Fallow

I can't recall having such a slow period for gigs in the last few years. Since joining forces with Wanda Nowicki a couple of years back, we've worked fairly steadily. Adding in ion Zoo and the other ventures that I get involved with, I'm usally as busy as I want to be. Since the Cage concert, though, work has been less plentiful.

With Wanda, we do a lot of restaurants, and in the last few months, many of the places have changed music policies or closed altogether. I know that change is just a fact of the restaurant business. In the past, we've always been able to find new venues, but at present, it's a bit of a challenge. In addition to her voice, one of Wanda's real talents is hustling gigs, so I am sure this is just a temporary situation.

In retrospect I was so busy in September and October that I didn't bother chasing down gigs for November. December is going to be a very busy month, so it all balances out.

So what do I do during the slow times? Nothing surprising here. I never seem to have enough practice time. As opposed to the young lions out there, the Evan Arntzens and Eli Bennetts of this world, I am on the slow track to learning the saxophone. Every day that I play, I feel that I get incrementally better, albeit microscopically. That's just the way it is for me. And Stan Karp will have a lifetime of things for me to work on.

On Sunday evenings, I have been part of a newly-created rehearsal ensemble that is reading through the extensive library of the NOW Orchestra. There is a lot of great music there that doesn't deserve to sit on the shelf. At some point, I will be able to bring out the three large ensemble pieces that I wrote for the Banff orchestra, also a good thing. And I get to play my alto sax, which otherwise sits in the case most of the time.

I have a couple of compositions in the works. Writing music is not something that I do on a regular basis. I need to have specific projects and deadlines. I am excited to have been asked to write something for LSB, an improvising string trio. I've been bouncing conceptual ideas for a graphic score around in my head and now it's time to get them on paper.

I've been doing the NOW workshops at the Western Front, something that I have helped to organize this year. I will be leading the final concert on the fourth of next month as Coat Cooke is off to Ottawa to sit on a Canada Council jury. My second composition in the works is for this concert, using a distillation of ideas gleaned from the workshop series.

The Monday evening series at The Cellar has been excellent. By the end of December, there will have been over 60 groups that will have participated this year. Only a handful of them have not been to my taste. Some have been absolutely outstanding, and this has been evidenced by the steadily growing audience numbers. I've had a small hand in the programming of this series and it's extremely heartening to see new talent appearing with such promise. Cat Toren's set last week was a fine example. I have been photographing most of the evenings for the past couple of months and some of my favourite shots are available for viewing on my page at flickr.com. Or click on the link at vancouverjazz.com. It's in the centre column under the Jazz Gallery heading.

I'm a rank amateur when it comes to photography. I liken it to performing on an instrument that I've never played before - sometimes the results are dubious, but the effort has been enjoyable. I've made a point of giving some prints to the bands and e-mailing all of my shots to the leaders. All of us have had too many gigs that have gone undocumented and later wish that there had been some record, audio or visual, of that time. We have worked at addressing that for the participants in this series.

And finally, there's the annual spate of submissions with their attendant deadlines. It often falls to me to put together the packages for the various groups that I am a part of, and this year I have my annual high hope of avoiding that last-minute panic to prepare and deliver them.