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Peter Dent, piano & Tom Croft, vocals

Tom and Peter will be performing songs of BC and the Yukon at Shannon Oaks. This material will be first presented in performance on an Alaska Cruise on September 9 aboard the Holland America ship Konigsdam. The songs celebrate the life of coastal BC, its history, and geography with an emphasis on mining and logging. In addition to his choral and instrumental music life, Peter Dent was a well-established folk singer in the 1980s and specialized in BC songs, particularly about labour. Two of the songs in the set are his originals, one of a poem by Pauline Johnson. Tom Croft was a successful realtor, banker, and former municipal counsellor in Oak Bay. He is now concentrating on music.

In a career spanning 50 years, Peter Dent has worked with and recorded with some of the finest jazz musicians in Canada: Dave Young, Neil Swainson, Steve Wallace, Terry Clarke, Archie Allayne and P.J Perry. He worked regularly in past decades with the big bands of Dal Richards, Mart Kenny and the Preservation of Swing. Lorraine Foster, Dee Daniels, Sibel Thrasher and Marcus Mosely are some of the vocalists with whom he has performed and recorded. He has appeared internationally in California, Cuba, the UK, Prague, and Budapest. Over the years he led groups at the All Canadian and Brockville Jazz Festivals. In Victoria he has played Hermann’s Jazz Club, The Charlie White Theatre, The Alix Goolden Hall, The Hotel Grand Pacific, and First Metropolitan United Church. Peter was a regular solo pianist at the Lure Lounge in the Delta Ocean Pointe for 4 years.