Get Smart, slit wrists and other musical musings

I've been reflecting on the amount of time I've been spending on music-related things - photos, going out to see gigs, working on setting up gigs, composing or arranging, tweaking my instruments, internet time especially vancouverjazz.com, burning my groups' cds and printing covers, doing cd cover artwork, and so on, not to mention blogging. Part of that is just necessary to move ahead as a performer, but I wonder how much is avoidance on my part. I love practicing and don't want to stop once I get in a groove, but getting started every day is a challenge. If I actually spent all of that time seriously practicing, I might be dangerous. OK, maybe menacing. Would you believe devil-may-care?

(I hear rumors of a Get Smart movie in the works - how can they ever replicate the comic genius of Mel Brooks, Buck Henry and Don Adams? And don't get me started on Barbara Feldon!)

Back to my original thoughts, I see this tendency mirrored in my daily battles with my daughter to stick to her piano practice. Maybe it's just payback time.


The Monday evening series at The Cellar is proving yet again that Vancouver is chock full of fine improvisors. Coat Cooke has done a great job of pulling this together and highlighting new groupings and musicians deserving of greater exposure. There could be a whole 'nother series featuring the established groups and musicians. I've cleared my Monday evening slate in order to be there weekly.

<- Clyde Reed, Bill Clark, Coat Cooke and Kenton Loewen at The Cellar on September 25th.

This week's gig by the Coat Cooke Trio was exceptionally good. Though not an unestablished group, Coat certainly deserves the monthly spot for all of his efforts in creating this series. He has lined up a series of guest artists each month and trumpeter Bill Clark was a fine fit. He and Coat and Clyde Reed have had decades of experience together in the NOW Orchestra and the group explored a lot of new and compelling sonic territory that night. The trio's cd on the Cellar Live label is getting fabulous reviews, and a guy like Bill could seamlessly turn this group into a killer quartet.

My contribution is to photograph the groups. Too often there is not enough documentation of one's gigs, and with Raymon Torchinsky recording almost every night, photos are a nice complement. I finally figured out the best combination of lighting levels and camera settings and was quite pleased with my results. I'm quite flattered that Brian Nation saw fit to make one of my shots Pic of the Moment on vancouverjazz.com. Now I just need to get myself set up on something like Flicker to post more of my pictures. As an added bonus for the performers, on some nights I'll bring my photo printer along and give them a shot or two of the gig before they pack up. Polaroids for the 21st century...


On another note, in my last post, I made reference to some of the indifferent managers that I deal with at certain local venues. Two of the people that do not fit that generalization are Cory Weeds and Cem Zafir, of The Cellar and Zula Productions respectively. Cory mentioned in his latest blog post that The Cellar is celebrating its 6th anniversary. I for one now feel like The Cellar has been there forever, always keeping its commitment to presenting the finest jazz has to offer. It is hands down the only place to really listen to jazz in the city. The Monday evening improv series presented by the New Orchestra Workshop Society is certainly well beyond the usual stylistic leanings of the club, but I think it's a good fit. As for Cem, he had a teriffic run at Rime and now is aiming to turn the WISE Hall into a great venue. I have a lot of respect for these guys. They could turn their considerable talents elsewhere, and the artistic fabric of this city would be the worse for it.


Tuesday saw ion Zoo do a short but sweet gig at the Western Front. We were providing music for a book launch and poetry reading presented by the literary magazine Capilano Review.

Some time ago on the vancouverjazz forum, I mentioned one of my worst all-time gigs, which was at a poetry reading. For those of you who don't hang on my every word (namely, everybody) I'll recount that infamous evening. About a dozen years ago I was playing with a saxophone quartet called The Four Neat Guys. We had a repertoire of light classical music and swingy sax quartet tunes. We got hired to provided light interval music for an author's night at the Harrison Festival of the Arts. The night was going along fine until we heard from a young angst-filled poet who used the evening to spill her guts in the most vivid way she could, going into great and gory detail about losing her virginity and a subsequent abortion. Good times. The whole room was ready to slit their wrists. OK guys, Pink Panther theme, 2, 3, 4...

