Departure

I woke with only two hours sleep. I had a decision to make. I was totally out of clean clothes, and either I had to do laundry or go home. So I packed up.

Rather than sleep in, I wanted to spend my last few hours there connecting with people one last time, and just making my farewells to the place. Very few of the musicians were around, small wonder given the previous night's excesses.

My roommate Ken Hoffman left before I had gotten up, as did several others. I had hoped to see some of the regular staff to say goodbye, but again many were not there. The was a subtle but significant change at the music and sound building as the next round of musicians were about to arrive. All of the signs and notices for our program were removed. I went to the studio that had been my home for the last two weeks and there was a sign on the door "Don's room". I was history.

I had hoped to run into some of the people who had worked in the studio recording program. They were on extended residencies up here. In previous years, these people seemed more like aloof tekkies to me, but this year was much different.

The recording engineers had become part of our extended team. We got to know each other fairly well and they were totally charged up by working with us, just as we were with them. I realized that the night Ken and Robin and I did that surround sound recording. They would ask us to do something and we would run with it. They were also totally pumped about our marathon orchestra recording session. I had hung out with them quit a bit during the final after party - it was just another indication how there had been a confluence of events during this program.

In the end, I saw mostly Vancouver musicians, all of whom were preparing to leave. I had been keeping an eye out for some of the arriving people, but didn't see anyone. I left a note on the bulletin board for Greg Sinibaldi, a great sax player from Seattle and a fellow member of Paul Rucker's Large Ensemble. I was also looking for Marilynn Crispell, who was part of the incoming faculty. I think I saw her arrive as I pulled away in the airport shuttle.

Every year I swear that next time, I'll stay a few extra days so I can connect with the next bunch of musicians, but it never happens.

The return to Calgary passed quickly as Jeremy Price and I talked a lot about what had happened. He was also a partcipant in the Maria Schneider and Kenney Wheeler programs, so we have share a lot of great experiences at Banff. He too had been blown away by Chucho.

As has been my habit in previous years, I spent a few hours visiting some dear friends in Calgary before departing for Vancouver. Visiting Angie Parkes and Rob Penner has always been an important part of my Banff time. Angie was my girlfriend in grade 11 (another fairly significant time in my life) and we have always been cherished friends, though we rarely get to meet any more. Her husband Rob is a violinist with the Calgary Philharmonic and has been on a long path of shamanistic spirituality. They have two lovely boys, Justin and Jonathan, who were startling in how much they had grown in the last two years. Visiting them gives me a chance to ease back into the real world. They have seen what I've gone through at Banff since 2002 and I value the short time we get to spend together. They are also just a few minutes from the airport, so everything dovetails nicely.

I scanned the airport for any musicians that I recognized, but found none. I did meet somebody I knew, and we flew home together. Rob is a good friend of Mia Weinberg, from whom I bought the laptop that I took to Banff and upon which I wrote most of this blog. Another non-coincidence in my books.

Homecoming was as it was meant to be. I love my family dearly and I missed them greatly.

But this blog is entitled 14 Days in May, and those days have now passed. I will probably add some pictures and a few supplemental entries as things happen that pertain to this experience.

Thanks for taking the time to share it with me.

Saturday #3 The Finale


This post has been somewhat delayed, as there has been no break in the action for a while.

The afternoon's sound check went relatively smoothly, other than a bit of persistent feedback in the monitors which took way too long to correct. Robin Jessome took a photo of Chucho and me together. He should be able to recoup his Banff expenses by charging us top dollar to get our pictures from him.

In previous years, my habit had been to have a glass of port at the pub before retiring for the night, but this year, other than the very first night, I had not had very much at all to drink, which resulted in a considerable saving of money.

So on this final full day at Banff, I took about half of the money I had saved and bought a very nice bottle of vintage port, something I would not normally do, but dammit, I had worked hard and deserved it, just like the three desserts each meal on the final day. I also located some decent souvenirs for everyone at home, no small feat considering the mountains of kitschy crap for sale in town. It was time to get ready for the gig.

Altoist Don Berner had dubbed the concert "Bay of Gigs" earlier in the week, possibly fearing that we would be massacred by impossible Irakere charts, which never manifested themselves. Had the gig not gone well, this would have been the title of this posting.

But we all knew that we were about to be part of something very special. The program Hugh and Chucho worked out started with Chucho playing solo, then add Hugh, next the faculty plus rhythm section, then the bones would do Manteca, and finally the trumpets and saxes and flutes would come out for the last four numbers, about 90 minutes in total. It turned to be simple yet very effective programming.

Many of us stood in the wings to watch Chucho play two solo pieces, the first being a medley of jazz standards, the second being more traditional Cuban folk melodies. Chucho played with mastery and again had some standing in the wings reaching for the Kleenex. Hugh then joined him in a duet of Body and Soul. After that the faculty and rhythm section entered for a rousing rendition of Billie's Bounce. Manteca was next and then the rest of us walked onstage. We then played the three tunes that Chucho had brought.

Everyone was very focussed and all of the tunes went extremely well, each building the excitement in the room. Hugh opened up the finale, Mambo Influenciado, and we all got several choruses to solo. I had debated whether or not to play it in the pocket, but finally decided to go for it in a much freer manner, as that is when I am best able to access my most emotional core. I had intended to look straight at Chucho and direct my solo to him. When it was time to blow, perhaps out of habit, I faced the audience so I could not personally guage his reaction. I did receive compliments from quite a number of people, sufficient for me to believe that I made the right stylistic decision.

The Mambo went on for quite a long time, until everyone had worn themselves out. Then the show was done. The Eric Harvie Theatre holds about a thousand people and it was totally sold out. The house erupted in an extended standing ovation. An encore was out of the question as the show clocked in at almost 2 hours and Chucho's limo was waiting to leave for the airport as soon as he was off the stage. He stood at the stage door and individually thanked each of us as we exited, and then just like that, he and Lorena were gone.

The arc of the show was just right. Chucho had played brilliantly and the band had given it their all, most likely the finest concert that I've ever been part of.

In rereading this before I post it, I realize that this is a fairly dry recounting of a concert performance, and in no way imparts what sort of feeling that was there. I just can't adequately write about the experience that I had - does that qualify me to become a critic? Put it this way - there have been concert experiences in my life when everything lines up perfectly and certain moments a captured in a crystalline memory, seared permanently into my few remaining neurons. There were many such moments at this show.

Chucho's playing was stunning and yet I now realize that he did not recreate his Giant Steps performance onstage. That was his private and very personal gift to only us in the orchestra. That memory resides in my heart.

I have never seen an artist deeply inspire so many people in such a short time, and cause so many to be overcome by emotion. Hugh and Lorae knew that Chucho was capable of this. They had extreme difficulty in making all of the arrangements to bring him here this year, but I would venture to say that the results exceeded any reasonable expectations.

Just before playing the concert, Chucho gave Marianne a handwritten page of manuscript paper with a special montuno for her to play, with a very personal and appreciative message to her on the bottom. Over the three days, he had inspired her playing to even higher levels. She constantly amazed us with her progress, and she's always been a formidable pianist. She rarely took her eye off him and his piano the whole time he was here, absorbing as much as possible. It was her turn to lose it after he left for the airport.

We retired back to the Music and Sound Building and had an afterparty that went into the wee hours. That bottle of port was an excellent way for me to send off this latest year at Banff, and much of the evening's proceedings will have to be permanently filed in the "What Goes On In Banff, Stays In Banff" folder. A lot of goodbyes were said and the general concensus was that it was a totally mind-blowing experience for all concerned.

I got back to the residence around sunrise.

Saturday #2

I've had it much more together over the last few hours.

Sombody who might have just started reading this blog starting with the last post may get the impression that I'm some sort of a weepy wimp into self-created drama - that's not how I operate on a daily basis. I consider myself to be a very logical and calm person most of the time. Some of you who know me may take either side of the wimp/non-wimp argument - that's your call.

I came up here to develop as an musician and a creative human being. I could have chosen to hide out behind some cool facade, or I could have filtered what I wrote in this blog. But that was not my choice. I did not want to cheat myself of one iota of this experience.

Despite obstacles which at the time seemed insurmountable, I made my way up here. I decided to go for the total experience, good, bad or otherwise. Like everyone else in the program here, I invested considerable time, money and energy into this time here, and I was determined to get maximum results, even if I didn't have a clue as to what those results would be.

It has been said that how you do one thing is how you do everything. I could have not partipated to the fullest possible during the run of this course. It would probably have increased the chance of getting lukewarm results. But I would have been depriving myself of a rare opportunity to grow.

I am very glad to have gone through what I did over the last two weeks, particularly the last couple of days. It has created an experience that will stay with me forever. It is too early to say for sure that Giant Steps changed my life, but I have a very strong feeling that it has. Hugh has already publicly proclaimed that after listening to Chucho play that yesterday, he is a changed person. It was that heavy.

Giant Steps is a rather apt summation of my four sojourns at Banff.

This is going to be one fuck of a day to get through.

I don't quite know how I'm going to deal emotionally with everything going on inside my head. I also don't know how much of this I should be writing in this blog today, because I know a number of the other people in the orchestra are reading it. Perhaps it is best for them to come to their own conclusions about what this program is all about. Perhaps it is best for them to get a read on what I'm going through.

I don't know.

I do know that when I've talked, really talked with the other people who I am close to up here, they are often going through the same process inside. But each of us has their own path to discovery.

