The Press

The musical journey of the kid from Flatbush began with a fascination with the banjo and continued through street music sessions in Greenwich Village. It's now at the stage where Eric Nagler is one of Canada's - and the world's- foremost children's musicians.

The 55-year-old Nagler will be one of the highlights of the sixth annual children's festival when he hits the main stage of the Community Auditorium Saturday June 14 with Polkaroo, star of the hit TV Ontario series Polka Dot Door.

"When I was 14 or 15 I heard the banjo and became thrilled with it." remembers the Brooklyn-born Nagler. "I hung around Washington Square in the '60's, playing music."

Those Greenwich Village sessions sold him on life as a musician. "When two people are playing instruments, there's a communication on a heart level that you can't describe in words."

Nagler started performing for children in 1977. Since then he's dome TV work with The Elephant Show and hosted his own program, "Eric's World".

The majority of his professional time is now spent playing public concerts and festivals. He toured Ireland for a month this year and has been invited to play in Portugal in 1998.

He says the shows he does now are geared towards families instead of just children. "It's a blessing to perform for families" says Nagler. "They don't do much together any more."

"There's a difference playing for families and playing for kids. Like, if you're playing for a family audience you're not going to play If You're Happy And You Know It."

Nagler finds the kids respond to "any fiddle tune and adult tunes from the '40s are kids' tunes today. He's performed such standards ads Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens and Glenn Millers Boogily Woogily Piggy.

Accompanied by pianist Evelyne Datl, Nagler plays a series of instruments from the banjo and fiddle to the Jew's Harp and his "musical saw".

He encourages people to bring their own "instruments" to the show. Spoons, washtub bases and car keys are all part of the orchestra when Eric Nagler throws a concert.

He says kids haven't changed so much ion the 20 years he's entertained them, but the approach to entertaining them has.

"The thing that's changed the most are the ways (children's musicians) approach family entertainment. In the 70's you paid a buck, dropped them off and picked them up later. There was a guy and a microphone and 400 kids climbing the walls."

The clatter of homemade musical instruments and uproarious laughter are vibrating throughout the Young People's Theatre.

You guessed it - Eric Nagler's in town!

The popular children's entertainer and star of the TV show "Eric's World" is the master of the improvised musical gadget.

Nagler who kicked off a four week engagement last Sunday at the YPT (165 Front St E) encourages kids to bring their own wacky instruments to his shows. Last week some youngsters complied and the theatre reverberated with the sounds of wax paper combs, keys, spoons and makeshift drums. empty handed were invited to clap along while Eric played his current favourite - a sewerphone. The contraptions consists of sone PVC pipe, a washing machine agitator and a mouthpiece.

A puppet named CJ, Nagler's wisecracking sidekick, was also on hand. During the first part of the show, his antics kept the small fry in stitches as he popped up in unexpected places.

Lively banjo and toe tapping fiddle numbers were devoured by the audience who just couldn't sit still. Several kids bounced in their seats and danced in the aisles as Nagler was joined by 12 year old fiddler Jeffrey Gosse. Even the adults loved it.

Eric Nagler achieves in his concerts what most children's entertainers can't. He can charm an entire family - from a two-year-old to an adult - with talents that range from some fine fiddle-playing to telling crony jokes, to making musical instruments out of just about anything. A child never outgrows Nagler and his obvious love of music is infectious.

Make Music Wirth Eric Nagler is an interactive concert in which, somehow, Nagler manages to involve his audience in various parts of the show (some lucky kids get to go on stage and play instruments) without ever losing control.

He has help from his puppet friend CJ to whom Nagler plays the straight man. CJ is irritating, exasperating and downright egotistical and provides just enough comic relief to fill gaps between songs.

My son and I loved this concert and, by looks on the faces of other parents and children emerging from the theatre, just about everybody else did too. It's not a big, glitzy show - just a lot of goofiness and goofy music. Don't forget to bring your own homemade instruments, such as spoons, shakers, or a wax paper and comb. 

A series starring a puppeteer and a singer from The Elephant Show? It sounds like a formula for toddlers TV. Yet, Eric's World, the Canadian series currently in reruns, Is not for toddlers. Better yet, it's a gem for that difficult 7 to 9 age group.

Too old for the Polkaroo and Dudleys of pre-school programming, these young viewers are still too young - or should be - to watch many of the sitcoms that enthrall their older siblings.

In Eric's World, they get a clever mix of song, humour and life lessons that suits their age perfectly, from the comic relief of puppet CJ who plays Eric's ambitious manager, to the light touch with which the show deals with such real-life issues such as pre-teen crushes, homework and even getting a tattoo.

After a five season run from 1990 to 1994 that captured the hearts of Canadian children - as well as awards - Eric's World now is being eyed by both private and public broadcasters in the US.

If sold south of the border, it will be yet another Canadian export in the field of children's broadcasting.

Produced by Cambium Film and Video Productions, the shows charm lies largely with star Eric Nagler , a hilarious New York folk singer who ha become a fixture on the Canadian children's music scene since moving to Canada nearly 30 years a go and holding a regular guest spot on the popular Elephant Show starring Sharon, Lois and Bram in the late 1980s.

Like the Elephant Show ( and Seinfeld for that matter), Eric's World plants one foot in the real world, with Eric playing himself as a busy musical performer.

Nagler plays a widower who lives in a friendly trailer park with his daughter Kaley, their neighbours and an overzealous manager CJ, a puppet. (Why do kids love shows like this and Full House where there is no mother and the kids are being raised by standup comic fathers? I can't imagine........)

In its last two seasons, Eric's character adopted a son Nat, to add boy appeal, and the actor who played neighbourhood nuisance Horace, Daniel Desanto, was nominated this year for a Gemini award for best performances in a youth series.

He lost - to Mr Dressup.

To me, the heart of the show lies in the relationship between Eric and daughter Kaley, who aged from 10 to 15 during the life of the series and who has a powerful appeal for young girls.

Played by Toronto actor Nikki Holt, who starred as young rosette in the stage play Les Miserable, Kaley is a bright, fun young woman who turns to her father for help just enough - but not too much.

"What's so special is that the kids are left to solve their own problems without Eric steering them to the answer," says Rita Carbone Fleury, vice president of Cambium's distribution wing, Cambium Releasing.

She was in Cincinnati earlier this month talking to PBS about the possibility of airing Eric's World on its eastern stations.

"Unlike other shows, Eric's World treats parents as intelligent, but still lets children come to their own solutions," she says.

Its gentle mix of social issues, music and laughs have won Eric's Worlds awards of excellence from Canada's Alliance for Children and television and the prestigious Houston International Film Festival.