For every form of music there are purists who say of certain practitioners, “That’s not really (whatever form of music they’re a purist in).”

Guitarist Robert Michaels admits Flamenco purists might say the same about Flamenco Fire, the concert he’ll perform with the Regina Symphony Orchestra on Saturday.

But the man the Ottawa Sun once dubbed “Flamenco’s version of Led Zeppelin axe-god Jimmy Page” is OK with that.

Saturday’s high-energy show, he says, is “a cross of different styles, everything from Flamenco to Cuban sounding music, as well as Brazilian, even a bit of Italian.” But it’s all infused with Michaels’s Flamenco style.

Eduardo Ventura, one of the ballet instructors at Class Act and Do It With Class, will dance Basilio.

“He’s a poor barber in the village,” Ventura explains. “Kitri and him have known each other since they were kids, and they love each other, but her father doesn’t want any penniless suitor for his daughter. He’s planning to marry her with the rich Gamache (Kent Wolkowski). They have to fight for their love.”

The role of Kitri is being danced by Jacqueline Burtney, a former student who is currently enrolled in the musical theatre program at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont.

“I’ve been working on ballet since I was seven,” she says.

Ballet isn’t her focus at Sheridan — she only spends an hour and a half on it there each week — but she says her ballet studies in Regina under former Class Act/Do It With Class instructor Ana Maria Campos have helped her get “my foot in the door for what I want to do, because the world of musical theatre is really surrounded by dance.”

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It begins:

Most electric guitar players don’t get much opportunity — if any — to play with a symphony orchestra.

Most electric guitar players aren’t Jack Semple, who’s headlining the Regina Symphony Orchestra’s final Shumiatcher Pops concert of the year, Guitar Heroes, on Saturday at the Conexus Arts Centre.

“I’ve been really fortunate in the last few years,” Semple says. “They’ve been using me on their Oscars shows and Pops shows and Mozart in the Meadow and stuff.

“There are so many brilliant musicians in the orchestra,” he adds. “It’s like going to school. I’ve learned what the orchestra can do.”

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