For me, the gravity of my insight gained as I was writing the last installment of this blog has been enormous. I played for about another hour after I finished writing, trying to express through my horn what I was feeling. I have no idea what it sounded like, but it was me.

I wondered if I dare play that way tonight. Actually the answer is obvious.

I got up at 9:00 and took a long walk in the woods, reflecting on the events of the last two weeks. As I've written a couple of times before, there are no coincidences at Banff. It was no fluke that Hugh asked me to be one of the soloists for the Love Supreme performance and that Chucho played Giant Steps for us yesterday. I'm not talking about knocking off Coltrane licks, or Trane's technical prowess, but something way deeper, the passion and raw emotion that made him one of the great artists of the twentieth century.

I was wandering deeper into the forest, off the trail, and eventually my spidey sense told me to turn around. I finally composed myself enough to go get my morning caffeine fix. As I approached the cafe, I immediately recognized Kent Sangster's son sitting a table outside. That pushed more buttons for me and I wished again that Clara and Cassandra were here with me. As I was about to go inside, Kent walked out and introduced me to his wife and son and daughter. Then he said that Chucho was inside. I caught sight of him as I spun around and fled. I'm pretty sure he was looking at me, but there was no way I could face him at that moment. I would have totally broken down on the spot, as it was I managed to get around the corner of the building before losing it in private.

I'm sure Chucho knows he can have this effect on people.

The challenge for me will be to be part of the program here for the next 24 hours and be totally involved in wringing the last drops of learning from this rare experience. It means walking around holding my head high even though I'm on the verge of losing it at any given moment.

This is what is means to me to be an Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre. At least that's what it says on my ID card.

Friday part 3

This is the penultimate evening here and it's been heavy.

The talk at dinner time was how Chucho played today. Later in the evening, Hugh mentioned that although he had seen Chucho do it years ago, it was nothing like today. It was pretty well unanimous that we had witnessed one of those indelible moments of sheer musical brilliance. There were a number of people near tears by the end of it. We were indeed blessed.

We had another evening's worth of music to perform at The Club tonight and it was another full house. The music ranged from straight ahead jazz to wind octet to blues and full-out funk. I was part of the octet on bass clarinet. Gunhild Seim from Norway is just a beautiful composer and it was a lovely piece, like a sorbet between courses of a fancy meal. Ken Hoffman's funk unit tore it up at the end of the night.

Last night it was Jon "Bunny" Stewart's time to shine. Jon's been playing great from the get-go here, but when he presented a set of his own music at The Club last night, it was at another level, deeply personal and intense from the heart. Marianne was as brilliant as ever on piano, and Jon McCaslin and Joe Libinsky were superb on drums and bass. Afterwards, Chucho asked Bunny for a copy of his charts. What an honour.

Emotions have been running high here. We are nearing the end of this program and lots of stuff comes to the surface. On reflection much of the angst about repertoire could be attributed to this emotional intensity. People are also beginning to make preparations to leave on Sunday and that feeling of impending separation is also palpable.

I had inadvertantly offended the lead sax player in our section when I made one of my usual flippant remarks at the dinner table a few days ago. It was totally unintended, but he took it personally, a good reminder for me to think before I open my mouth. We ended up getting into it at the club last night and I was very quick to apologize again. I really respect this guy as a player and a person and truly felt bad about the whole thing.

The thing is as I mentioned quite some time ago, is that up here, after a few days in this intense environment, a lot of people, myself included, drop many of the emotional barriers that we use to shield ourselves in daily life in the real world. We do this because we feel safe in the environment that Hugh has fostered here over the decades. It helps us to perform from a very emotional place, and that can only make the music better.

So things naturally just become more intense. And that's a thing that I very much enjoy when I come here. Interestingly, I have always attributed a lot of that to the ball-busting music that makes up the final concert.

This year is different. We were looking for heavy salsa charts, but what Chucho brought instead was music that on the surface appears simple but is very, very deep. Hugh knows what it's about and I'm starting to get a sense of it, but it will probably take a long while to sink in. He told me that what Cubans really appreciate when they come here is not how well we may be able to play montuno, or what sort of chops we have; no, what really gets them is when music is played from the heart. According to Hugh, Chucho has heard that in this orchestra and he is very impressed and honoured to be a part of it. It may explain somewhat why he played Giant Steps the way he did.

He is leading the way for us.

Damn those epiphanies.

Friday part 2

There may be several postings today, as it will shorten the length of time I spend at the computer later on this evening.

After my initial post this morning, I got down to business with the song room piece, as we basically had the morning off. The chord changes started to sound alarmingly like Kenny Wheeler's Gentle Piece (damn, I wish I could write like that!) so I had to be very conscious of where this piece was going. I eventually got something that was original. I suddenly became aware that the building was very quiet, so I went to check out the cause. Much to my chagrin, an impromptu Q&A session with Chucho was going on and people were peppering him with questions, which he answered through his wife who translated for him. It was an extremely rare opportunity to hear this man's views on so many things - not the sort of thing you could expect if you happened to be travelling to Cuba.

At lunch, we had a barbecue out on the courtyard. It had rained briefly, just after I mentioned the great weather in my last post, but it was fine by the time we were ready to eat. I asked Chucho to autograph one of the cds that Patrick Dubois lent me and it turned out to be a very rare and special recording, so that was even better. I am reconsidering giving it back to Patrick now...

In the afternoon, we had a full rehearsal and Hugh masterfully addressed the concerns of some the band regarding the music selection for the show tomorrow night. I was one of those people and I was satisfied by what he said. One thing that probably nobody knew was that all of the Irakere charts are property of the Cuban government, regardless if Chucho wrote them. I guess that's communism in action, and a pretty damn solid reason we weren't playing that music.

After the rehearsal, Chucho had another lecture session, specifically about how the rhythm sections of a Cuban band basically work together. He explained about the difference between basic song form and montuno, and what usually would happen in the rhythm section when that change took place. He talked about different claves and tumbao and many other things.

I slightly derailed the strict rhythm section talk when I asked at what age to the kids start learning this stuff. This led into a long explanation on his part, but this is something that is very important to him. Apparently, kids are tested at the age of 7 for musical aptitude and if the authorities deem them to have some talent, then they a enrolled at a musical school. Musical education is conducted in addition to their regular school studies and they have to do well in both. If they fail a year either on the music or the academic side, they are out of the program. They have to learn percussion in addition to their main instruments. Percussion studies are initially done by example or orally, but eventually, they have to be able to write all of the figures that they play. This goes on to grade 12, at which time they can apply for university. There is another set of tests and only a small percentage of applicants get in. The rest have to continue learing "on the street". University is for 5 years and they must study classical in additional to jazz and traditional Cuban music. In years past, it was strictly classical and guys like Arturo Sandoval had to leave school in order to play jazz. We were all shaking our heads in disbelief at the rigorous study regimen.

I hope I got all of the above correct - we were all listening the translation very carefully.

Hugh asked Chucho to finish off by demonstrating his take on a classic jazz standard - Giant Steps. I don't know if anyone in the room could coherently describe what happened next. It was the most masterful solo performance I have seen in my life, and I may also be speaking for most of the people there. Chucho has a magnificent sense of time and fabulous keyboard technique, and he immediately took the piece from a very straight-ahead reading through possibly dozens of Cuban (and other) variations, switching midstream with accuracy, confidence and soul. It was from another dimension and we just happened to be lucky enough to be in the same room.

Dinnertime!

"The sun rose, as is its wont, in the east." Is that a line from Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings? Old School is the forum's resident expert on obscure pop culture references - perhaps he can elucidate from his tweedy confines at Tulane.

True to form, I start getting a bit reflective in the waning days of the program. This melancholy feeling is combined with excitement for the upcoming concert, making for an interesting emotional mix. It will be hard to part with this particular ensemble.

It's the time when I wish I could take pretty well everyone in the orchestra home with me, and just keep this magic going. We all know that it's back to the real world on Monday, save for those staying on for the International Jazz Workshop, usually known as the "Dave Douglas thing". Hugh has scheduled his annual lecture for tomorrow morning, the topic being reintegration back into the real world and ways of keeping this vibe going.

Typically I've always been last out of the building and first one back in the next day, but this time round I've been having late breakfasts. What can I say - I'm slipping. But for sure, I've closed the building most nights. Yet I still feel that I haven't done enough here. I've spent at least an hour a day blogging and checking e-mails, etc. This is the first time I brought up a laptop and I have spent a lot of time on it, some days more than practicing. I'll have to reflect on that.

Anyways, I did get up earlier than usual and was the first person through the music building's doors at 7:00am, having left just six and a half hours earlier. I took a short stroll through the woods to a nearby cliff overlooking the Bow River and watched the sun rising over the mountains, hence the purple prose at the start of this entry.

Here it is, yet another beautiful day up in Banff. Good weather seems to be just as certain as the black panties that have been hanging on a tree branch above the door to our residence since the day after I arrived. (Disclaimer: I had nothing to do with them!) It's nice to have some constants in your life.

This time round at Banff, I am one of the senior repeat attendees as well as being one of the oldest participants. More than ever before I have a sense that I am part of the tribe. I certainly don't have that huge feeling of insecurity that I did during my initial time with Maria Schneider. Also, I am much more secure in my role as being the "free player" of the group, as some people are approaching me to play with them, or pick my brains about this style of music. I know it's not everyone's bag, but there seems to be a greater acceptance of the genre on the whole. I also know that I am a much more accomplished musician that when I first came here. Even this year, I have really heard a big improvement in my sound.

