Five Questions with musician Virginia Dipierro

Interview by Jason Setnyk | Photo by Evan Hambleton (Yourtv Cornwall)

Cornwall, Ontario – Virginia Dipierro is the host and community producer of Melodies and Memories on Yourtv Cornwall. She spent her life juggling her social service career and her career as a professional performer, musician, and actress. Retiring to Cornwall in 2015, Virginia hit the ground running. Since being back here, she has played at many venues and festivals, including Cornwall Music Fest, Garlic Fest, The Port Theatre, Arts in the Park, and Buskapolooza. 

After her retirement in 2012, Virginia began playing in long-term care homes and retirement residences and fell in love with both the process of reworking and interpreting the songs she grew up with. In turn, the audiences were grateful to hear and sing along to these songs. Enter the pandemic and Yourtv Cornwall. Unable to continue playing live in residences, Gabriel Rivière-Reid offered to bring the music to them via Yourtv.  Hence, Melodies and Memories was born. Entering its third year with producer Even Hambleton, Virginia records the show every two weeks and invites everyone to join her and “Come sing along”.

Five Questions with The Seeker

1 – What was your first musical instrument?

“I still have fond memories of my piano teacher, Sister Marie Theresa starting in first grade. Sister Theresa taught me for 8 years. Learning piano shaped my love of music and my desire to keep playing. I have never been without a piano. For my first apartment on Pine Avenue in Montreal, I bought a piano and slept on a mattress on the floor. That was a fully furnished apartment.”

2 – Describe your favourite venue for performing.

“There was a venue on the West Island of Montreal run by Isabelle Delage called the Side Door Coffee House. She had put extreme effort into providing the best sound and lighting, and there was always an amazing audience. I think I played that venue 7 or 8 times with different bands. And by the way, she now has the same venue in Morrisburg called the Tilted Steeple. The best venues are always local.”

3 – Tell us about your favourite performance as a musician.

“It’s a toss-up between being the big band vocalist on New Year’s Eve at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1992 and the Ottawa Jazz Festival in 1990. They were very different experiences. For the New Year’s Eve night, I was treated to complete hair and makeup and an evening gown. However, for the jazz fest, I played with the best jazz musicians, including Greg Clayton.”

4 – What inspired you to start playing music?

“My inspiration has always come from musical theatre and musical movies. I watched The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan as a small child and became fairly obsessed with the genre until I discovered Motown and soul music. My first concert was the rolling Motortown Review, where Little Stevie Wonder jumped up on stage and played harmonica. We were both 12 at the time. Every day of my life was a new musical inspiration.”

5 – Who is your ideal musician to collaborate with, and why?

“Collaboration has always been the key to anything and everything that I have done as a performer. Llawnroc (Cornwall spelled backward) and The Bottles are two of the bands I formed since being here. I never expected to become a solo artist, but the pandemic changed all that. And since you asked, I’ll take a year or so hanging out in the studio with Paul McCartney. We’ll put together a couple of love ballads that every great vocalist will sing over the next 75 years, add some harmonies, and there you go.”

Check out this video: Cornwall Art Presents: In the Artist’s Studio with Virginia DiPierro