Fortunately last night couldn't have been more different. We had two very, very short sets to play, for which we were very nicely compensated. Carol improvised a song using a poem written by the featured author of the evening. The second improv, she went on this very entertaining jag about being daunted to perform in front of a room full of writers, so she'd do it in Esperanto so nobody would know what she was saying. After a break for the reading by the featured writer (which was right on schedule as opposed to Kaslo, and not gut-spilling as opposed to Harrison) our third and final improv was also based on a poem. It was all very together and entertaining and very well received by the audience. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Carol doesn't realize how good she is, despite what we tell her. Clyde was totally bang-on with his bass playing, despite some last-minute manipulations of his bridge backstage. I played soprano sax, bass clarinet and debuted my just-refurbished alto clarinet. I was quite pleased with my results. One of these days, I'll go just with clarinets alone, but for now a saxophone on the side is my security blanket.

In a very recent posting, I wrote how sometimes I don't know if a gig was good or bad. There was no guesswork here, it was a keeper.

Just like Kaslo, I forgot to arrange for someone to take pictures of the performance with my camera. There's always next time.

Descending into Hope


<- Similkameen sage

I was dreading the end of last week. Wanda had been asked to do a gig in Kaslo. The dough wasn't particularly good, but expenses would be covered. The main impediment was the bloody long drive to get there, 9 hours each way at the least. On the other hand, the organizers of the Kaslo Jazz Festival would be in attendance and this was a fine opportunity to get our foot in the door.

There were a number of early signs that we shouldn't take the gig. I won't bore anyone with the details, but there were a few miscommunications between band members, and with just over a week to go, we discovered that our bassist and pianist both couldn't make the trip.

We knew from the jump that Chris, our pianist, couldn't make the gig, so I got guitarist Rich Rabnett, now living in Nelson, to fill in. Rich and I have done a number of free improv things in the past, but nothing straight up, so I was looking forward to this gig. I had to ask him to line us up a decent acoustic bassist who could read down our arrangements, of which there is exactly one in that neck of the woods. So now we had to hire two subs. Paying them what they wanted in order to make the drive to Kaslo cut into our share, but what the hell.

Then last Tuesday, while in the depths of that cold bug that was going around, I realized that Wanda doesn't drive, and without our bassist Mark coming along, I would have to do all of the driving in my car, not Mark's van as originally expected. Plus I got a note from my daughter's school that Friday would be a Pro-D day, no classes. That meant that I had to line up some care for her for the day. For various reasons, none of the usual group of classmates' parents could help me out, so I was going to have to pay for daycare for the day.

Then my wife suggested I arrange for a rental car (we are a one-car family) in order for her to deal with all of the necessary family logistics while I was away. As ever, Clara has supported me unconditionally in taking this road trip, so if she asked me to line up a car, I'd do that gladly. Now the trip was going to cost me out of pocket. I had to decide on whether or not to bail, in which case Wanda would have to cancel the gig at the last minute, or just take my lumps and go.

I've always maintained that I'm not in music solely for the money, so I decided that I would look at this as yet another investment. I also decided that I would take a good attitude into the trip, despite the cost, the 20 hours driving, and the energy required to make it happen. I always have a choice in these matters. I could decided to be miserable, in which case the whole trip would be guaranteed to be miserable, or I could make the most of it.

Every year at Banff, during his music business lecture, Hugh Fraser has talked about how he handled similar situations, often on a larger scale. He talked about when he self-produced VEJI gigs that he knew were going to lose money, or cancelling an entire recording project mid-stream. In the end, he always found that if you are coming from a place of musical and personal integrity, these events would have a payoff greater than the momentary loss. Sometimes that payoff would come from unexpected quarters, but it would always be there in the fullness of time.

