Con Works

The listening session on Monday evening convinced us that we indeed have something good with the ion Zoo recording from the Cellar. Listening to it on Lisa Miller's home stereo was helpful. The group sound was not as together as it sounded on Chris's studio monitors or in my car, which has a nice stereo system. I have yet to give it a listen at home where we have a decent stereo, or at Clyde's, who has a great system. The challenge is to get a mix that sounds good on all systems.

We seem to be inclined towards releasing it as a cd, but this is not a process to rush. One thing for sure is that we want to perform more with Lisa. We've got a couple of more dates already booked for coming months where there's a nice piano, so the opportunity will be there.

I visited Raymon Torchinsky yesterday to pick up some more recordings from subsequent Cellar gigs. He is a big booster of ion Zoo, so that is encouraging.

I'm writing this from a cafe in Seattle near where I'll be playing tonight. What can I say - either Homeland Security has totally failed or free jazz musicians are not yet on the watch list. I guess they are too busy listening in on America's phone conversations.

I think it's such a crock that it's not permitted to have a free flow of artists over the border. Certainly in the musical circles that I inhabit, it's not like there is a massive amount of money being sucked out of the Vancouver music scene by visiting Seattle musicians, or vice versa. There's a negligible amount of money involved at all. For my case, it has averaged out to gas money, perhaps covering accomodations occasionally. It's great that I have friends here where I can crash on a relatively comfortable bed for the night. But really, if I was into creative music for the money, then my motivation would be dead wrong from the get-go.

I come down here to play with Paul whenever possible because we've always created great music together. I figure we've played about a dozen gigs together in various configurations since we've first met and they've always been musically satisfying. He's a great player and a fine person, just the sort of musician that I prefer to spend my time with. Besides, my daughter loves him, and that is the litmus test. Her radar is way better than mine.

Tonight's show is with the Paul Rucker Large Ensemble, a group that he created two years ago directly out his experience at Banff. Driving down today, I listened to the cd of the initial concert we played at Earshot, the one that got so much acclaim. The opening tune in particular absolutely kicks ass, and the music is strong throughout.

We are back at Consolidated Works tonight to reprise that show. The event that brought this show about is rather unfortunate as it is being staged to mark Con Works' closing. I don't know the circumstances at this point, but I would bet that money is at the core. This place is about 30,000 square feet and it's in the Westlake area, fairly close to the Space Needle. It has been a multi-media artists' space with facilities for theatre, film, large scale installation art, music and a pretty cool lounge. I've been envious of not having such a great space in Vancouver, but now it's coming to an end. Judging from the fairly virulent anti-Republican material I seen there, it's a safe bet these guys haven't been getting a cent from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Time to get to the soundcheck...

I'm now finishing this post off back home in Vancouver.

The show went fairly well. Paul has often gotten funding from the City of Seattle to produce the Large Ensemble Concerts. But in this case, he was really doing it to honour Consolidated Works, and it was a door gig. Half of the people from the original show performed, about a dozen. The entire evening was improvised, rather than playing Paul's compositions and the first set went fairly well. Fairly early on in the second set, Paul starting having some fun and a general goofiness permeated the set, as evidenced by a deconstruction of Row Row Row Your Boat. The audience enjoyed it - perhaps it was just refreshing for them to see some avante-garde musicians not taking themselves too seriously onstage. At one point, the seriously talented guitarist Bill Horist struck a rock god guitar pose, placing his foot on the middle of my back for maximum effect. It was that sort of night. To be honest, it wasn't my favourite set that I've played with this band, nevertheless it was fun.

Best of all for me, I had the pleasure of playing with all of these guys 3 or sometimes 4 times now, and they're all great people. I'm sure more musical connections will evolve out of this. And they all want to come up to play in Vancouver, quite envious of the scene we have up here. And here I am thinking that Seattle is pretty great. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the world's longest undefended border, undefended at least for now.

I hit the road for home at midnight and ran nonstop to the border, then home for 2:15 am. By not taking any pee breaks, I was sufficiently uncomfortable to stay awake for the drive, but just barely. Then of course, I couldn't get to sleep at home.

So this morning was a bit rough, and it stayed that way for the day. By the end of of the afternoon, I had a short temper and just wanted to get the evening's gig over and done with. I arrived at the restaurant with instruments and PA system, but no charts. I've been playing Wanda's tunes enough by this point, so I did quite well from memory, aided by the odd peek at the bass book. I had been feeling fairly comfortable with the music lately and I know I should just ditch the charts. They're a bit of a crutch, but I really have a poor memory for chord changes.

