Caillou music composer Jack Lenz knows Canadian kids love winter

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This article was published 27/11/2010 (5443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

YOU don’t have to explain winter to Jack Lenz.

The veteran Toronto-based composer, who scored the music to Caillou’s Greatest Skate of All, which is currently on tour across Canada, grew up in Eston, Sask., in a house with no indoor plumbing. Just in case nature should call and refuse to hang up during one of Saskatchewan’s frequent winter storms, Lenz’s father devised a solution of sorts: He hung a rope between the outhouse out back and the back of the Lenz house, so the kids could grab hold and not get blown away by a Saskatchewan winter gust.

On the day I spoke to him in Toronto, the forecast was full of storm warnings, which Lenz laughed off.

“I’m from the Prairies, so they (Toronto storms) don’t seem to be very big when they get here,” he said. “They (Torontonians) don’t know what a storm really is.”

Nothing like growing up on the Prairies to turn a guy into a weather trash-talker.

As far as the kid part of the equation goes, Lenz has even more impressive credentials in that department: He has seven kids of his own, ranging in age from nine to 35.

That helps Lenz get into the heads of a target audience that, in the case of a show like Caillou’s Greatest Skate of All, tends to be toddler-sized.

“(Raising seven kids) gives you a sense of who (kids) are, and what they love,” Lenz says.

And all of that lifelong exposure to winter and children serves Lenz well when it comes to scoring a children’s show such as Caillou’s Greatest Skate of All, which is a combination of two things Canada excels at: children’s entertainment and winter activities.

“Caillou represents all those iconic things,” says Lenz. “It represents Canadian hockey, which we believe is our sport and doesn’t belong to anybody else, and skating, and (also), this great little children’s show.”

It turns out that not only does Lenz have a significant background in scoring kid’s shows — he has worked in the past with Raffi, the popular children’s performer — but he also has an appreciation for the music of sports. He scored the recent movie of the week about Don Cherry, and wrote the Toronto Blue Jays theme song, OK Blue Jays.

Lenz even co-produced a disco album that Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur recorded in the late ’70s.

“When Gilles Paquin at Paquin Entertainment brought it (Caillou) to us (Lenz and writing partner Doug Cameron) to write the music for it… it was a treat, because it’s really what we love doing,” Lenz says. “And it’s fun to write songs about hockey.”

Lenz says he’s afforded more creative latitude on kids’ shows than he is on adult productions for which he’s composed, such as Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, or Little Mosque on the Prairie.

“People seldom have a preconception, or even a misconception, about what will work for kids,” Lenz says. “Generally, you know it’s simple songs, memorable songs, lyrics that are silly, lyrics that are fun — these things are the staple of kids’ music, and so I’ve done a lot of it.”

— Postmedia News

Concert Preview

Caillou’s Greatest Skate of All

Pantages Playhouse

Saturday at 1 p.m.

Tickets: $24.50 and $30.50 at Ticketmaster