With this in mind, I decided to soldier on, despite the perceived roadblocks. I also knew this gig was important to Wanda.

So we set out for the Kootenays at 6:00am Friday morning. Driving through Langley, it was all we could do not to show up at Mark's door and say "We're here, let's hit the road!" He would have felt so guilty from this prank that he probably would have come along. We didn't do it only because we wanted to make good time, but we regretted not pulling this one on him.

The weather was perfect and the roads were virtually empty. I've done the drive to Nelson many times in the past, always on long weekends in the summer when there was considerably more congestion. I discovered a few secrets to a successful road trip which I am willing to share here. #1 - Drive a new car with a decent stereo. My old Volvo was getting to the point where I was uncertain if I could reach the out of town gigs without a major breakdown - not good for the nerves. And it didn't have a cd player.

<- Copper Eagle, Greenwood

#2 - Know where the real coffee and the decent food is. I am a typical Vancouver coffee snob and I need to have multiple fixes of serious caffeine, especially when I'm doing all of the driving. Those Bunn carafes of diner coffee don't cut it. The Copper Eagle in Greenwood is recommended. The Omega in Grand Forks is not.

#3 - Know when and where to gas up. Of all places, Princeton had the cheapest gas of the whole trip. Many years ago, I literally had to roll down the mountain between Grand Forks and Castlegar, all 21 kilometers of it. We hit Grand Forks too late at night to find an open station and I ran out gas right at the summit. We coasted into the Castlegar Chevron at 5:00 am.

#4 - Make sure you drive through the Similkameeen and Okanagan areas during business hours, not for the fruit stands (which are great), but for the winery tastings. We discovered this time that a well-timed glass of wine (avoid the plonk!) certainly made the trip go smoother. And they have nicer bathrooms than at the West Hedley Mall.

#5 - It almost goes without saying - pick your tunes. We had quite a range of music going on in the car, from Ella to Hard Rubber Orchestra. But early on in the trip, we started to have a series of times when the randomly selected music perfectly matched the setting in which we were driving.

<- Abandoned farmhouse west of Keremeos

The first time it happened was driving through Keremeos on to Osoyoos. I threw on Bill Frisell's sublime Quartet album, with Eyvind Kang, Curtis Fowlkes, and Ron Miles - one of my desert island picks. I now know it also works beautifully with desert valleys. The match was unreal, and when it happened, I knew that our trip was going to be much better than expected.

<- Spotted Lake, just east of Osoyoos

Past Osoyoos, as we crested the intriguingly named Anarchist Mountan, it was time for Marvin Gaye's Greatest Hits, and we hummed along the almost deserted highway. Well, the car hummed, we were gettin' down.

The capper was on the return trip, descending into Hope along with Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now. Vince Mendoza's orchestrations are just so goddamn magnificent, combined with Joni's voice, Wayne Shorter... I could have veered off the cliff and died a happy man. As it was, we just had to drive in silence for about a half hour after that. Even after that length of time, I had to be careful what I put on, choosing Ellington's impeccable Such Sweet Thunder.

Listening to these cds at volume on the open road is so much different then having them play while I'm navigating through traffic in the city. I could really listen to so many of the details that make all of these albums so great, even though I've heards them many times already. I have little time when I can just sit and listen at home, so this was a real treat and almost enough incentive to take another road trip next weekend.

We arrived in Kaslo well ahead of schedule. Wanda's friends Jim and Barbara met us and took care of us the entire time we were there. They had two spare bedrooms in their lovely house and fed us at every opportunity possible. We got to the Langham Cultural Centre in Kaslo ahead of schedule and set up before dinner. That was a good thing as our hosts kept us overly long at dinner and we only hooked up with Rich and bassist Rob Johnson just before we had to go on. With no time to go over Wanda's arrangements, there were a few rough spots, but I doubt anyone in the audience noticed.