I have a great wealth of arcane trivia that I can call up but something that really matters, like chord changes, elude me. What can I say - I'm lame.

On the whole, it ended up being a pretty good gig. The place was quite full of people and they really liked our performance.

So here I am pecking away at a keyboard rather than hitting the sack. Lame!

Killer baris

There was an open Monday night in the Cellar schedule and Coat Cooke asked me if I wanted to put something together for July 10th. Ken Hoffman, my roommate from Banff, was planning to be in town. My original idea was to get trombonist Robin Jessome over from Victoria and we could revisit the ad hoc trio that did the surround sound recording. However, Robin and his wife Natalie are vacationing back home in Nova Scotia for the summer, so I called Chad Makela so as to have a three baritone sax group, with doubles on bass clarinet.

I also decided to work out some structures for each of the improvisations, particularly for the sake of Ken who's a great player, but not really experienced with free improv. I knew Chad would like it that way, too.

We set a rehearsal for the day previous to the gig and I brought about a dozen sketches of what I wanted to do. Ken and Chad hit it off immediately and the rehearsal went well, punctuated by honking and howling of Italian soccer fans celebrating the World Cup victory. I made a quick executive decision to forget about the bass clarinets. Ken hadn't brought his from Edmonton, so rather than search around for one to borrow, I thought we should just simplify.

The following night we showed up at the Cellar, and much to my chagrin, Raymon Torchinsky had brought his own bass clarinet for Ken to play. Unfortunately Chad and I hadn't brought ours. Raymon has been a great supporter of the series on behalf of the Cellar and has recorded most of the Monday night shows so far.

The gig was very lightly attended, the smallest crowd that I've played to there, but it was just 8 days since the jazz festival (burnout still a factor) and a lovely summer evening. That's pretty well impossible to compete against in this city.

Nevertheless, I thought the music went really well on the night. For the most part, my structured improvisations worked out. Chad and Ken and I had fun, and the audience enjoyed it. We each have our on disctinctive style on bari, and they complimented each other. Chad thinks that with some steady rehearsal, a really nice group could grow out of this, and I agree.

During the second set, Coat joined us for a couple of numbers, and that was really a blast. I'd asked Chris Kelly and Shane Krause to come by, but they couldn't. Six baris would have killed. Too bad Danny Kane isn't into this sort of thing any more - seven baris at once would probably have broken some sort of municipal bylaw.

Here's a shot of the four of us. I'll be picking up the rough mix from Raymon this coming week, so I'm very hopeful that the recording sounds as good as I expect it to be. My personal feeling is that some really fine music has been created during the Monday night run starting last year with the long engagement of the Coat Cooke Trio. Raymon has learned the house recording system and worked hard to get good raw recordings, then do rough mixes. Time may well prove that this has been a very important series of gigs, and to document it as well as he has is a real plus. I think there could be a number of great live cds coming out of this. There should be some distribution for them.

In the past week, we just finished our initial mixdown of the ion Zoo gig in February with Lisa Miller on piano. We did the mix at Chris Gestrin's place and were very happy with the sound on the night. Our next step is to have a group listening session and figure out just what we are going to do with it. This is one that may be releaseable as a cd. It's certainly good enough for festival submissions for the coming year.

Also on my calendar this week is a jaunt down to Seattle to play in the Paul Rucker Large Ensemble. Any time I get the call from Paul, I'm there.

Jazz Festival


This year was different for me as far as performing. Last year, between club gigs and VCMI, I had five festival gigs, and this year was just one, but a nice one. The Wanda Nowicki Group got a booking from CJBS to play at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Garden Stage on the second night of the festival.

It turned out to be a really nice venue and a fine performance. I hadn't been to the suspension bridge for at least 20 years and it was a chintzy tourist trap. They've done a lot of work there and now a really nice tourist trap. And the stage area was quite lovely. I had concerns that there would be no audience, but we ended up having a full house. I can now appreciate why this has been a perrennial festival venue.

We were booked as a quintet, and very happy to have Tom Foster play drums again with us, as he did in the studio. We may have benefitted from a rehearsal, but it went very well indeed and was enthusiastically received. Prior to the gig Wanda asked if we should bring 20 cds to the gig and I laughed and said we have never sold that many. I got to eat my words - we sold out on the first break and could have easily sold 20.

Tom is such a great musician to play with, we felt really solid with the time. Mark could ease up on bass with a great drummer beside him and his playing was much more fluid. Chris really bore down and we could see him concentrating on his playing. He's usually like a magpie - shiny things distract him easily. Wanda did great job fronting the band and singing as well as ever. The tunes flowed nicely from one to another. I was happy with my playing, though felt I could have been more relaxed.

