ICC Guest Artist Series: “My Favorite Things”

EAST PEORIA — The audience at Illinois Central College got to look back through the history of one of the greatest Broadway musical duos of all time.

On Oct. 11, ICC presented its Guest Artist series of “My Favorite Things” with the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein in the Performing Arts Center. The show was performed by Tiffany Gates, Michael Snider, Trinidad Snider and conducted on the piano by Bobby Dietz.

The show started off with Dietz walking on stage and beginning to play the tune to “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music.” Then Gates, Snider and his wife, Trinidad, came out as well and began to sing the lyrics to the song.

As the show continued, the audience got a bit of a history lesson on the current events that had happened when each of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s shows had opened. They mention that when “Oklahoma!” first opened in 1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his third term as President.

One of the shows that they started performing was from “Oklahoma!,” and the song that Gates and M. Snider performed was “People Will Say We’re In Love.”

“It was beautiful,” said Sharron Williams, of Peoria, about the performance. “It brought back some memories of when I saw it in the movies.”

The performers sang 20 well-known songs from “South Pacific” to “The King & I” and even “Cinderella.” It was like watching their own Broadway version of the show as they acted out of the characters.

One of the best performances of the night had to have been when Gates performed one of the best known songs from “The Sound of Music” called “The Hills are Alive.”

“She was very, very good,” said Robert Wallace, 82, of East Peoria. “She made it her own version that was different than Julie Andrews.”

As the show concluded, they performed the same song as they performed at the beginning, “My Favorite Things.”

Wallace also added that the show was a lot of fun and that it’s great to know that these songs are still being played still today.