
“We didn’t want to get too carried away with this award, but we had a blast doing it,” said McRauley, who played the drums in the Roots’ first-ever gig at the SaskatchewanTel Centre in 2016.
“This is a great opportunity to have a group of people that we know, that we can trust, that can share a lot of knowledge with us, and that are able to sing and play the music with us.”
In their first full concert since 2016, the Roots hit the stage at the venue on May 17 and played a few songs before closing the show.
“When we started out, it was kind of surreal,” said Davis.
“Because we were just coming out of the hospital and having a few bad experiences and it was like, ‘Wow, we really did go through that and now we’re finally here and it’s not all bad,'” said Mc Rae.
“To hear that people love it is just really special.”
In 2017, the band played a show at the National Music Theatre in Saskatoon for their first time, and after a week at the centre, they returned to the arena to perform the new song “Pulse” on July 20.
“They brought us a whole new show, new equipment and new music,” said Purdy.
“And we just got so happy that they were like, we’ll do it again, we can do this again,” said Coker, who is now an organist at the Canadian Centre for Contemporary Music in Toronto.
“The first time we played at the Centre, the crowd was just like, wow, we’re going to get a good show out of this.”
In 2018, the SaskCentre hosted a performance of the Roots concert.
“At that time, we were kind of new to the band, and so we just kind of took it all in,” said the Roots lead singer, Mc Rauley.
“If we play at the end of our tour, that would be great.” “
Once we’re done here, we want to come back and play again,” added Coker of the SaskMetal.
“If we play at the end of our tour, that would be great.”
With files from CTV Saskatoon’s Kristin Johnson contributed to this report.