We had a sound guy that I worked with before at Cap College and Lloyd did a fine job for us, a real professional, which was nice for me. I'm the default sound guy at our regular gigs.

So it really was one of our best gigs, which is satisfying, We've been playing a lot and it shows now. Tom added a lot of punch - it's a shame that we really don't have very many places where we could afford to pay (or even have room for) him. It will be a treat a few times each year when we can do it. I particularly liked how we did Waters of March, a fabulous Jobim song, a tune that took us a very long time to work up. I play percussion for the majority of the piece, except for a short instrumental section in the middle, then a longer solo to finish the piece. I told Tom that I would play pandeiro for most of the piece and he immediately played a drum pattern that was closer in style to a pandeiro than a standard bossa sort of thing. It really gave the tune a much more Brazilian feel in my opinion, and so it really worked well.

That was our official gig in the festival and I think we did it justice. I'd be very pleased to get the gig there again in future years.

I made use of my artist's pass right away. On the opening night of the festival, I saw Andy Bey perform. He's a very accomplished singer with a unique style. I particularly dug his arrangements.

My one regret was that on the night of our gig, I had to miss most of the NOW Orchestra show at the Cultch. I caught the end of it and it went quite well, particularly a new piece of Coat's called the Westside Stomp. It has a very strong political message, very anti-Iraq war, and that naturally played well at the Cultch.

Sunday afternoon I went to Ironworks, where the VCMI performance was being held. Having been a part of the program last year, it was very interesting to be on the audience side of things this time. All in all it was a fairly interesting show, and I got to hang a little bit with Marilyn Crispell, Mats Gustaffson and Nicole Mitchell. I am working to arrange a VCMI night at the Cellar during the fall Jazz Projections series, and this show convinced me that this year's participants would do a fine job.

Then I was off to Gastown, actually Victory Square to see Ann Schaeffer's group perform. It was the only unpleasant experience I had during the festival, and nothing to do with the musicians. The sound man was totally useless and ruined the gig in my opinion. Ann is a fine singer and guitarist, but this meatball had her acoustic guitar louder than the rest of the band combined. Her vocals were often inaudible. Onstage, drummer Kelby McNayr later told me they couldn't hear Ann's guitar in the monitors, and that's what he and the bassist needed to hear in order to pick up on her intricate finger picking patterns. Instead of applause for the first few numbers, the audience kept yelling out to fix the sound. After a half a set with no sound relief in sight, I had to leave. I just couldn't stand it any more. It was very out of keeping for this jazz festival.

I won't bore you with my gig-by-gig experience at the festival. In the end, I reflected on my trends in gig choices. I saw a lot of singers, particularly liking Jeanette Lindstrom enough to go to two of her gigs. She has a great voice and is a fine composer. I really dug her trumpeter Staffan Svensson - like JP Carter, an anti-trumpeter. He did none of that macho brass thing and really said a lot more by playing a lot less. Ditto for Russ Johnson, who was part of Michael Bates' great show at the CBC studio. I didn't see any sax players who rocked my world, free or straight-up, though I was unable to see any of Mats Gustaffson's appearances (I heard mixed reviews on him, but I've seen him before and like him), and I didn't go to see Paquito d'Rivera, who was reportedly fantastic. But this wasn't a "sax festival" this year. I don't know if any one instrument was more prominent this time round.

I caught a lot at Granville Island, and the final weekend at David Lam Park and the Roundhouse. I am a big fan of the High School Intensive and Nicole Miller did a standout job with them. The whole concept of taking an all-star high school band and having them play a combination of classic repertoire and some new music like graphic scores is a winner with me. It's usually the first introduction of free improv techniques to these kids and it opens a whole world up for some of them. And I love to hear some of these kick-ass young players.

I also liked Ache Brasil's show to finish off Saturday night at David Lam Park. I must admit I have some bias since my daughter has recently started studying capoeira at their studio, but these guys put on one hell of a high-energy show. I am also partial to Brazilian music as evidenced by my attempts to play pandeiro.

By Sunday night, I was dragging my sorry ass around, and as much as I hated to miss Alita's festival closing set at the Roundhouse, I had a birthday party to attend - my own. Even then, as I drove someone home to the West End after the party, I couldn't resist popping in to O'Doull's. But by midnight, just as Mike Allen was taking the stage, I had to bail.