The deal was that we were to play a brief set, then take a 40-minute break, during which there would be a presentation about the SS Moyie, the restored paddlewheeler docked in Kaslo. Short story long, this guy droned on for an hour and half in the most excruciating detail possible. That meant we had to wait around to start our set almost at the time we were scheduled to finish. Rich and Rob were very gracious about it. They were having fun, so were willing to wait around. My major concern was that the Kaslo jazz festival people missed the first set. They arrived when we were scheduled to start the second set. Wanda chatted them up over complimentary drinks. I would have been truly pissed off had the left due to this boor not being able to keep to a schedule, but fortunately they stuck around and liked what they heard.

<- Langham Cultural Centre, Kaslo

I killed the time by exploring the building. It struck me as being somewhat similar to the Western Front in feel, and also as it was home to a nice little theatre space, a gallery and numerous artists' studios. The Langham building is about 100 years old and has the dubious distinction of being the place in Kaslo where the Japanese-Canadians were interned during the 1940s. There was a museum documenting this sad chapter of Canadian history. I read through the exhibits, feeding my middle-aged white guy's guilt, dreading that I may find a family name that I recognized.

Thus invigorated, we played a decent second set, though we lost most of our audience due to the delay the speaker caused. He had the theatre doors closed so nobody could escape during his somnolent talk, talk, talk. When everyone had a chance to get to the bar, they went and many never returned.

Regardless, Wanda and I immediately felt that the trip was a success. We had made a good Nelson connection with Rich and Rob. We shared the bounty of the Kootenay harvest. We had left what we hoped was a favourable impression on the Kaslo jazz folks. We'd also made a good connection with the people at the Langham and we now know the costs involved in self-producing a gig there in future. Combined with a gig in Nelson and another in the Okanagan, we feel we could now set up a modestly profitable mini-tour.

Most of all, we felt the appreciation of the all of the people involved with setting up this gig, particularly our hosts Jim and Barbara. Yeah, it doesn't pay the rent, but it's always a welcome change from indifferent or sometimes worse treatment that seems to be the norm in many of the places we have played in Vancouver.

We hit the road Saturday morning at 8:00 am. I chose a longer route through the wierd little ghost town of Sandon, then on to New Denver (great cafe, but passed on the Nikkei interment museum - enough guilt already, thanks). The drive through the Slocan valley was beautiful. Wanda and I had enough time to discuss plans for the band, fix the US administration and deal with the Middle East mess.

Our only bad meal of the trip was at the aforementioned Omega in Grand Forks, unless you're a fan of overpriced soup and brown caesar salad. FYI the cheapness of borscht is now pegged at $6.95 for a small cup. Next stop was the Nk'Mp winery where we picked up a nice bottle of merlot - they have a great operation there. Then on to Keremeos to load up at the fruit stands. Finally we rolled on to Vancouver to the sounds of Joni and Duke, getting home at 8:15.

<- Keremeos valley

<- Obligatory fruit stand visit

I was pretty beat the next morning, gathering only enough energy for a family stroll along the dykes at Steveston. It was another beautiful day, as if I needed reminding what a beautiful corner of the world we have the good fortune to inhabit.

Next up, ion Zoo returns to the Western Front on Tuesday evening.

Perceptions

I'm sitting here reflecting on my emotional reactions to how some of my recent gigs have gone. First off, I'm excluding the ones where I say to myself, "Man, that really sucked." or "Shit, that was unbelieveable!". Fortunately, I can't really remember the last time I said the former, though I've had my share, and one that definitely falls into the latter category was the show featuring Chucho Valdes at Banff.

It's the ones that fall in between these two poles, especially when I have some sort of personal interest in the outcome. So that eliminates the more commercial ones like the fundraiser I played last week. I go into every gig with the aim of playing as best I can and at fulfilling my designated role for the evening. For the fundraiser, we were background music, and we did a fine job of being wallpaper. That's all there is to that sort of gig.

