Relativity

I've had my head down somewhat since the Kiwanis festival ended, though when I say it ended, that's technically not true. The balance of the festival continues on through April, with the concert band segment starting up on Monday.

I am no fan of concert band music. Never liked it when I played it as a kid, and it hasn't grown on me with the passage of time. Saxophone parts are uniformly dreary, usually doubling another instrument, save for the odd "jazzy" outburst that could only swing if the arranger was hung by the neck from a tree.

I've been told that it's that way in concert band because saxophones get so much of the spotlight in stage band. The only repertoire that I heard and liked in this genre was played by the Pacific Symphonic Wind Ensemble, and arguably a professional outfit of that calibre was playing music that transcended the traditional fare of retooled light classics and Broadway medlies. Not that I could be proven wrong, but I really don't have the inclination to expand my tastes in this particlar direction.

I only harp on this because I feel pressured to continue volunteering a considerable amount of my time for the balance of the Festival. But aside from a few minor shifts of door-tending, I'm sticking to jazz.

Which brings me up to this current weekend, another busy one. Last night was the first evening of the NOW Orchestra/VICO collaboration at The Cultch. I'm working behind the scenes for NOW as the production manager. Essentially my duties are to liase between all of the various aspects of the event - Cultch staff, sound and recording engineers, stage manager, the volunteers at the front of house, etc. Typically Coat did all of this stuff himself, and drove himself to distraction rather than focussing on the music he was supposed to be creating that evening. Ron Samworth did the same in his time as artistic co-director of NOW.

I used to see them running in circles before the show, and often the music would suffer. I got involved as a way for them to concentrate on doing what they were really there to do, to make music.

This is an interesting event as both groups aim to blur boundaries as far a challenging conventions for large ensembles. Concert band this ain't. I believe that VICO comes from a much more staid academic approach, as opposed to NOW's bohemian jazzers. Of course, this is a dumb generalization as they both have highly talented musicians, some of whom have played in both groups. I do see less of an element of risk in VICO's performances, as opposed to some of NOW's more adventuresome outings. This is not lessening one group in favour of the other, just a matter of style. I just happen to like risk.

The initial show went well, a very good thing indeed, given the complexity of some of the compositions and also the tech aspect of micing and recording a raft of exotic instruments in a live concert situation. Other than a bit of persistent feedback from Gord Grdina's oud mic in the first number, things flowed quite nicely. I'm expecting an even better performance tonight.

As soon as the Cultch show ended, I hightailed it over to 1067, where I was playing with the Robin Jessome Creative Ensemble. Robin and I met last year at Banff and we hit it off. He was in the composition program in UVic and his experience at Banff inspired him to set up his own improvising ensemble, exactly as Paul Rucker did two years previously. Last night was the first show and it featured a number of Robin's compositions plus one of my own. He also wanted me to do some conduction.

The members of the group were an even split of Victoria and Vancouver folks, all good musicians, many relative newcomers to improvised music. They were GGG as Dan Savage would put it. In the end I lead at least 4 conductions, and I was quite stretched to make them as varied as possible, without having the benefit of much prior rehearsal. Without that, they weren't familiar with many of the hand signals that could be used, or without much of the necessary group discussion of the processes involved in large ensemble improvisation.

During one of the last conductions, midstream, I had the idea of setting Darren and Jonathan (of the abovementioned cleftpallet) off on a verbal rant. This put them on the spot and they initially stumbled for a moment, then went off on a hilarious tangent. They broke everyone in the room up, especially the band. I just sat down for a few minutes and let them go.

Robin wanted me to top this off with one final conduction. I decided we had to end pretty, so I had everyone play a snippet of a different standard ballad, but only when I pointed at them, sort of a perverted Charles Ives affair. Robin started off with that old Chuck Mangione nugget, another good laugh, but then everybody got on board with the ballad thing and it ended quite nicely indeed.

The evening was very raw and full of risk, given that some of these guys had their free improv deflowering that night. Their musicianship showed through and made for a good performance. I have to say I enjoyed myself very thoroughly. I got to blow my head off in one chart which had a screaming tenor solo from start to finish, something I would never, ever consider doing. And I did a lot of conducting on the night, something that left me buzzing for a couple of hours, at the expense of a good night's sleep. This is something that I certainly want to do more of, be it with this group, or a large ensemble of my own.

It definitely was the most stimulating of my musical experiences of the last few weeks. I was so far from my high school days of concert band drudgery, creating music that the conductors of those groups literally could not have conceived. It certainly would have shocked them to the core. But who am I to say that they could not have been equally as jazzed up about leading their band through some symphonic overture and having a great performance?

It's all relative.