The other thing I did at this festival, which was a first for me, was to go out to some of the late-night jam sessions. Cem Zafir organized the Avant-Jam sessions at Rime, which got moved to the pub at the WISE Hall. The initial Sunday night one was cancelled altogether because the pub wasn't open late Sunday nights. Of course, that was the first one I tried to attend. Then on Tuesday night I went to the one hosted by Ron Samworth - the leader of the final gig of the night at Rime hosted the following jam session. Only three musicians showed up that night, Ron, drummer Roger Baird and myself. So we got to play as a trio for the whole session. It was a lot of fun.

I went again on Thursday and Friday. Thursday night there were a lot of enthusiastic but inexperienced improvisors, which always translates into nonstop noodling on the night. Not my favourite night. Friday was hosted by trumpeter Dennis Gonzales from Austin TX, and he is an old hand at this sort of thing. He kept it organized and set parameters for each jam. This was a lot of fun too and afterwards I went out to eat with Cem, Dennis and guitarist Greg Prickett. I really like what Dennis does and I hope I have a chance to play with him in future.

These jam nights cost me dearly in sleep, getting in at 3 or 4 in the morning, but they were worth it. I certainly had the glazed-over look of a hardcore festival goer by that last night. All in all, another fine jazz festival. Too bad the T-shirts sucked. What was with that artwork???

So on reflection, what appealed to me most this year were the performances that had some emotional impact on me. I did go to see a lot more singers than ususal, which was telling. Again, I am seeing the effects of my time at Banff. Sheer technique bores me. It's what a performer says with it that counts.

Song Room

Here's a shot of Alita and Stew mugging for the camera at rehearsal. It took a bit of work to get to this point.

For those of you who haven't hung on my every word since May, the Song Room is a series of in-home concerts that have been produced by David Pay, Tom Cone and Karen Matthews. They have taken place in Tom and Karen's lovely home near Nat Bailey Stadium. They decided to start this series in order to have a vehicle for the creation of original works, with the aim of expanding the Canadian library of songs. To this end, they have set an ingenious set of restrictions on the submissions. They must be an original work, with lyrics by a living Canadian writer, no more than three performers, no more than five minutes long, and with a maximum of one electric instrument. Furthermore, the songs must be based upon a preset thematic idea, one that is created at a meeting of the organizers and participating artists.

The house is usually packed to the rafters on performance night with a paying audience consisting of a broad base of people from the music, theatre, visual arts and writing community, as well as professionals and general lovers of cool events. The take at the door is evenly split between all of the performers, so they are reasonably rewarded for a five-minute performance. Plus the audience is requested to bring either a sweet or savoury food item, so the dining room and kitchen is piled with food. The audience is very supportive and the whole evening becomes quite a happening.

I played my first song room, #3 in the series last year, with ion Zoo. Carol, Clyde and I did an improvisation based upon a great text by Vernon writer John Lent. It went well, and afterwards I was invited to present a song of my own. Song room 4 was already filled up, so I agreed to participate in #5.

Stew Brinton and I had successfully collaborated on a couple of things in the past, my fave being a staging of a Godzilla comic that he and artist/drummer Gary Wildeman had created. It was a Godzilla meets Beach Blanket Bingo sort of affair, and I wrote the score for a large improvising ensemble: string quartet, brass quartet, sax section, surf rhythm section and a greek chorus of voices. It was pretty zany, and deserves to be remounted in future.

Going into Banff, I had wanted to created a group that would give a performance with a lot of emotional clout, and coming out of Banff, I really knew that that was my top priority. I had decided on the spot at song room #3 that I wanted to do a piece with two percussionists and voice. I wanted a mallet player with sufficient chops to carry the harmonic aspect of the piece, while I coloured the music with my rack of various bronze percussion instruments. And I wanted to have a singer who could deliver the full impact of Stew's lyrics, and be a new voice for song room listeners. I had Alita Dupray in mind from the start, and also Dominique Brunchmann on marimba, so I was thrilled when they agreed to be part of it.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I'm a big believer in the good omens found in fortuitous coincidences. Simply put, I'm a bit superstitious. I look for good signs and the first one of these was when I learned that Dominique would be in Banff at the same time as me, but for a totally different event. We got together for a couple of hours in the percussion room there and both got totally jazzed up on the sound of the beautiful marimbas there. I got a lot of good ideas from that session, and kept a marimba or two in my practise studio for the whole time. I worked out a couple of my key motifs on the marimba, and also wrote a lot of mallet parts for my jazz orchestra piece so I could get more comfortable with writing for this instrument. Dominique was also able to arrange the loan of a big concert marimba for the gig from one of the Burnaby schools where she teaches. We were off to the races.

