He walked the walk.

I've got only one day to go before I take off and I still have a hell of a lot to do. I've become acutely aware of how much time this I've been sitting in front of my computer working on this blog or sticking my foot in my mouth on the jazz forum. I am surprised how beguiling this blogging is. Perhaps that's one reason for its popularity.

I am not a succinct writer and will endeavour to use many words when only a few will suffice. I also take quite a bit of time rereading before I hit the "Publish Post" button. At least with this blogging system, I can edit or even remove the post days after the fact.

It all adds up to many hours spent at my computer, when I could be doing other things, like practising or packing.

Yet I feel compelled to finish off writing about my previous times at Banff before I go there again. I believe that way I can shorten my daily blogging time, without having to explain something that previously transpired up there.

In 2003, I believe the guest artist was originally slated to be Palle Mikkelborg, who collaborated with Miles on his mid-80's recording of Aura. For whatever reason, he couldn't make it and Rufus Reid got the call.

Everyone knows what a great bassist Rufus is. What is lesser known is that in recent years, he turned his talents and experiences toward composition and was pursuing it with all of his vigour.

Not surprisingly, he approached his writing from a rhythmic and groove-based perspective. I didn't consider his writing style to be particularly radical or ground-breaking, but it certainly was challenging and fun to play.

I introduced myself to Rufus with one of my typical smartass lines that I immediately wished I could have taken back. I told him that the last album I heard him play on started off with a nasal voice saying "One, two, one, two, three, four". Rufus did a bang-on Jamie Aebersold impression. I stood there fearing what sort of first impression I made on him.

For some bizarre reason, I ended up in the lead tenor chair that year. I'm more comfortable in the 2nd tenor or bari chair, but Banff is not about comfort.

It was a joy to watch Rufus put the rhythm section through their paces. It was the section he knew intimately and he worked them partcularly hard. He would explain the tempo and groove to them, then give them one chance to get it right, because that's the way it works in the real world. Rufus has this cool way of telegraphing how he wanted the tune to feel, by the sort of little walk he would take before counting it in. He'd move in time; the funkier the tune, the funkier he would move.

I worked hard to do as good a job as I could in the lead tenor chair. When I messed up key passages, Rufus was hard on me. I particularly remember a section in his arrangement of Round Midnight. He took a bass solo and then at the bridge, I had a lead line that would bring the band back in. Typical of me, in rehearsal, I got really caught up in listening to his wonderful soloing and then I'd muff my part. After the second time it happened, he wasn't too impressed with me. We didn't have a lot of time to rehearse this piece and I swore I would come in the right place in concert.

Come the performance, I was focussed. There was no way I would miss that entry, goddamit and I didn't. The only thing was that without telling the band, Rufus had decided to extend his solo. Most people picked up on it, but I had tunnel vision and came in anyways. I recall that someone in the rhythm section also started in, but I got the stare from him, one that was pretty obvious to the audience. There was another instance in that first set where I was supposed to come in and he cut me off after a couple of notes.

I was pretty pissed off at the break because I felt he was singling me out. But it didn't take me long for me to realize that this wasn't the case. Sometimes it just a simple matter of realizing that in performance the bandleader is always right. I was just being really anal in my rendering of the charts. He was making changes on the fly and I wasn't keeping up to some of them. I was over it by the end of the gig - another lesson learned.

After the gig he was very gracious and he autographed one of his bass books that I swiped from a bassist friend of mine before I left for Banff. I loved returning the book with Rufus' signature in it. At the end of the year, Rufus e-mailed me a New Years greeting, which I really appreciated.

That year, in order to accomodate Rufus' schedule, the guest artist segment came first in the program. Next were a few days of working on the original compositions, followed by Hugh working up repertoire for the final concert.

I made good on my rash offer the previous year to bring a piece of mine up there. With Hugh's blessing, I had written a pretty avante-garde piece with a full colour graphic score. It was modular in nature, with a set introduction and conclusion and four interchangeable modules that comprised the bulk of the piece. Each module was basically a set of rules for the band to follow and three of them had solo passages. Each module was based on a concept that I had developed out of the New Orchestra Workshop improv series, and the overall architecture of the piece was heavily influenced by my brief experience with Barry Guy.

Each module had a different image as part of it, each being a different colour. I had cue cards with each of these images which I used to tell the band which module to move to. The images were photograms that were created by my close friend Mia Weinberg, who had done an extended visual arts residency at Banff the previous year. I'm sticking an excerpt of my score onto this posting.

It was an ambitious piece and I workshopped it with my regular rehearsal big band back in Vancouver. They had rarely played anything much more contemporary than Thad Jones/Mel Lewis charts, and frankly my efforts with them were a pretty dismal failure.

So I was nervous presenting the piece to all of the very fine jazz players in Banff. I didn't know what they would make of it, but they ended up doing a brilliant job of it. Many of the people in the band had never played anything that out, but they all went for it. That's just the way it is at Banff. The orchestra ended up doing a fantastic job of it for our final concert. Hugh asked if I would be willing to donate the original score to the music library at Banff, which I gladly did.

I left the place in a daze, with the realization that I had just become a composer. That was my huge achievement for 2003.

My other achievement that year was on a totally different level. It's a really intense environment up there and musicians have different ways of blowing off steam. Of course a lot of time is spent in the pub and that leads to a lot of crazy stuff.

Every year, the now-legendary stories of what VEJI pulled off in the eighties would be told, probably getting a little better in the retelling every time. I dare not repeat any here.

There were tons of practical jokes being pulled by certain members of our orchestra that year. Things ranged from the ever-popular water in the trumpet joke to the dreaded deadly fart during rehearsal. Yeah, it was sophomoric, but way fun. It started getting a little out of hand between lead altoist Kent Sangster and trumpeter Mike Herriott.

Mike is a brilliant lead player and has chops for days. He's worked damned hard to be that good and he demands a lot of the players around him. I've come to really respect that. He's also capable of being very abrasive, especially if you are not pulling your weight. He's certainly forced me to raise my level of playing.

He and Kent go way back and they were really were going after each other with the jokes. A lot of what they did must be filed in the "What goes on in Banff, stays in Banff" category. Slowly some of the rest of us were getting pulled into their pranks. Naturally, I have to back up my section leader, and besides Mike was asking for it, just for being Mike.

A few days before the final concert, Kent, second altoist Olivia Tischler and I came up with an evil masterplan to get Mike once and for all. We were going to get him in the middle of my piece during the final concert. It was a sign of how far gone we were that I was ready to jeopardize a couple of months work on my first major composition, just to do this prank. I cleared it with Hugh a couple of days prior to the show. He was in in a heartbeat.

Now here is the spoiler. I am not going to describe the joke in detail. What goes on in Banff... The most I will say is that it involved something downloaded off of Mike's website and a bit of Photoshop trickery. In the days before the final concert, Kent and Olivia and I could not look at each other without cracking up.

I will say that in concert the joke went off without a hitch. It pretty well brought the whole orchestra to a stop in the middle of my piece. Kent turned around to take pictures of Mike's reaction, and Hugh can be heard on the concert recording taunting him. Mike was furious and he screeched out some notes on his trumpet, but since my piece was so "out", there was no way he could ruin it. I think I even gestured to him to keep going.

After the show, Mike was livid with me. He demanded that all evidence of the joke be destroyed and that I never circulate copies, ever. I promised to do so and I've kept my word. He swore retribution, and since he may well be reading this blog, that may be coming this year.

Hell, it was worth it. Getting my composition in the library was an honour, but creating the practical joke of the year was the icing on the cake.