This whole sense of comfort leads me to question whether or not I will do this program again. So much of the initial experience was about playing way over my head and having the guts to present a new music composition. It may be that it's time to look at some of the other programs that Banff has to offer, the Dave Douglas thing, or perhaps a group residency with ion Zoo. Maybe I need to look at programs elsewhere, but frankly, walking around this morning, looking at the majestic mountains and reflecting on the last 12 days, it's hard to think that this isn't the place to be.

Of course, a lot of it depends on whom Hugh may get as a guest artist in future years. I would come back for Maria Schneider in a heartbeat, as would anyone who has had that privelege in the past. We all said as much at the dinner table last night.

I've been giving thought to the concept of accountability, in the personal development seminar sense. Accountability is the concept that I attract that which happens to me in life. Good, bad or otherwise, I have the choice to react in a way that can enrich my life.

Under the concept of accountability, I attracted that initial phone call from Lorae to come do the session with Maria Schneider, just as much as I attracted comments at the end of the session that I took poorly at the time. In the end, after I set aside the self-defeating thoughts, I emerged a changed musician.

Since I'm still in the program here, it's too early for me to pronounce what I will eventually take from this time round, but I am starting to get curious about just what that will be.

Expectations part 2

Earlier, I'd written about expectations and how they may get in the way of results. We are now on the lunch break of our very first session with Chucho and I must say that I have mixed feelings. My anticipation was that we were going to get a load of ball-busting charts along the lines of Chucho's great group Irakere. Instead, what we have been presented with is three high school simple big band arrangements at medium to slow tempos which basically function as a solo vehicle for Chucho's amazing playing. The only uptempo tune is Mambo Influenciado, which I have played numerous times, and which we performed at a faster tempo in concert last week.

From the sounds of it, these are the only four charts of his we will be playing in concert on Saturday. There will also be a couple of solo piano pieces and then maybe a mass trombone arrangement of Manteca. That's it.

Hugh did not know until Chucho arrived what he planned to bring, so now the challenge for Hugh is to pull a concert together out of this material that will be satisfying for everyone. The pieces will be reworked and expanded to make them more concert oriented.

I had expected to be in the practice room from this point up to the time of the concert working my ass off just to cover my part, but frankly they're dead simple to play and due to the size of the band, I'll be laying out half of the time. So basically my initial reaction to the morning session was disappointment.

I don't want to sound insincere here, because it is an honour to have the opportunity just to share the stage with him. Chucho is a gifted pianist and having the chance to hear and watch him in person in something very special. But the title of today's entry is "Expectations".

So now it's time to shift gears and focus on making the material sound as good as possible. Stan Karp had a great quote from his mentor Bill Green when young Stan got overconfident with his assigned studies "If you're so bored with it, why doesn't it sound better?". So we can always improve our playing of a passage of music no matter how simple. Even if we are just a support vehicle for Chucho's soloing, the only professional thing to do is to honour the music and make it sound as great as possible.

I already told Hugh last week, that I felt like I'd gotten my money's worth up here this year, even without the Chucho experience, and I need to bear this in mind. Yesterday's recording session was an exceptional group achievement and perhaps a bit of a letdown is natural. I haven't talked about my feelings with anyone else here yet, but I'm sure many of the young trumpeters here came to Banff expecting a mega-burnout Latin workout. That's not going to happen.

The next few days will be interesting. I have to take advantage of the opportunity to spend time with one of the greatest masters of Cuban music, regardless of what music is put in front of me, and absorb as much as possible. As in all of the previous years here, my greatest learning has come from unexpected sources. I have to keep open to all eventualities.

This will also allow me to spend a couple of more nights composing, which is one of the primary reasons that I'm here.

Studio marathon

Today was the day that Chucho arrived. He had a long flight from Cuba and missed a connecting flight from Toronto due to a Caribbean storm. We generally gave him a lot of space to rest up for tomorrow. Hugh got a nice cigar to puff on, so he was happy.

The rhythm section loaded in at 10:00 am and the horns at 11:30, then soundcheck. Marianne's piece was first up and by the second take, it went quite well. That set the tone for the day. The second was Carl Anderson's - he had heat stroke, now recovered - and I was a few minutes late for the setup, as the start time was advanced by 15 minutes. I was still 15 minutes ahead of when tape started rolling, but I felt bad about not being there right from the jump, and I think my playing sufferred a bit as a result.

We kept gaining time throughout the afternoon and we took an early dinner break. We got a bit bogged down with Jon "Bunny" Stewart's tune, as Jon has rushed putting the arrangement together, and had never heard it played before Banff, but everyone really wanted to make sure we got a good take of it because it was a great piece. Jon asked Mike Herriott to conduct (it was in 5) and take the solo, which was quite an accomplishment. Because we were still all working hard to nail the piece, I suggested to Mike that someone else conduct while he soloed, a suggestion he didn't take particularly well, as he was more focussed than anyone to make this piece work. But after the supper break, a variation of that did happen, as Marianne took part of the trumpet solo on piano, enabling Mike to conduct us through the tempo changes. Bunny also gave direction from the sidelines. In the end, I think we got a really good take of the piece.

After that was a period of pandemonium while the extra instruments for my piece were set out, miked and sound-checked. We did two takes and I was quite happy, particularly with the second one. Again Mike was very helpful in pointing out some clams being played in my notated sections, while I did all I could to make sure my conducting went well. I need a lot of work in that department. The subsonic rumblings at the beginning were astonishing. Every band should have an alphorn. I will have to wait to hear a mixdown of this - the studio guys will also do a 5.1 surround sound mix for me. BONUS!

After that, things lightened up for me and I could focus more on playing. We wrapped the final piece at 10:30 pm, with about 260 minutes' worth of music in the can. If anything, the orchestra's focus increased as the night progressed, and the rhythm section kept kicking it until the last note. If any of them had started dragging, the whole evening would have been a disaster, but it was just the opposite. This was quite a feat and the whole band is now as ready for Chucho as we will ever be.

Tomorrow awaits...

Radar Quebecoise

The new works concert was originally planned for tonight, but due to some snafu, it ended up being advertised by the Banff Centre for last night. An unexpected result of this was a decided drop in the collective energy level today. People played well and kept their focus for the second round of rehearsals for the original music, but outside the rehearsal hall, many asses were dragging, mine included.

I took my piece to "Defcon 2" and went over it cell by cell, and it sounded much better for having done so. Even though this is a graphic score and so-called free improv, I reminded everyone that just like straight-ahead jazz, this music only really works when it is played from an emotional centre. That is the message that I will repeat when we get into recording the piece tomorrow evening.

I am quite happy with how this piece has gone, but I know it's time to move my writing beyond this particular style of graphic notation. This is the fourth grid-based piece I've written, definitely the most ambitious, and I feel like I've finally added some original modifications to the format. Some time ago, John Korsrud had suggested that I consider laying out the individual parts of my compositions and physically move the pieces of paper around, considering the flow and content of each segment, and that way find the final form. This is exactly what I did this time round, sticking each of the individual cells of the piece up on the bulletin board of my studio, going over them again and again, until I got a satisfying flow of events. I just can't let Reno know that he had such a good suggestion.

One of the other fine composers here, Carl Anderson, got lightheaded at the start of my piece and was feeling unwell for the rest of the day. In fact, he eventually went into town to the medical clinic for a checkup. They couldn't pinpoint anything in particular, but he has been pushing himself hard since arriving here, so a good night's rest may be the ticket. I certainly hope it's not more serious than that. I joked with him that it was the goal of my piece to take out one trumpeter at a time. It starts with a faux-Tastee Bros. screech trumpet bit. You can go to www.tasteebros.com for some clips of the most obnoxious screech trumpets ever recorded. Most brass players secretly dig that sort of stuff, though many will deny it in public.

Marianne and I went into town for sushi for dinner, and we ran into Mike Herriott, Kent Sangster, John Korsrud and Melissa Hubert just leaving the sushi bar. Sometimes you just have to get away from that big buffet table. Message to Malcolm: keep away from the buffet!!!

In the evening was a session on the business of music, a seminar that I have already heard Hugh give quite a number of times, but there is always something new to be gleaned, especially in the digital age.

I think I have forgotten to write about the bear attack that happened here last weekend. I mentioned a few days ago that Marianne and I had taken a stroll in the woods. I had wanted to take her along a trail I had done a couple of years ago, around the backside of Tunnel Mountain beside the Bow River. She said she didn't have a good feeling about going that way and sure enough that was the exact trail where a malnourished black bear took out a cyclist within the next 24 hours. He ended up in a Calgary hospital with some head lacerations. The bear paid for it with its life. Had it been a grizzly bear, the biker would have been dead, too. So I'm going to pay attention to Marianne's intuition from now on.

I complained to some of my associates today that I'm not getting any dirt from them to spice up this blog. Everyone has been relatively civil and well-behaved, and we are all getting along quite well. There have been no inter-sectional dustups, booze-fuelled barf-o-ramas, furtive couplings or any other sordid gossip to report. It makes for good music, but relatively dry reading.

Alphorns, attack!

This was one hell of a long day. I felt like I had about four hours worth of sleep, and I woke up nervous because my piece was not yet ready to go. It was a triple expresso shot breakfast and then up to the Music and Sound building. We were on an extremely tight schedule as 10 composers in the band each had only 30 minutes to present and rehearse their piece.