But I didn't finish the song in Banff as I had hoped. The whole series of events around Chucho overtook everything else, but the message gleaned from that was an absolute key in the creation of the song. Without a strong emotional core, with delivery straight from the heart, I had nothing. This was definitely uncharted territory for me.

Stew wrote some brilliant lyrics, and their form totally changed my original musical ideas. I realized that I had to write music that would be in character with the doomed people that he wrote about. His inspiration was a news item about two skeletons found in a New Orleans attic six months after Hurrican Katrina. DNA testing show that this was a woman and her granddaughter who drowned in the attic in each others' arms. Stew beautifully captured what their final time together may have been like. I needed to create something to deal with my own feelings about the national tragedy and disgrace that happened there. I have been thankful for John Doheny's missives that have kept readers of the Vancouverjazz.com website mindful of the continuing struggle down in New Orleans.

So Stew and I were on the same page from the start. Stew worked obsessively on his writing, sending draft after final draft, but surprisingly, in early May, he said he was done and had written all that could be written. And I agreed. Normally he'll continue to revise things until the last possible minute.

I came back to Vancouver with an incomplete composition and a very full schedule. The song room project hung over my head until about 10 days before the performance, when I finally was able to finish it. Then I had to deal with the logists of setting up rehearsals and coordinating things with Dave and Tom. One of their requirements was that all performers have a dress rehearsal at Tom's home in the days prior to the performance. They offer their input (very well-considered and appreciated on my part) and then they schedule the songs based upon how they think the program will best flow.

I'm not going to get into the gory details, but I was pretty well run ragged in the week leading up to the performance. I had vowed to do whatever it took to make the performance work out. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about how to pull it off. It also involved a ton of driving all over Vancouver and Burnaby in seemingly endless rush-hour traffic, as I was the only one of the four of us with a car, but in the end I was sure we had something pretty good to present.

One of my biggest logistical hurdles involved a significant change in instrumentation, one of the things that I had at the core of my concept. We realized that a concert marimba, about 7 feet long and 3 feet wide, would simply be too big for the tiny performance space, and couldn't even fit through the front door of Tom and Karen's house. Plus it's a very delicate and expensive instrument and would require a van to transport. In that last week, Dominique and I decided to go with a vibraphone, much more compact, but I feared its metallic sound would lack the sensual woodiness of a marimba and maybe not mesh with Alita's voice as well. It turned out to be another portentious choice.

The song room was being held on June 17th, a Saturday. I had our first rehearsal set up for Thursday, dress rehearsal at Tom's for Friday, and then I did a one-man sound check Saturday afternoon.

The Thursday rehearsal went well. It took some time for me to convey my concept of the piece, even though I had it fully scored out and with individual parts. It turned out that I pitched it too low for Alita to do a lot with it. Dominique just worked it through ascending keys until we found something that sat just right. We got it to a reasonable state after a couple of hours and then we all relaxed, as evidenced by the photo above.

That night I took my percussion rack over to Tom's to set up in advance of the dress rehearsal. Some other groups were doing their thing. One of the best things about the song room is that these guys really make us all feel valued about what we are doing, a nice change from the usual gig routine. They are very accomodating and encouraging, yet professional, coming from the theatre background.

It was then that another one of those coincidences popped up. Tom himself had written the lyrics for a piece of his conception, being performed on Saturday by composer Ben Wilson on drums and one of my favourite singers, Vivianne Houle. It concerned a conversation between a husband and wife (represented by drums and voice) of a guy whose insane wife locked him in an attic to die. Tom nearly flipped when I told him our piece was also about dying in an attic. Our piece had some other thematic connections to a number of the other pieces. The evening's theme was "absence" and quite a number of songs, ours included, had some religious references. Even the hiphop piece I heard rehearsed had a connection as they referred to the Golden Mean in the opening lines.

The Golden Mean (or Golden Ratio) is another way of expressing the Fibonnacci sequence, so near and dear to Hugh Fraser's heart. I had bought a piece of sheet brass to use as a thunder sheet specifically for this gig. As a nod to Hugh, I had it cut to precisely the Golden Ratio. It has an incredible sound, whether or not Fibonnacci had anything to do with it.

I took all of these coincidences as good signs and had faith that the gig would go well. While bringing Alita, Dominique and the vibes to the dress rehearsal, I told them about the attic connection. Dominique told us that the very vibraphone we were using had been found in an attic. THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES!

