Out of the blue

Without the support of my family, particularly my wife Clara, no amount of determination on my part would enable me to take these trips. She has always been incredibly supportive of my musical endeavours. Particularly with Banff, she has always encouraged me to go, even when our finances have been tight. We find a way to make it work with Cassandra's school and activity schedules. It's a wonderful thing to have such support, to be able to go up there without a guilty conscience.

She was the one who immediately asked "Well, what's to think about?" when I got that very first call from Lorae Farrell almost exactly four years ago to this day. Lorae is a longtime friend, former bandmate and the better half of Hugh Fraser (some may argue she's the better 90%). She told me there was a last-minute opening for the bari sax chair at the Banff workshop due to start in a few days. Hugh had remembered me from a workshop he had run the previous fall, just after the two of them had started dating. Lorae said that Maria Schneider was the guest artist and I just had to get my ass up there, and bring all my doubles.

So, with Clara's blessing I basically dropped everything and hopped a plane to Calgary, without a clue as to what I was getting into. Some of my friends had been to Banff in previous years and had spoken well of it. I was aware the program had changed somewhat, but had no details.

I really had no idea who Maria Schneider was, never having listened to any of her cds nor having played any of her charts. I must have seen something about her on television because when we met, I realized I was familiar with her appearance and her habit of breaking into dance when the music was really happening. It was either TV or a prescient dream - late at night the distinction blurs.

I was completely unprepared for those 10 days to totally change my life as a musician.

For the sake of brevity, I will try to limit my recounting of that first time up there, but there were a number of highlights, and there were some cases where a few words casually tossed off had big consequences.

The very first day of the program, Hugh started off with an exercise in communal music making that was passed to him by master African drummer Abraham Adzenyah years earlier at Banff. I had done the basic version of it in Hugh's workshop in Vancouver the previous fall, so I was mildly competent with it. This time, Hugh advanced it several more steps, until almost nobody could do it. Then he told us it was a Ghanaian kid's game. It had the effect of levelling the playing field with all of the participants, got everyone involved and was a hoot. It was all done away from our instruments, then Hugh got us to play and it became an incredible piece of music. It was a brilliant way to get a large group of strangers to gel into a musical ensemble in a couple of hours.

I made some great friends that year. There's a common bond that all of the participants have, a special shared experience that will last for a long time. Among others were Michelle Gregoire, the wonderful Winnipeg pianist; flautist Jeremy Price from London, ON, now Vancouver; trombonist Steve Mynett also from Vancouver; and sax section leader Kent Sangster, a mainstay of the Edmonton scene.

There was a trumpeter from Montreal who freaked me out the first couple of days. The first time we met he walked straight up to me and said "You're Steve Bagnell from Nova Scotia". Uhhh-huuhh... Later that day he asked "You used to play in Track." Yeah.... The next day it was "Your mother's name is Shirley." I was getting a little freaked at this point, and I was wondering if he knew my SIN number and that I was late in filing my taxes. It turns out that he is married to my second cousin and that they were originally from Halifax. He had joined the long running horn band "Track" just after I moved to Vancouver. Bill Mahar is a superb trumpeter and composer, and his wife Jennifer Bell is a killer sax player. They are fixtures in the Montreal jazz scene. They have been coming to Banff for many, many years and I always look forward to playing with them again. Too bad that neither of them can make it this year.

When these sorts of synergistic coincidences happen, I pay attention. I knew the second I arrived at the Banff Centre that it was a special place, but that cinched the deal.

One of my first playing highlights was getting to solo in concert in Hugh's Concerto for Jazz Orchestra. I was very aware that I was following in Ross Taggart's size large footprints in this one. Hugh wanted a solo that would represent the forces of chaos and so it fell to me, I figured, because I'm from Vancouver where all those freaky free players live (now I am one of them). So I went for it, and in the thin air at Banff, my tenor had a huge muscular sound that I just can't get at sea level. At the dress rehearsal, as I walked back to my chair from the solo mike, Hugh told me that was the exact sort of solo he had always wanted for that spot. Ohhhh yeaahhh! That evening in concert, I did even better. The photo that is on this blog is that very solo, with Hugh looking on.

At that point I knew it was going to be very hard to go back to my Saturday morning rehearsal big band in Vancouver.

At lunch one day, came one of those innocuous comments. We were talking about graphic scores. Thanks to Coat Cooke and the annual New Orchestra Workshop series of improv workshops in Vancouver, I had recently had the opportunity to spend a little time with the fabulous bassist and composer Barry Guy, whose graphic scores are things of beauty to look at and stunning to listen to. Hugh said something to the effect of why don't you write something in that vein for us next year, and I said sure, why not. That proved to be another turning point.

Then there was the Maria Schneider experience, but that is best left for another installment.