I got my piece ready with about half an hour to spare. It's always a challenge to present a graphic score to people unfamiliar with new music, but the orchestra did me proud. Overall it came off close to how I imagined. We rehearsed the until 5:30 and then after dinner, we were to present these pieces to a sold-out audience in the Rolston Recital Hall.

I was pretty dragged out after I completed my section of the rehearsal. I rejuvenated myself by eating lunch and dinner outside on the patio of the main dining hall. If I hadn't said it before, this place has got to be in one of the most bloody spectacular settings in the world. The music building is designed and situated so that through the windows of the Rolston Recital Hall, where we've rehearsed every day, there are magnificent and inspiring mountain views. I needed a little time outside to recharge my batteries and it worked, or maybe it was the two desserts.

A bonus was that I ran into some of my Banff buddies from previous years here, Mark DeJong and Keith Kruschel, who were up here for another program. It's like being part of an exclusive club - these guys will be friends forever.

At any rate the concert was an overall success. Some of the pieces were a little shaky in execution, but probably the audience never knew the difference. We'll have another chance to rehearse them tomorrow, then record some of them on Wednesday.

My piece went off relatively well. There are some sections that will need tightening up, but I can address them tomorrow. During the performance, at one point when the percussion section were instructed to let their parts degenerate, I turned to see two of them sword fighting with their sticks. It worked for me. On the break someone told me it sounded like cartoon music, which I took as a compliment. If I could even begin to emulate the sounds of Carl Stalling, the brilliant writer of those Bugs Bunny soundtracks, I'd be a very happy camper.

At the last moment, I was able to add in a couple of more instruments - an aplhorn which was about 10 feet long, and a valveless baroque trumpet, in addition to the cello, which I added in the morning rehearsal. I'm really thrilled with this turn of events and Hugh would have thrown me the kitchen sink had he been able to unbolt it in time. This is another aspect of the Banff experience - there is a wealth of really talented musicians here and you can take advantage of that.

A really nice bonus was that my cousin Valerie, her husband Ron and daughter Kim came up from Calgary for the concert. It meant a lot to me.

I joked that I had a real winner here with my arrangement. I'm going to sell it to Kendor Publishing - it will be great for those high school stage bands who want to feature 4 marimbas, cello, baroque trumpet and alphorn.

Some of the other composers were not as happy with how their pieces went, but there's more time to work them up.

A lot of the pressure is off me now, so I can relax a bit. My job for the next two days is to get my piece polished and recorded. It will get back into high gear on Thursday when Chucho arrives. Time to go to the after party...

Canadiana

Today was our day off, allegedly. Basking in the glow of a great concert, Sunday was the when I had to complete my piece.

And except for a short jaunt into town, I spent the entire day and evening doing just that, skipping dinner in the process. At the present moment, I am over 90% done. The graphic and scored segments are individually completed. Monday morning, well later on Monday morning as it is just past 1:00am right now, I have to combine the segments and photocopy them. Normally I would scan and combine them in Photoshop, but that ain't gonna happen here this year, so I'm working on the analog cut and paste system.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with my piece. I did write a very long convoluted melody for one section, which I may have to toss out if it doesn't sound any good in rehearsal.

I also wrote a part for pandeiro and as of yet I haven't found anyone who can play one. They're all afraid of it, perhaps because it's an instrument that is played to exceptional levels in Brazil, to the point of people playing no other instrument in their lives and changing their names to pandeiro, the most famous of these being Jackson do Pandeiro. Hopefully someone will step up. I can play it as it's a simple part but I need to conduct.

So my only diversion was the hour I spent in town. It's a short walk down the hill from here, but it's a world away. I've been up on the mountainside for over a week now and I've gotten acclimatized.

Walking down Banff Avenue, it struck me as a cookie-cutter sort of Canadiana. Low grade maple syrup sold in vials like it was liquid gold, all sorts of souvenirs of Canada (mostly made in China), gaggles of tourists, giggling Japanese couples whose idea of living on the edge in a foreign country is crossing the street against the traffic light... well you get the picture. The main street of Banff is copied across the country from Historic Properties to Gastown and it all looks oppressively the same to me. I decided that my reaction to this was largely due to my current paradigm of being in an overcharged artistic environment for the last 8 days. Perhaps if I was visiting the town with my own family, some other artist from up the mountainside would probably be judging me just as harshly.

There were a couple of things that caught my eye as I walked into town, which would have amused me regardless of my mindset. The first was a huge inukshuk on somebody's front lawn that look to be an exact replica of the 2010 symbol. I know it's been there for quite a few years, but I couldn't help imagining them getting a knock on the front door in the middle of the night from the VANOC logo goons. The other thing that tickled me was the license plate on a huge pickup truck from the heartland of America: 1GSUS

Heaven help us all.

Sound pressure

Saturday turned out to be a very full day so I've ended up writing my latest installment on Sunday morning.

I ended up feeling totally invigorated from the Friday night recording session, so the next morning the creative juices were flowing. We had the whole day off until 3:00pm when we had to the sound check for the evening concert. I had only two objectives: get a lot of work done on my composition and practise the rough parts for the performance. That was one goal too many as it turned out.

The first thing I did was to gain access to the percussion room and start working on some marimba patterns. I played the basic pattern from the Steve Reich score that I studied. I'm no mallet percussionist - it's one thing to play the pattern a couple of times, but to keep it up for 20 minutes or so when all of these other sounds are being created, real and perceived, well that's another thing. The Reich patterns were a good launching point but what they didn't have was a close connection to clave. Again, in the hands of a skilled percussionist, just a slight shift in how the pattern was accented would have immediately changed that.

I've talked with our drummers and though they can play mallets, neither of them considers himself that proficient. And I want to add at least Marianne and our guitar player Marc on marimba as well. I'll have two people on each marimba, and another person playing my pandeiro, the Brazilian version of the tambourine. That means I have to keep each individual part simple, so there is a quick learning curve. My aim is that once all five layers are played simultaneously, it will sound very complex. I don't think that phasing effect will be created but it would be cool if it happened.

I don't know if I can really explain clave in a paragraph, but for those who are not familiar with latin music, it's the basic rhythmic pattern that underlies most of the music, salsa and bossa nova being two prime examples. It's usually a short two-bar pattern, most clearly heard when it's played on two hardwood sticks, also know as claves.

About a year and a half ago, I asked John Korsrud if he had heard any improvisatory music built out of the latin tradition and he couldn't recite a clear example. It's often been said "Don't fuck with clave." Serious latin players know it's a very sacred and deep tradition. My friend Patrick Dubois has written a couple of essays about it - this is heavy stuff to be messing with.

But in my typical behaviour, I believe there are no sacred cows, and hopefully Chucho won't be offended if he hears my piece and send out a Cuban death squad. I'm sure he has a direct line to Fidel Castro, so nothing's out of the question.

So I ended up spending most of my free time on Saturday working on my piece and conceptually completed things. I also got a number of marimba patterns down on paper, so I was well on my way. One of our drummers, Karl Schwonik, was practising in the room next door, so he was able to play a bit for me so I could hear the two most basic patterns together. That's when I discovered that he has a surround sound 5.1 system set up in his practise room, with the sound centred on his drum throne. Brilliant! And we will be able to listen to the playback of our recording session!

In the end, I had about a half an hour in total to practise for the evening show. I was just able to go over the roughest spots in the Love Supreme suite, and gave up on nailing the fast flute part on Mambo Influenciado. It's something I'll work on when I return to Vancouver, so I can play it with the Wanda Nowicki Group, probably as an instrumental before she sings.

The sound rehearsal went relatively smoothly. It's always a compromise situation in a large theatre with a 24-piece band. Not everyone can be pleased with the onstage sound quality, but there was minimal time spent messing with monitor mixes, which can be tedious.

In no time at all, it was time to play the show, and I knew I was as ready as I was meant to be. My only real concern was to do Love Supreme justice - it's such a monumental work in jazz.

The whole show went very well. This orchestra has come together extremely quickly and I feel that everyone is very compatible with one another. The overall level of the musicianship is very high, not to demean any of the previous editions of the orchestra, as each one has been excellent in its own way. I knew the concert would be good, but in the end, it exceeded my expectations. Mostly, it was a really high level of excitement that the band generated, so that there was a real uplifting effect on the listener. That's a damn good reason to go out to hear live music, and something that Hugh very actively and intelligently pursues.

Love Supreme went quite well, and Hugh set the bar very high with his impassioned piano playing. I felt that I held up my end of the deal - definitely the other tenor players Jon Stewart and Mike Ruby are great soloists. I just played from my heart and did my best to convey what Coltrane meant for me. I am the free jazz guy here, so that's what I do best when it comes to playing with passion, which is one thing that Trane had in spades. It wasn't a total freakout on my part and hopefully it will sound good on the recording.

The final piece of the night was a McCoy Tyner composition called The Man from Tanganyika, very African in a 12/8 feel. He opened this piece up and did a set piece for the ending. During the extended drum solo near the end, the trumpets all left the stage. Hugh has often ended such pieces with the members of the band leaving the stage one by one, ending with a pulse-like drum beat. But in this case the trumpeters all ran back around to the entrances to the theatre. The walked down the stairs through the audience, all soloing. Somewhere in transit, they acquired trumpet legend Jens Lindeman who was visiting, so this killing group of nine or ten trumpets (I lost count, and Reno won't let me turn around to count them) were all blowing their brains out. Mike Herriott and Jens were on opposite sides and they were definitely going toe to toe at the very top of their range, full blast. They were playing so high, there was probably a pack of dogs amassing outside the theatre. The total effect was incredibly loud and thrilling, but mercifully didn't go on forever.