Tom and Dave were very pleased with the piece in dress rehearsal. Alita and Dominique had given it a lot of thought overnight and it sounded pretty good on Friday. By this time I was very confident that we hadn't heard anything yet. Also the vibes sounded great, so I was happy to let go of the marimba concept.

On Saturday night, we were scheduled to start the second set, which gave us lots of setup time. Tom and Dave like to keep things moving with minimal breaks between songs. With the thunder sheet, my percussion rack grew to about 7 feet wide and over 6 feet high. It was a fairly eye-catching visual.

The place was overflowing with people, down the front steps. Stew introduced the piece with a short speech that explained the song and set the tone perfectly. As we started the tune, I could hear Alita do what she does best, which was to take a song to a whole new level in performance. Dominique and I fed off that and we gave a performance that exceeded my wildest expectations. There was a long pause after we finished, and then great applause. Alita and Dominique were facing the audience throughout and they saw some people crying. We got continuous compliments on it throughout the evening. Tom and Dave were absolutely knocked out with it and they continued to get great feedback about it for days afterward.

There were a few things that could have gone smoother, like me not dropping my sticks twice while changing them and worst of all, some brain-dead twit in the very front row left her cel phone on and of course it rang in the middle of the piece. If looks could maim, she would be spending her remaining days in a basket. Probably she's a very nice person, blah blah blah, but I have little patience for that sort of thing any more.

I had the great satisfaction of having pulled this project together, creating a vision for it, pulling just the right people together for it, and then having it exceed expectations. It would have been nothing without all of the contributions from Stew, Dominique and Alita. I am indebted to them for their efforts.

Most importantly for me, I felt that I was able to take the fundamental message from my Banff experience and create some music that was from an emotional part of my being and have it performed with huge heart. It now remains to be seen if the recording done that evening captured what we felt. Hopefully I will be able to continue down this path with my music.

With the Song Room in the books, the Jazz Festival was just a week away.

Box set

This is Carl Anderson leading the orchestra during the recording of his composition during our amazing day in the recording studio at Banff. The session went about 11 hours, we did 2 takes of each piece by 10 different composers in the band. And the band just got better and better as the day went on. By the final take, we were in overdrive. Perhaps it had a lot with Chucho Valdes about to take the reins the following day. Carl's piece was one of my favourites - he's definitely a guy to watch out for here in town.

In June I got a package of 10 cds documenting our various concerts and recording sessions. A couple of them, including half of the studio recording (the morning session with Carl's and Marianne's pieces) were poorly duplicated and unplayable. I need to get Technical Services to send me a good copy.

There was some great music, and really nice recordings there and some that were less so. The one playable disc I got of the marathon day in the studio sounded really good. I was relatively pleased with the way my piece came out, although I now question my decision to move the piece along through the various cells so quickly. Some of the sections could have been left to develop more.

Some of the live concert recordings had uneven miking, so that certain soloists were never loud enough in the mix. There is a simple reason for this. The full orchestra had 25 members, sometimes more. There simply were not enough channels to indivdually mic everyone. Most saxes had to share 1 mic between each 2 players, and some of the studio mikes used were very directional, so one guy sounded fine, but the other guy didn't when it came time to solo. Lead tenor Mike Ruby and I both had this problem in both of the big concerts. We consistently were way too low in the mix when we soloed. I was playing on mic, but it was pointed at the guy beside me. Live and learn. I was only mildly disappointed. Setup time was at a premium and we knew going in that some compromises would have to made. Trumpets and trombones also had some uneven solo micing, but hell, everyone in the band got at least one solo. Recording an orchestra of that size live in concert is one hell of an undertaking.

I would liked to have had better recording quality for myself on the Love Supreme Suite and the final performance of Mambo Influenciado, with Chucho, but it was what it was. These are documentation recordings, not commercial releases.

In the end, I liked the studio recordings, the three "simple" pieces that Chucho shared with us, and a set at The Club of music written by Bunny Stewart. I didn't care for much of my own playing. Especially in the concert recordings, I sounded like I was blowing my brains out to compensate for the lack of adequate micing. No big deal - in previous years I would have gotten worked up over it, but now it's time to move on.

Jumping ahead to the present, today I spent several hours at Chris Gestrin's house working on a mixdown of a recording made back in February at the Cellar. It was a full evening of ion Zoo - Clyde Reed on bass, vocalist Carol Sawyer and myself on saxes, bass clarinet and a wall of percussion, along with guest Lisa Miller on piano. Now here was a recording where everyone was nicely miced and I never had to overblow. This session came out really well and we're quite stoked about it.