Rather, I am thinking about my other three most recent gigs, one with the Silent Summer Nights Monster Orchestra, a restaurant gig with Wanda, and the ion Zoo set last night at the Cellar. I think they were all good gigs, at least in terms of audience satisfaction. How they merited musically is where I get hung up.

The only way one could tell if the Monster Orchestra show had any merit would have been to be part of the audience. Keeping my focus on three conductors, and being in the back of the orchestra where the sound was sketchy, there was no way that I could really hear everything that was going on. The energy felt good and there was a large range of sounds and textures that seemed appropriate to the movie. The audience seemed to really like it, mind you quite a few of them were pretty stoned. I had fun playing, and that was really why I came away from that gig feeling like it went well.

I know the audience really liked us at Wanda's gig on Saturday. Seb's is a fairly small room and we got immediate feedback from the patrons. They came up and complimented us and bought cds from us, so we knew we did our job as far as providing an evening's entertainment. Plus, we can make objective assessments of how well we played technically - how well we blended as a group, kept the time and the feel, played over the changes, tuning, etc. A recording of the night would have provided a way for us to go back an mark how we did. I fear that I would have to take a few marks off for showboating a couple of times when I soloed, getting a little too big for my own britches. It happens with this group when things go well and I'm having fun. Another measure of how we did on the night is if we get booked again. In that regard, this group is generally quite successful. We bring in people, the rooms are usually full, we start and finish when we're supposed to, take reasonable break time, look good and play not too loud - all the things that a manager is looking for. It's why this group works so frequently.

ion Zoo is much harder to evaluate. In free playing, many of the familiar measuring sticks are thrown out the window. There are certainly no chord changes to play over and we generally avoid groove. We have a passing acquaintance with tonality, which we may choose to work with or not. Form? Pretty amorphous. So what is left are often much more fundamental questions: Was that musical? Did we connect and communicate as a group? Was it original? Did we connect with the audience? This sort of questioning is one reason why I am so attracted to this form of music.

There is a variety of opinions in improvised music circles as to whether or not connection with the audience is important. I believe it's crucial, otherwise you're better off wanking off in the practice room. It does have a bearing as to the choices I make in the moment, as I believe I have a responsibility to the audience. As I've mentioned in previous postings, I also believe that having a singer in the group provides the most direct connection with the audience. Carol Sawyer is tremendously talented and has a knack for improvising stories and songs based on her life experience, often in a very funny and engaging way. We do strive to connect with our listeners.

<- ion Zoo sound check at the Cellar

So was the Cellar gig last night any good? I think so. We had a reasonably good-sized audience. We kept them in their seats through our set and they listened to what we were doing. (It's never good when they start streaming through the exits!) I always take it as a good sign when we can quiet a large room, as Wanda can also do when she nails a ballad. We had a few of those intuitive group moments when we all started shifting together. We also came up with some interesting spontaneous compositions, where it sounded like it had been written. Some of the moods we created were also new for us, somewhat on the dark side. Maybe it had something to do with being the 11th of September, I don't know. (I hate what I call the numericization of the English language, like 9/11, 24/7, "get the 411" or even "that's a big 10-4", but that's a topic of for another rant.)

The only real way to evaluate this particular gig will be to listen to the recording of the night, preferably a few weeks down the road. Our track record is that almost always we have created some good and interesting music. Perhaps I am too analytical of what's going on during the performance, that I can't step back and be objective. But I need to be involved in order to make what I trust are musical decisions. And I want to be playing from my emotional core.

We've had a few gigs where things have been transcendant, and if we have anything less, I'm a bit let down. That's a pretty big burden to put on one's self, and a nice way to undermine all of the good things that happened at a gig. It's those damned expectations again.

As for the audience, I'm sure that there were as many reactions as there were listeners, ranging from "Oh, wow" to "That really blew" to "Oh man, Bagnell's stealing my shit again!"

Another very sure yardstick for the success of a gig is if the leader, in this case me, forgets the cheque for the band at the bar. Which makes me yet again a loser.