When the rest of the band came back in with the melody to end the piece, the effect of the sound pressure was very evident to me. It was the same repressurization on my ears as when I am decending after a long flight. The rest of the orchestra sounded distant and a bit muffled for a few seconds until our ears readjusted to normal sound levels. And then we were done.

I went to the after party for a while - it was worth taking in the vintage videos of Earth, Wind & Fire that Hugh was showing on the projection TV, then called it a night relatively early. I have a lot of work to do on Sunday as it is the day I must complete my piece.

The unexpected

A few words on the food at Banff - it's pretty good and there's tons of it. Hugh usually give a "Banff Bulge" spiel during the intro session. It's natural for jazz musicians to go ape over a heaping buffet table, especially for the young guys who usually buy KD by the case at home. Years ago, there was a dramatic improvement in the food quality not to accommodate the sophisticated palettes of jazzers, but for the conference crowd. There has been a serious increase in the percentage of corporate functions that are held here. At breakfast I noticed a place card reserving a table for the "Infectious Diseases 2006" boys - I tell you they are a wild bunch once they get a few beakers of booze under their belts.

Back to the food, any self-respecting jazz musician will descend on a buffet table of this quality like it's the last meal in his/her life. And then there's the "Dessert Island" as Hugh calls it, which always has 4 or 5 different rich desserts on it for lunch and dinner. So the Banff Bulge is a real threat. My tighter jeans are left in the drawer after week 1. The young guys in the orchestra, brass players in particular, are all walking around in a food-fuelled daze, but still regretting that they couldn't scoff down that third dessert.

The only group of people I've seen who are worse than this are jazz writers. I was at Larry Svirchev's place for a jazz writers' get-together during last year's jazz festival and once the food was put out, it was like watching a pack of rabid piranhas. I guess they don't even get the opportunities that musicians get. But I am digressing.

This year, the siren call of the buffet table is not as strong for me. I am trying only to eat meat during dinner, and go for lots of fruit and vegetables, basically a healthier diet to get me through these two weeks. I am getting about 7 hours worth of good sleep, so I should be doing OK. I might add the extra helping of dessert, but dammit, I earned it.

We started the day off with sectional rehearsals, which are always good to do. I actually thought Kent Sangster was pretty easy on us, but he's quite happy with the quality of the players here, so it's just detail work. I feel he'll crack down on us next week when Chucho's here.

I also did some work on my composition, but there's still lots to do. I need to get it finished this weekend for sure as we start on Monday with the orchestra doing our pieces.

In the afternoon, we had a full orchestra rehearsal. The band is really starting to gel. When the trombone section gets it really together, the sonic effect is quite astonishing. The way that the harmonics of brass instruments line up when everyone's in tune and really playing suddenly creates ten times the power, not necessarily loud, but the sound pressure is very tangible and we sax players can feel it in our backs, threatening to push our chairs across the floor. I must admit that it's a glorious sound, but don't tell any brass players that I said that.

Pieces have to come together very fast, and many of the pieces are already under my fingers, something that may take several weeks in the big bands that I play in back home. Time is one thing that we do not have in abundance during this program. However there are about three pieces that need some serious work and I need to practice the hell out of them, particularly the Love Supreme suite. I mean, it's Coltrane!!!!

So I felt mixed about my playing today, which is about typical at this point in the program.

I went to the extensive music library here and took out a couple of Steve Reich scores to study in detail how he writes for marimba. In the late '80s, I saw the percussion group Nexus perform his Six Marimbas in Halifax. This is an incredible piece, even more so now that I see the score. Basically each person plays a repeating pattern for a long time, and the combination of six layers of this creates phasing effects and the perception of notes being played that aren't really being played. The effect is very much like those optical illusions, where the eye gets a jumble of information and "sees" something that really isn't there.

I could sort of play each of the individual patterns of the piano and the overall sound is very much like I remember. If we only had a room with 6 pianos, I would try to get some people together to try to recreate that sound effect. The killer is that these patterns repeat endlessly, and some of the six parts only have 3 different patterns for the whole piece, so it is a major exercise in stamina for the performers. I would imagine that the whole aural illusion would be destroyed if these patterns weren't played perfectly in sync.

Anyways, it was a treat to study the score of this piece after so many years. I'm studying writing for marimba for my piece here and of course the Sound Room piece next month.

I had resolved to do some major work on my composition this evening but I got asked to go down to the recording studio for a session. It was with two other players, both of whom were in the composers' residency. Organizing it was a fellow Nova Scotian, trombonist Robin Jessome, now at UVic and my roommate Ken Hoffman. Robin had brought his trombone and some percussion, and Ken and I each brought a load of woodwinds and of course my bag of percussion.

So we went down to the studio and were surprised to see that the engineers had been setting up for surround sound recording, at least 10 mics in various positions. We were given free rein to improvise as we saw fit and the end we had recorded about 50 minutes worth of music. They were using some literally priceless recording mics. The sound quality was unbelieveable, picking up every nuance of our playing. We were asked to move around to make the most of the surround sound effect and the playback in the control room was pretty amazing. We had fun and at one point, I ran circles around the perimeter of the mics, playing like a madman.

It was also interesting to hear the three of us gel as a group, and by the last track, there was some pretty amazing stuff being recorded. There were times when we all played a series of multiphonics that I cued, with the resultant sound like a chorale of about 9 instruments, way cool. As participants in this program, we got this session for free in a studio that usually charges about $400 per hour.

The engineers, also participants in a Banff residency, were totally enjoying the experience. We hope to do it again next week, maybe with Marianne. She will be pea green with envy when she hears what went on tonight. She and I had taken a short stroll after supper and we had both vowed to spend the evening composing. We are both having a laugh at how we are influencing each other's composing styles.

So now it's after 1:00 am and I haven't practised a note or written anything all evening. I will run over some of the more difficult passages before I turn in tonight, but my head will be buzzing about the recording session. With Robin in Victoria and Ken in Edmonton, it's not out of the question that we couldn't continue this musical relationship in some fashion.

I'll be playing a concert of great music tomorrow night, including the VEJI arrangement of Love Supreme, and playing a Hard Rubber Orchestra piece with John Korsrud conducting, I recorded about a cd's worth of music tonight and made some great musical connections. Next week - my composition and then Chucho Valdes.

This is what Banff is all about for me. And the dessert isn't half bad either.

On a roll


Well, today has been interesting.

My laptop gave the appearance of totally packing it in for a while, but apparently I don't need to use it desparately enough, so it has decided to hang on a while longer.

The morning orchestra run-through was really good and we did a piece of John Korsrud's called Iguana. I got the soprano sax part and I had doubts at first that I could handle it, but it sounded pretty good by the end of the day. It's a totally unique piece based on hiphop club music and super-fast cuts between different styles of music.

At lunchtime, I had a pleasant surprise when the in-house piano tech told me he had found a bunch of surplus piano tuning pins. These are the steel pegs that piano strings are wound onto. They also happen to make an exquisite percussion instrument when strung onto a short handle, like wind chimes. In fact, they are called pin chimes and have a unique tinkling sound. I have enough to make two sets of chimes. I'll give one to Dominique for her generousity with providing a marimba for the sound room gig.

After lunch, it was back to repertoire. Ken Hoffman scored big when he inquired with the Banff School of Music and found that we were able to borrow a bass clarinet, an alto flute and an Eb clarinet. The bass clarinet is in fact the one I played here in 2002 with Maria Schneider - an absolute top of the line professional instrument. I gave it a try and it's a lot less painful to play now that I have had one of my own for over a year. It has a great smooth classical sound, with a thundering low C, but actually, I'm quite happy with mine. Maybe it's a better instrument for the style of music I do.

I'm going to play the alto flute in one of Hugh's pieces. I gave it a try and this baby is SEXY. It has the sound of Kathleen Turner back in her Body Heat days. About 5 of us want to take this beauty home with us. The flute, not Kathleen Turner.

After the afternoon break, we divided into two smaller groups and I hit paydirt. My group is doing the first two movements of the VEJI arrangement of A Love Supreme, John Coltrane's monumental work. It features three tenor saxes, along with brass and a rhythm section. Hugh is on piano. I saw this arrangement performed by VEJI a few years ago at the Cellar during the Jazz Festival. Jon Bentley, Bill Runge and from New York, Patience Higgins played tenors. Oooooh, yeah, baby......

I am totally thrilled to be part of that group. It's also cool that the first movement was arranged by Robin Shier, who directs Urbana, a big band that I played in for many years.

I reworked my ideas for my new piece for the group and I am looking forward to getting a lot down on paper over the next 24 hours. I think I now have a more original working of my initial concepts. I'm going to forego a lot of the optional events this evening and tomorrow morning to get my score started and to work on these charts.

I did take a nice hike up Tunnel Mountain after dinner, and it looked like the weather was changing, and sure enough, it just started pouring for the first time since I arrived here.

Clara reports that things are going well at home, including on the financial side (finally!), so that is good. I'll need to focus my attentions here over the next few days.

The flute club

Today marked the commencement of the Jazz Orchestra Workshop portion of the proceedings in Banff. The first couple of hours was the official welcome to Banff by Hugh and various members of the Banff staff. Most enjoyable was Myra Davies' "Tick Talk". Apparently ticks are coming out in force this time of the year and being an artist herself, she had a very theatrical presention on the life of these little buggers. At least it was different from the same basic presentation in earlier years.