Then when I got home, I got a message that the recording of the Song Room show would be available at the end of the month - that's one I'm dying to hear.

Ass. gigs

I've decided to put up a few selected images from Banff with each posting. Here is a shot from a performance at The Club, with part of a wind octet doing a piece by Gunhild Seim from Norway. She was another one of the composers in our residency and she wrote some lovely pieces, particularly this octet. Pictured from l to r are yours truly, Ken Hoffman and Audrey Ochoa both of Edmonton, tenor phenom Mike Ruby from Toronto and the pride of Pitt Meadows, talented composer and trumpeter Carl Anderson.

I've played a number of assorted gigs since I returned to Vancouver in May that held some significance for me.

The first was with the Wanda Nowicki group at Rime, the first time we played there. I had some trepidation as to whether or not this was a suitable venue for the group. We we sufficiently ironically hip? Worldbeat melange? Whatever, in the end, we were a good fit for the room. We had a good crowd and many stayed to listen for the whole evening. It's always a bit hit and miss when I've played there - you never know what sort of audience you may get. I've also got a theory that when the people in the back of the room see a drum kit onstage, that is permission for them to talk loudly all night.

It was my first AD (after discovery?) gig with the group and they all heard something different in my playing. That was really good for me, but what I really dug about the gig was a couple of times when we all internalized the time as a group. That's something that we hadn't done before and something that I've been on them about, since the time is not always super-solid with these guys. It's something that I admire in groups like Kate Hammett-Vaughan's or Mike Allen's. Anyways we had a taste of it that night and I want more. Part of it may have been the setup of the stage at Rime which makes it much more like a performance than backround wallpaper at other restaurants we play. With Cem's departure from the management team there, I hope we can get back there soon. Emir certainly liked this group and ion Zoo as well.

Speaking of ion Zoo, the following Monday was a set at the Cellar with an expanded version of that group. With the addition of Marianne Trudel and Seattle cellist Paul Rucker, we go by the name of Fuzzy Logic. This group only gets to play once or twice a year and we had an instant chemistry from the first time we got together for a gig in Seattle. Paul arrived in town the day of the gig and we rehearsed at Clyde's place. Sure enough, the magic was there from the first notes we played. This is the only group where I expect brilliance all the time, and the rehearsal only bore out this belief.

We were the second half of the double bill at the Cellar that night. There was quite a long changeover between the two groups and Raymon Torchinsky was pulling out all the stops to get the recording gear set up as quickly as possible, but there were inevitable glitches to work out. We eventually sort of slid from an extended soundcheck into our set. Much to our dismay, for the first time, that spark wasn't there right off the get-go. We all tried ways of pushing it along to reach our customary zone, but it took a long time to gel. It got progressively better and in my opinion, the last piece was breathtaking, with all five of us twisting and turning together through an improvised song. Afterwards, musicians in the audience asked if the piece was written. It wasn't. The concept of spontaneous group composition is very exciting for me and when it happens for me as a performer or a listener, I think it is one of greatest aspects of improvised music.

Listening to the recording later on, the whole set sounded relatively good, getting better as it went along. But each of us had the same immediate reaction after the gig was done, that for the first time ever we had failed to achieve our group potential. In other words, we weren't brilliant right off the mark.

This all led to some very interesting and productive discussions amongst us and with other improvising musicians. That group mindset, the "zone", whatever you may call it is a very elusive thing to capture. We were very fortunate to have had that chemistry from the start, but it turned out we were quite unprepared as a group as far as having ways to deal with the music if things weren't there from the start. Some of us over-played, some under-played, but we didn't seem to have the trust in ourselves just to ease up and let it happen. As I say, you can't push a chain.

In the end, after listening to the recording, yes it was a good gig. But the real value in it was the learning we gleaned from figuring out why we didn't gel immediately and how we can recover onstage if things aren't really working. I am just honoured to be part of a group where we can improvise at such a high level and have such high expectations.

Throughout this whole time, there was bit of a dark cloud hanging over my head. The SongRoom was fast approaching and I had not finished my composition or worked out all of the logistics to pull the performance off. It was time to get it together.

• Back at it
  
  It's been almost two months since my last post.
  
  No that's not a cardboard cutout. Chucho Valdes is really standing beside me. Chucho is a big man - I'm 6'2". And he does have huge mitts, though not as large as I recall Oscar's to be. Those suckers seemed to wrap around my hands twice when I shook hands with him backstage after a gig in Halifax in the late seventies.
  