Gearhead

September brought a slew of activity and I was happy to get back into a routine at home . The first gig was with the Silent Summer Nights Monster Orchestra, an annual film soundtrack performance series every Labour Day Weekend. Through his Eye of New Collective, Stefan Smulovitz continues his long tradition of presenting improvised sountracks to movies, mostly the silent variety, or at least with the original soundtrack turned off. SSN is held over three nights at Grandview Park, and the final night features a large group of improvisors, about 26 this time round.


I played percussion, bringing out the Big Rack, and was part of the percussion section with Joel Lower and Gary Wildeman on drum kits. Playing with them is a gas and I feel I lock in better with them every year. The night got off to a good start when I won a door prize pack from Womyn's Ware, including some massage oil and a nice little stuffed Orgasm, which is apparently the new pet rock. On the whole the night was quite successful. The movie was Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis from 1927. There were three conductors, Stefan, Coat Cooke and Giorgio Magnanensi, so you had to keep your focus on them all of the time. Each had a specific role and would jump in and take over in various combinations. Having the Big Rack, I could provide sound effects, play time with the drums, or play Stefan's written melodies on the crotales, so I was able to function in a few different roles. I played a bit at the afterparty at the WISE Hall, but the music wasn't really happening, so I called it a night.

Later in the week, I played at a private function with Footprints Jazz Trio, basically the Wanda Nowicki group sans Wanda. Since we started gigging with her, we've had a lot less trio gigs, so it was nice to go instrumental again. I certainly needed to blow the rust out of my tenor, which I hadn't touched in the month of August. The organization of this gig left a lot to be desired. We were promised dinner, but the food only appeared when we were playing, and nothing was set aside for us. Then, with about two numbers to go, one of the organizers told me that they wouldn't have a cheque for me for at least three weeks. I was choked and let her know that I would have to pay the guys out of my own pocket. My friend who had arranged the gig was laying low, knowing I wouldn't be very happy about the payment situation. Serves me right for not looking after the details.

It certainly resonated with me today when I read Cory Weeds' latest blog installment about the value people place on live musicians. I was originally asked to do this gig for free, which I refused. Then I saw their advertising where they prominently featured the word Jazz. They finally came back to me offering a reasonable payment, probably after they were refused by a number of other musicians.

So I join Cory in wondering what value the general public puts our chosen art form. Nowadays music students spend untold thousands of dollars on instruments and related accessories, private lessons, college and various workshops, not to mention thousands of unpaid hours in the practice room. With the exception of a few places in the town, if you want to work regularly and aren't at the top of the jazz food chain, you play for the door or get paid peanuts. It doesn't make sense. Yet we persist.

It puts me in mind of the last gig at Rime that I did with the Wanda Nowicki Group. We agreed to play for the door because we were confident that we would be a good draw and we were, so we got reasonably paid for our efforts. During the second set, a group of guys came in and wouldn't pay the cover. They sat at a table near the back of the main floor, not far from the stage and talked loudly. On the break, Wanda went over to the table and very diplomatically asked for a cover fee. They all refused. Obviously their precious money was better spent on beer. I really wanted to find out where they worked, so I could be as discourteous in their job situation. Assholes.

We do persist in this because we love what we do. I am fortunate that I love the music that I am playing and so will take a certain amount of crap in order to perform. I have friends who are longtime professional symphony players and are burnt out. They hate the music that they do, being in a city where the repertoire is very conservative, playing Bach, Brahms and Beethoven year in and year out, yet it's the only way they can make a living. I am indeed fortunate to live in a city like Vancouver.

I'm looking forward to the next few days. Saturday night will be the first gig with Wanda since July, then I have a set on Monday evening with ion Zoo at the Cellar. These two musical styles are as different as chalk and cheese. I enjoy them both immensely.