We started off with the traditional welcoming exercise which was the communal African clapping and singing piece. It got progressively harder until most of us couldn't sing, move and clap the rhythms that your basic African rugrat can do. It's a great leveller of musicians' egos. I got to play the bell pattern on my salsa bell, but although I am much better at playing the pattern than before, the moment I add singing to it, I am toast. It makes you a bit humble, but the energy generated through this exercise is palpable. We went inside and applied the same concepts to our instruments, resulting in about a 40-minute piece (or so it seemed) where everyone got to introduce themselves by way of soloing. There are about 24 people in the band, so there were a lot of players to work through. The trumpet section made an immediate impression as being particularly hot this year.

After lunch, we got down to reading some repertoire, sometimes a bit of an organizational challenge since there are 8 saxophones, 2 flautists, and lots of extra trombones and trumpets. Maybe I should get a better count tomorrow. There will be some rotation of players, but also some pieces where everyone plays together.

I'm one of three tenor players. I got to play most of the doubling parts, on soprano sax or flute. In fact I got to play a lot of flute. In advance of coming up here, I practiced one piece, Chucho's Mambo Influenciado. I was expecting to play it on sax, but Hugh asked me to play flute. He is planning on taking it way faster than previous years, or rather he expects Chucho to do so, and it's up very high in the flute's range, two things that I don't usually do well on flute. But being Banff, I went for it and actually did quite well in rehearsal. I think with some work, I'll be able to do it justice. Jeremy Price is going to give a master class later this week, so I may come home being a much better flute player, though that may not be saying too much.

A couple of days ago one of the composers here mentioned at the dinner table about going to a gig recently at the Chicago Flute Club. This sent us into fits of laughter thinking about a bunch of effete gangbangers defending their turf with hissy fits, or else a bunch of people climbing up to the alpine meadows to pick flowers and playing trills. I know it's pretty sophomoric, but the vibe starts getting a little wierd up here after a couple of days. But ironically now, I appear to be in the Banff Flute Club.

I spent the evening in the practice room, alternately practising, trying to get my laptop to run better and avoiding working on my next composition. I did look at my pre-Banff notes on the piece and tossed them away. I think I have to start all over again. I made some draft sketches for a graphic score, but they look suspiciously like something Barry Guy did, so I may have to start yet again. I have a few days to pull something together.

Excuse me while I work on my trills...

What's in a name?

Well today was the final day of the composer's residency. I reworked my piece late at night and it was as ready as it was going to be.

We started off the morning talking about the business end of composing, about SOCAN, copywrite, publishing, royalties, not-for-profit societies, online sales, writing grants, Canada Council and so on. I've heard the talk up here before, but some parts of it are much more relevant for my current career stage.

I had a growing uneasiness during the seminar, as I really wanted to have my piece ready to go. Unfortunately, my laptop was giving me a lot of grief, another annual Banff ritual. What should have taken a couple of minutes took about 3 hours. Typical with computers, the techno-screwup is directly proportional to urgency of the printing job. Without Ken Hoffman's and Lorae Farrel's help, it never would have printed at all. I could have done it by hand in a fraction of the time.

After lunch, we ran through everyone's compositions, ten in all, with the aim of recording them during a live performance in the evening. I missed a good portion of it dealing with printing issues and my piece had to be moved from #2 to #9 on the order list.

Rehearsing all of the pieces proved to be quite tiring as everyone was pushing their compositional boundaries, trying things that might or might not work. I for one was not happy with how the group improvisational aspects of my piece worked. In the end, I noted with some irony that I wrote the piece with chord changes and flowing melody and Marianne wrote the graphic score, a total reversal of roles.

One other thing happened during the rehearsing of my piece. First Marianne, then a couple of other people laughed when they say that I had misspelled my own name on the chart. I was rushing, it was in teeny tiny font, blah, blah, blah. Steve Bagnekk - so I missed by one key on the keyboard. I thought it would be fine as long as Mike Herriott didn't find out, and right then, right behind me, he started howling. I had served up the pitch and he hit it out of the park. BAGNEKK! He dubbed me "Gooch" with his trombone, a word with filthy connotations, at least in Mike's equally filthy mind. He was most pleased with this turn of events, and I had myself to blame.

No worries, I was pretty tired after the afternoon's proceeding. Marianne and I took a walk by the Bow River before supper. It was nice to get outdoors finally, but it really wasn't enough. I want to take a big hike and we noted with a bit of regret that the snow is still pretty far down the mountains, so we won't be able to do any serious vertical hiking.

Jeremy Price arrived at dinner, as did a couple of other Vancouver musicians, as they started rolling in for the Jazz Orchestra Workshop which starts tomorrow.

We had to be back at Rolston Recital Hall for 7:30 to get ready for the recording. First off, was a piece we had not yet rehearsed and I had to sight read it for the two takes each of us got. There were some serious tuning issues with the other player (heaven forbid, not me out of tune!). I kept adjusting but it didn't help.

For some reason, people kept asking me to play their pieces, even if I hadn't been at all of the rehearsal that afternoon, so I did a lot of playing and sight reading while tape was rolling.

By the time we got to my piece, I was fried. I made the necessary adjustments and they worked reasonably well, but my conducting sucked. Mike Herriott was actually really helpful during the recording. He is always that way, he respects the music but once the playing is over, it's game on again. I know I could have done a better job, but I'm sure the results will be satisfactory. Sometimes you just need to put a little time between the recording and the listening.

So now it's off to the wrapup party and the real work starts tomorrow. And now on top of all of the playing, I have my major piece to write, not to mention the song room piece. Well, that's just the way it is here.

Johnny Reno


Last night I went to bed with composers brain. Basically the creative process going on between my ears did not get the message that it was time to sleep. So it took a while before I was able to drop off, resulting in me dragging my sorry ass around for most of the morning.

At breakfast, John Korsrud appeard. He had gotten in from Vancouver at 3:00am and looked more chipper than me. He has a new work of his, written specifically for Francois Houle, premiered with the Turning Point Ensemble last night. The dining room manager came by and apologized for the behaviour of that rude woman on the desk yesterday and refunded my money, a nice way to start the day.

We spent the day doing a study of John's compositions. He is one heavy cat when it comes to innovative writing. I really liked going through his scores and getting an insight into his writing techniques. The last thing we heard was a recording of his new piece from last night. It was terriffic - Francois can do no wrong.

At the end of the afternoon session, I caught up with Dominique and we went to the percussion room to discuss our song room project. She can swing a marimba for the gig, so we checked out a couple of the beautiful instruments that they keep up here. The sound of these instruments is amazing and I got really jazzed up about the possibilities for this piece. Dominique is a great 4-mallet player and you could feel the vibrations from the bass notes in your gut - very neat. I got the idea that bass clarinet may be a good fit - nice and woody.

After dinner, I got down to work on the composing assignment and got it done and into the computer, which took a little longer than usual. I just switched to a Mac Powerbook after 20 years of PC, so there were some things to learn with Finale.

There was just enough time to sit in on the last tune of the nightly jam session, then it's time to go for a nightcap then try to get some rest. Really, I'm still so excited about the marimba that it might be another sleepless night.

A Steinway in every driveway...

I had a solid night's sleep. Ken had a gig out of town so I had the room to myself for the night. It's dead quiet at nighttime up here save for the odd rutting elk, so I awoke refreshed, but with a mouth as dry as a popcorn fart. (Just how did someone come up with that saying?) You have to rehydrate constantly in Banff due to the elevation and the dryness. I found it good to have industrial strength lip balm on hand at all times. A cracked lip could be deadly up here with so much playing going on.

I had an orange left over from dinner and so all I had to do is get a my caffeine hit and a bottle of water before the first session started. The morning was an introduction session and the 10 composers in the program (less Marianne who needed the day to recuperate) all introduced themselves. It was quickly apparent that we are all very diverse in style, and some are extemely talented. This is going to be a fun program.

We all had to play some excerpts of our compositions to give everyone a taste of our personal styles. I rifled through my cds and much to my dismay, had not a single example of my writing. I had lots of varied performances, but it was all either improv or my playing standards. So I just talked about where I am coming from, and my approaches to the creation of my graphic scores.

After the morning session broke for lunch, one of the people in the room, acutally Banff staffer and an artist in her own right, asked me to play at least a sample of my music. I put on a bit of our February recording of the ion Zoo gig at the Cellar. She asked who's singing and I said it was Carol Sawyer. "CAROL SAWYER - I know her!" She asked which group and when I told her it was ion Zoo, she said she's come out to see us at 1067 and absolutely loves the group. Again, there are no coincidences at Banff.

Lunch was less than fun. I still hadn't found my room key package, which also contained the slip used to get my artist's ID card, which is also the meal pass. The previous evening the front desk just called down to the dining room and the manager was happy just to accept a photo id, since I was already in the computer system. In fact he remembered me from previous years there. Not so at lunchtime. The person at the dining room computer basically said no card, no food, unless you pay for it. She was quite unpleasant about it and would not even bother to look me up on the computer. She had no time for me and didn't care to hear how they accomodated me the previous evening. She charged me full price for lunch, $18.75, and believe me, it wasn't worth it. I lodged a complaint with our Community Services liasion person about her conduct.