  I really hadn't intended to write anything more but I've received encouragement from a number of people, particularly Brian Nation, to keep going so I will, but not on a daily basis.
  
  I needed some time to decompress after Banff and really process what happened there, but I didn't have that luxury. Reintegration into regular family life would have been enough, but just to raise the degree of difficulty, I had a deadline for my Song Room composition and a number of important gigs.
  
  Also Marianne Trudel came to Vancouver and used my home as a base of operations for two weeks. Keeping up with her whirlwind lifestyle was like doing another intensive program. She ended up gigging almost every day and made two trips to Vancouver Island for work. She played at The Cellar four times over a period of eight days, an evening at Rime and did a CBC radio recording session with Andre Lachance and Dylan van der Schyff, and made a couple of visits to Tom Keenleyside's studio, amongst other things. A number of people, myself included, have been encouraging her to spend part of every year here, perhaps a two-month stretch once or twice a year. I pulled out the heavy artillery, which was taking her on a walk at Lighthouse Park, something that really turned her crank. A jaunt to the Gulf Islands would probably have sealed the deal.
  
  People who heard me play in the weeks after I returned home heard an immediate change in my playing. There was much more of an emotional element, an urgency, that I was feeling. It's the very thing that I admire most in a player like Bruce Freedman. It was certainly the Big Message that I got from my brief time with Chucho.
  
  So now I measure my time in terms of BC (Before Chucho) and AD (After Discovery, no Devastation, no... I'll have to work on something catchy). Whatever the hell I'm going to end up calling it, this year at Banff marked a turning point in my career as an artist. I had wondered when Hugh had pronounced that hearing Chucho play Giant Steps had changed his life, if it was hyperbole in the heat of the moment, but no, it was simply a statement of fact.
  
  I have performed weekly with Wanda Nowicki since returning home. Especially in doing this sort of straight-up playing, often in a restaurant situation, I realize the challenge to play with a higher emotional urgency. It's an interesting constraint to have, if one is to play within a standard group context, and certainly helps to avoid the trap of overplaying or musical hytrionics, as I may be wont to do. It has to be done in a more subtle way. There is also the trap of falling back into old patterns, or becoming cynical about the gig situation. So this is actually a great vehicle for putting this new approach into practise.
  
  Coat Cooke has often mentioned that his favourite musicians to play with are the guys who play like there there is no tomorrow, like every day may be their last. These guys bring it all to the stage every time they play, and furthermore are thrilled to be playing regardless of the context and show it. They bring an element of joy to everything they do.
  
  As musicians, most of us have talked about this approach to music. Few of us actually model this behaviour. Of the people I know well, perhaps Hugh Fraser exemplifies it best. He brings a certain joy to the stage every time, sometimes a barely contained mania, even on the nights when I have seen him backstage feeling anything but joyous. He models himself on players like Chucho and Slide Hampton, who embody this approach. Of course, they all have seriously heavy chops to back it up.
  
  What I've found is that playing with this approach is unexpectedly liberating. Stan Karp has often said that the sole purpose of musical technique is to better enable the musician to express through his instrument what is in his head and in his heart. I find the more I connect my heart to what I am playing, the easier it is to do. Playing over changes is different, not so hard when I am really saying something.
  
  This is why the regular gigs with Wanda are so great. I get to work on the same songs week after week, aiming to put more into them, but not going overboard. As recently as last Friday, I continue to have small insights as to how to achieve this goal. That night I realized that a person can play a simple egg shaker with emotion and commitment, not just stand there like a lump and keep time. It may not sound any different, but it FEELS different. And I saw how that works in performance, when we got some unexpected and very enthusiastic applause during our third set, particularly after one of Wanda's great ballads. I knew that it felt more passionate onstage, but was nontheless pleased and surprised when the audience acknowleged it.
  
  The other challenge is how to keep the spirit from Banff going. Often these things fade over time, but my goal is to make this a permanent change in my life. I keep a poster with Chucho's picture on my practise room wall. I ordered that great DVD Calle 54 to watch Chucho and his dad Bebo play together. In the DVD performances, I now very clearly see how he combines simple folkloric melodies with staggering virtuosity for the big emotional wallop. And with Wanda's group, I'll now call Chucho's Mambo Influenciado as an instrumental set-opener. I still practise it at home, as part of my daily flute practise, including the great tutti section that Hugh wrote. I have no idea how I played it so fast on flute in Banff!
  
  All of these things serve as small reminders of what I should be focussing on. Though I have said that I'm a changed musician, that is something that I will have to continue to strive for for the rest of my life, hopefully getting a little closer to my heart each time that I play.