In the afternoon, we had a lecture from Hugh about one of his favourite topics - some of the universal mathematical concepts behind music. It went from what note the Sun resonates at, through the Fibonacci series and into geometric shapes superimposed over the circle of fifths. It was very esoteric and even though it's the fourth time I've heard it, I am making slow progress in understanding it. I was interested in noting the places where I felt like I has a sudden IQ drop, all places where I hadn't wrapped my head around what he was talking about. The fascinating thing was that he backed it all up by playing samples of famous pieces on the piano, often rearranging them on the fly as he thought of a new way to apply the concepts.

He put many of these theories into the composition of his Concerto for Jazz Orchestra, which I had played here in 2002. In particular, one section was done absolutely strictly by the numbers and diagrams, but it sounded like Ellington, had he been writing in the late 20th century. I have been intrigued by that direct connection between Duke's music and some of the more avante garde music. It's like it's a straight line progression, and here it was showing up again in the example Hugh was using.

We were given a short writing assignment to be presented Tuesday evening. I was thinking that I could spend my time here developing within the stylistic guidelines of my two previous graphic scores, but this was the perfect opportunity to challenge myself. I joked that it would be most radical for me to write In the Mood. That's not far from my intention, as I want to write something more arranged and voiced than I normally do, at least for this assigment.

I met some other Vancouver musicians that I know, who are up here with high school concert bands and choral programs that are going on until Tuesday. Dominique Brunchmann and I are going to try to meet tomorrow morning to work on the song room project - it's so great she's up here.

I went back to my room and much to my surprise found the missing key and registration package in my percussion bag. I had absolutely no recollection of putting it in the one pocket that I hadn't checked in the previous 24 hours. So I got my artist's id.

I didn't even have to pull it out at dinner time - last evening's host said "Hi Steve" as I was walking down the stairs into the dining room and checked me into the computer. That just made me even more displeased with my lunchtime experience.

After dinner, the music building was packed with high school kids waiting to go into a performance. As I waded through them, I had the sense that I was being stared at. It was only at the end of the gauntlet that one of them said "Tell us a joke." This was a school that attended our Kiwanis Music Festival and one of my things I do as MC is to tell a lot of stupid music jokes. Q: What's the definition of counterpoint? A: Two guitarists reading the same line.

I had a couple of good scheduled one-on-one sessions with Mike Herriott and Hugh, discussing compositional concepts and my idea for doing a more arranged piece. Particularly with Mike, I picked his brains about how to approach voicings for brass instruments.

Then I got to work in the practice room. There is a wealth of great grand pianos in the practice rooms here, many of them Steinways, sometimes 2 in a room. I like having a Steinway in a practice room. They are such great instruments that they resonate when I'm playing a horn in the room and I always sound better. We all should be so lucky in the outside world.

I got to work on my piece and something wierd happened. I just want to write a fairly short and manageable piece for the assignment, but the damn thing kept growing bigger. I had to stop after a couple of hours because it was getting to be too long, and I didn't feel that it was complete yet. And the wierder thing is that it sounds like something Marianne would write (probably on an off off day). She is a bigger influence on me than I knew. And stranger still because I am not much of a pianist, but these pianos just sound so damn good that the music flows out of them.

I decided to write this while taking a break from the piano, but what I really want to do now is play some saxophone. I'll do that and call it a night.

Roomies

The balance of my last day in Vancouver went much better than the morning and my mood was pretty good by the time I started the gig Friday night at 1067. We ended up with 9 performers, and it went really well. We had Dawn Zoe (accordion/piano), Fabienne Lacroix (clarinet), Pessi Parvanien (guitar), Lisa Butel (voice), Blythe Polreis (trombone) and Joe Rzmeniak (trumpet), augmented by Soressa Gardner (voice) and Dave Chokroun (bass). I played one instrument only, tenor sax, which was unusual for me at an improv gig. I like to have a variety of instruments at hand, but they were all packed up for Banff. I want to find some more gigs for this particular group - it has a really nice sound, and everyone is a really sensitive musician.

I told everone that I wanted to wrap up by midnight, however, the music was just too damn good, so we went until almost 1:00 am. It was pushing 2:00 before I got home. I needed one more hour to complete packing. In the end, I only got about 2 hours sleep before heading to the airport for my 7:00am flight. The last couple of days have been good preparation for Banff - there's time to sleep when you're dead.

I was met at the Calgary airport by my cousin Valerie, whom I haven't seen in about 8 years. She is totally charming, but I'm still getting my head around the idea that she's a grandmother now. She filled me up with coffee and lunch and then insisted on driving me to the Banff Centre. We had a wonderful talk on the way out, as our colourful family has no end of source material.

Immediately upon stepping out of her vehicle, the first person I saw was Ken Hoffman. And we're roommates! There are no coincidences up at Banff.

I've always been very lucky with my roommates up here. I was on my own the first year. The second year was Bill Mahar, next year Mark DeJong, a fine alto saxist and also a student of Stan Karp. I count all of these guys as some of the better friends that I've made up here.

I was so tired, I managed to lose my room key within 5 minutes of registering. Ken and I hung out for a while. He told me that his time at Banff two years ago totally changed his life. He changed his appearance - he's looking way more hip now with long hair, changed girfriends and dedicated himself totally to music.

We ran into Hugh and Lorae, then Marianne Trudel arrived - she'd had her pre-Banff trials as well and just needed to lay low and rest up for the coming days. At dinner I met a couple of the other composers. I figure I already know almost half of this year's participants.

After dinner, I blogged a bit then headed up to the music building for a little practice. I need to check out all of my instruments and make the necessary adjustments due to the altitude and dryness. I just worked on my tenor for an hour or so. My sea level reed sucked up here, so I ran through reeds until I got one that worked. It's one that I had rated pretty low in Vancouver - one of these years, I'll figure out how this all works.

Then off to the bar for a quick drink with Hugh, Lorae and Natalie, a fellow Nova Scotian and composer. Hugh gave his blessing for me to write this blog.

All in all, it's been a pretty great day. I'm here, I'm caught up on the blog and I'm ready to dive in tomorrow. Now if I could only find that key...

Kenny Wheeler + Banff + CBC = Shitstorm

I've arrived at the Banff Centre, but first I have to backtrack one more time.

In 2004, when I learned that Kenny Wheeler would be the guest artist, I again applied to go, expecting that there would be some stiff competiton for a spot in the orchestra, and I was right. I was advised by Registration that I could only attend as an audit.

I cornered Hugh at the Cellar after a Bonehenge gig to discuss the implications of auditing. Typically he told me that I just have to come, there would be lots of chances for me to play and that I would have the opportunity to present another composition. I was still unsure, and maybe part of that was fear of what sort of payback Mike Herriott would exact on me for The Joke. Hugh was insistent and added that I had to come because there would be a bassist/cellist from Seattle who was also into new music and it would be worthwhile for me to meet him.

I dithered for a while, but I knew this would be a rare opportunity to work with Kenny, so what the hell, I went for it. I weathered the annual financial strains and made my way up there.

I took the shuttle bus from the Calgary airport to Banff with a fresh-faced young guitarist named Perry Smith up from Los Angeles. He was attending USC and I knew one of his profs, Shelley Berg. Shelley is a scarily brilliant pianist and we have regularly hired him to adjudicate at the Kiwanis Music Festival. So Perry and I had a starting point for conversation which helped the drive pass quickly.

The first evening I was there, we had an impromptu jam session in one of the practice rooms. Not too far along, we went from playing standards to more freely improvising, something I couldn't have paid the orchestra members to do in the first couple of years I was there. There were three of us who were nudging the group in this direction, the aforementioned Paul Rucker from Seattle, pianist Marianne Trudel from Montreal and myself. I knew we had an instant chemistry. It also turned out that the three of us were intending to present compositions for the orchestra. I felt things were off to a good start.

We started into repertoire the next morning. Normally a big band sax section consists of 5 saxes - 2 altos, 2 tenors and 2 baris. I was sax #6. I was thrilled that my second cousin Jennifer Bell was on lead alto. It was her turn to come up while husband Bill Mahar stayed home with the kids. Kent Sangster had the lead tenor chair, and I shared the second tenor chair with a young phenom from New York, Mike Kammers. This guy could really play like hell and he had all of the swagger that an up-and-coming Big Apple hotshot would be expected to have. I don't think he ever warmed up to the idea of sharing the chair with me, but it didn't really bother me. He got most of the solos (as he deserved) and if the music called for a more delicate voicing, I had no problems laying out.

The first several days went quite smoothly. I kept looking over my shoulder for swift retribution from Mike Herriott, but surprisingly it never came. Mike was focussed on the business at hand, namely the music.

I didn't really commit to writing a piece until I arrived there. I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity, especially once I saw what Paul was writing. I had three days to pull it together, I had been tossing some ideas around in my head ever since my success the previous year. Of particular interest to me was the challenge of writing a largely improvisatory piece that still sounded as esthetically beautiful as some of the things I had done two years earlier with Maria Schneider. It's really easy to do ugly with free music, much harder to sound pretty but not new-agey.

I had started thinking about the piece a year earlier, as soon as I had presented my initial offering at Banff. I generally leave ideas to percolate for a long time, then the actual writing process has generally come relatively quickly. I am not a prolific composer. I give a lot of thought to which concepts to explore, experiences to draw upon, and the overall architecture of the piece. I decided to preface the the "pretty" section with something more toward the ugly end of the spectrum, so there would would be a real contrast. I also decided to emulate Hugh's favoured Fibonacci series to have a mathematical formula govern certain facets of the piece, particulary the relative length of the sections, and how many changes there were in any given section.

So my second Banff piece actually came together pretty quickly. What really took a lot of time is transferring the musical ideas and directions to graphic form on paper. I use a combination of standard notation and images. This involves a certain ability with Finale and Photoshop and usually several other software programs. One thing I have taken from Barry Guy is the desire to have the final score look as good as possible. His scores are often worthy of framing and hanging on your wall.

I decided that the use of conduction, the cueing of improvisation through a series of preset hand signals would be a big part of the piece. That gives me the opportunity to create spontaneous shifts in the music, reacting to what I hear and building on it. I owe a debt of gratitude to Coat Cook for really schooling me in this technique. I made sure to come up with some new signals of my own for the piece, to add to the growing conduction vocabulary.

All three of the pieces presented by Marianne, Paul and myself ended getting recorded in the Telus studio by the orchestra. I could never have afforded to mount such an exercise on my own. I was really pleased how my piece came out - the members of the orchestra were so open to new ideas and responded so musically that it had to sound great.

An unexpected highlight - Toronto-based guitarist Dave Occipinti was doing a residency at Banff, just working on his own stuff. One of the amazing things that took place was the connection between Dave and Perry Smith, the guy I had taken the shuttle with. These two decided to play together at a performance at the makeshift on-campus jazz club. These two guys connected instantly in a telepathic way. Perry was no goofy kid, he was a seriously heavy player, and he and Dave immediately sounded like guys who had been playing together for years. They would launch into a standard and take it through dozens of twists and turns, often finishing each other's phrases, and pushing each other to greater heights. It brought the place to a standstill, with a room full of jaded jazzers just standing there with their mouths hanging open. It was a phenomenal occurrence and the people who saw it are still talking about it.

Then there was Kenny Wheeler. I don't know if I can be brief discussing that experience.

First off, Kenny was into his seventies and he was recovering from a fairly serious stroke. Many of us had a great fear for his well-being and were concerned that this may indeed be the last time he may come back to Canada. It felt like a great responsibility to honour him by playing his music as best we possibly could.

He didn't have a strong voice. He led the band by sitting in a chair and would turn and say something in a soft voice to Hugh, who would relay the instruction. Kenny is self-effacing to a fault at the best of times and this was an interesting lesson in leadership. We would hang on every word and then to our utmost to carry out his wishes. I think he could have ordered us to march off the peak of Tunnel Mountain and we would have done it for him. He had a very dry wit, painfully self-effacing and absolutely wonderful to work with. It was such an honour to be there.

Kenny's music is absolutely beautiful and extremely demanding. It is truly original. The jazz world has yet to give him the recognition he truly deserves.

In truth, despite our best efforts, rehearsals leading up to the final concert were not going well. At one point Mike Herriott blew up at the band, trying to get us to play better. Hugh also cracked down one day. It was shocking because he usually leads the band in a jovial, almost goofy way, all the while encouraging us to dig deeper. This particular day, he simply read the riot act. It was what had to be done in order to protect the integrity of the music. It wasn't a fun thing to go through, but it was a serious lesson in true professionalism.



One casualty of that crackdown was that just before the concert, Hugh reassigned the solo that I had been given in a tune of Kenny's called Kayak. I will freely admit that I had been struggling with the changes, but I had been working hard on it and thought I could pull it off in concert. It hurt because I was thinking of it as my offering to Kenny, and it had been taken away. Rationally I know I would have done the same thing had I been in Hugh's shoes. I had not shown in rehearsal that I could handle it. Hugh asked bari sax player Ken Hoffman to take it that evening.

Ken and I had sat beside each other throughout the program and we got along great. The concert went really well and it came time for that solo. As Ken got up to blow, he said to me "This one's for you, buddy." I damn near lost it on the spot. We never had spoken a word about it, but he knew how I was feeling. I considered it an incredible act of friendship. It was an unexpected blessing that I received that year at Banff.

Here's Marianne Trudel, Kenny and Mike Herriott in the green room just before our show.

Just to add to the intensity of the program that year, Andy Sheppard had brought his CBC-FM radio program to Banff, and he prepared his broadcasts all week from one of the practice rooms. Andy hung out with the band a lot and really did his best to relay the special nature of this place and how it affected the participants. He broadcast an interview with me, along with some of the other musicians. He asked me to request a piece to air and I asked for Maria Schneider's Hang Gliding. He said Michelle Gregoire had also requested it. Together, we turned Andy onto Maria, whose music he had not been familiar with.

CBC also recorded some of the Kenny Wheeler conert, for broadcast on After Hours. We were expecting that an excerpt of no more than two minutes would be broadcast, with the music being background to Andy's voiceover. That way it was possible to get around musicians union regulations and we wouldn't get paid. No releases were signed as a result.

The shit hit the fan big time the following week when all 15 minutes of our performance of Gentle Piece was broadcast on national radio. A couple of weeks worth of increasingly angry open e-mails between band members and the CBC ensued. Cousin Jen let especially them have it with both barrels - I made a mental note never to piss her off, even if she was family. Eventually we all got properly paid for the performance, not a particularly great sum. I was happy to get anything - this was one of the tunes that was fairly delicately arranged, so I sat out. Two second tenor saxes would have upset the balance. Technically, I was part of the performance as I was onstage, but I never played a note. I played every tune that night except this particular one. This is the first time I've come clean about this. The CBC cops will probably kick my door down some night and shake me down for the few bucks I got.

The producers of the show claimed it was all an innocent misunderstanding, but I personally have the totally unsubstantiated belief that it was done on purpose. It was a very important concert in the sense that given Kenny's poor health, it could well have been that last time he performed a complete concert of his large ensemble compositions on Canadian soil. We all certainly felt that was a possiblity and there was a slight melancholy feeling in the air as a result.

Happily I saw Kenny perform last month in Vancouver with Hugh, Cam Ryga and the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, doing the premiere of Hugh's Primary Colours. Kenny's health was better but he was noticeably older and had slowed down a step or two. He autographed my copy of the Banff recording of that fateful evening.



The other thing that came out of that was a musical relationship between Paul Rucker, Marianne Trudel and myself. We've played in various combinations together in the ensuing two years. Every time has been very special and fabulous music has been created. I am part of the Paul Rucker Large Ensemble, an orchestra he formed as soon as he got back from Banff. I have watched him model some of Hugh's leadership style. The Ensemble had an immediate impact in Seattle and has helped Paul win a number of awards and vaulted his career to great levels.

Shameless plug: Paul, Marianne, Clyde Reed, Carol Sawyer and I will be playing at the Cellar in Vancouver on May 29th. This lineup was a featured group at last year's Northwest Free Jazz Festival in Seattle, and was simply one of the best gigs I have ever been part of. I do expect lightning to strike again at the Cellar.

Hugh had encouraged me to go to Banff that year to meet Paul. I hate it when he's so right.

Expectations

I'm in a black mood today. Things are not flowing as I had planned. I was up too bloody late last night blogging and now I am sleep deprived. Perfect setup for my day and my 1067 gig tonight.

The sole bright light of the day so far was dropping off Kate Hammett-Vaughan's belated birthday present. I got a set of 6 Kate Smith lp's - eBay, baby! Our Kate is married to Guy Smith, so the connection goes without saying. Three of the lp's feature the same photo of Kate Smith, with red hair and a black dress - too perfect. My favourite album is one of those three - The Great Kate, where she belts out jazz standards. Kate and I have known each other for 30 years and I love her to pieces. She is an inspiration for me to this day, but she still hasn't hired me for her band, the bag.

I expected to have a warm and fuzzy Banff send-off lesson with Stan Karp today. One of his true gifts is the intuitive ability to zoom in on the really serious stuff, usually the stuff that you haven't really worked out between lessons. Ask any of his students - sometimes he'll zero in before you play your first note.

First we discussed the Hard Rubber Orchestra show last Saturday night. He is a huge admirer of Phil Dwyer's playing. He hadn't read the Sun review, and I told him how I felt about the show and that I may have stirred some shit up on the jazz forum. His comments were directed at reviewers in general, but obviously meant to include me too. "People have to take the stick out of their asses", is the gentle way he put it. He enjoyed the Cdn Idol bit, saw it as a laugh between the heavy pieces. "Who's got the right to tell artists they can't have some fun during a performance?" He's right, as usual. Isn't that exactly what I wrote about in my previous post, having some fun onstage? I went to the HRO show with the expectation to have my world rocked, and just having it shaken wasn't good enough for me. I've got to lighten up.

Time to play. I was expecting that he was going to share one of his unique insights, something that would easily open up the world of Afro-Cuban music, but he just zeroed in on the very fundamental things that we have been covering since the start of the year. I didn't have them down cold and he worked me over as a result.

The message was pretty loud and clear - I had better get my basics down and really focus on the music. And really that's what it's all going to be about for the next two weeks, not hanging out with some old and new friends, not the jokes, nothing else but the music.

I had been expecting to be over and done with our financial restructuring well before I left for Banff. At the very least our mortage renewal, where we're taking out some equity to retire our other debts, was supposed to be complete today and I was planning on picking a nice fat cheque this afternoon. I called our notary today only to be informed the soonest it can happen is next Wednesday. This process has literally been dragging on for months and I am sick to death of it. The last thing I wanted was to have this on the back of my mind for the next two weeks.

I expected to have this blog up to date by now. I still want to write about my last time up at Banff in 2004, but that's just going to have to wait.

I've set myself a half-hour limit writing this thing today and time's up.