Wanda's going to be at Seb's Market Bistro on East Broadway, a place where we always enjoy playing. It's cramped, but the food and the atmosphere is great and owner Francois always treats us well.

At the Cellar, we are going to have a focussed set. I am only going to play only bass clarinet and soprano sax, Clyde will be playing his cut-down travelling bass, and Carol will bring her full voice. Sometimes it's a really interesting exercise to achieve more by using less - the power of limitation.

Which brings me to what I was originally planning to write about. Hi my name is Steve and I am a gearhead. There, I've said it.

I own quite a number of instruments, a lot if you count the percussion individually. I have had most of my saxophones for between 15 to 25 years, and my closed-hole flute for over 30 years. Some of my percussion has been around for that long too.

The last sax I bought was my Serie III Selmer tenor, over 8 years ago. My clarinets have come in the last couple of years (coming out of my experience with Maria Schneider at Banff) and I just got the open-hole flute this past June. Most of my percussion has been purchased from eBay, which is insidious in its ease to absorb my money.

It's the accessories for some of the wind instruments which is an endless source of gear-hunting - new mouthpieces, reeds, ligatures, custom necks, new cases to replace 30 year old junkers, stands. It goes on and on.

Then there was the PA system last year, which gigging with Wanda has paid off. I got some really nifty mics, then pre-amps, compressors, a parametric EQ... There were my computers, a laptop, a couple of printers, various peripherals... Now it's digital camera equipment - lenses, another printer, neat accessories, cases, WAAAAGGGGHHH!

My only justification is that I'm not as bad a gear fanatic as this guy who has dozens of mouthpieces, or that guy who buys a case of reeds just to find the right one, or the guy with the complete home recording studio, but never uses it.

I tried to be a one-horn guy. Lord knows I tried. I envy a musician like Lori Freedman who hasn't bought anything new for her bass clarinet other than reeds for the last 25 years. She professes to not remember what type of mouthpiece she plays and has very little interest in seeing what the new instruments are like. She is the Anti-Gearhead. Guys like Dave Say, who's playing the same horn (albeit a very nice one) that he's had since high school, one that's so out of adjustment that a mere mortal couldn't get a note out of it. Yet he never sounds anything less that great every time I hear him.

I'd like to be like them, but I'm just not wired that way. I'm the classic jack of all trades, master of none. And I'm happy to be like that.

Travelogue

<- Annapolis Valley
I took August off from the blogosphere and most everything else, including gigs. I can't remember the last time I took such a long break. The highlight of the month was a family trip back to Nova Scotia, where my wife Clara and I both have family. It was a great vacation, to say the least. Those of you who have been to the Maritimes already know this, and for those who haven't yet been, maybe I shouldn't let the cat out of the bag, but Atlantic Canada is without doubt one of the most special places on earth. I spent the first half of my life there, and the last 25 years vacationing there regularly.

Every time we go, Clara and I pick another corner of Nova Scotia to explore. After all that time, it never ceases to amaze us that a turn down an unfamiliar little road can lead to a new and often breathtakingly beautiful spot. We certainly found our share of them this time. And it takes time for me to adjust to how really friendly the people are everywhere we go.

On the downside, the uncontrolled development and suburban sprawl in Halifax and particularly in my hometown of Dartmouth makes me puke. Cole Harbour (birthplace of hockey hero Sydney Crosby) is so bad that the only relief that I saw on the day we passed through was the purpose-built set location for the Trailer Park Boys movie. Endless strip malls, butt-ugly architecture, gawdawful public housing developments - I will never criticize Vancouver city planners again. Vancouver specials and monster houses have a long way to go to match the dross that I saw. The cities are booming. Dartmouth's population has increased tenfold since my early days there and local city planners are not dealing with it very well.

Halifax waterfront ->
I took about a thousand photos with my new digital camera - it's hard for me not to post most of them. As far as music, that all went by the wayside between family obligations and touring around the province. I had made some overtures to Paul Cram, a founding member of the NOW Orchestra now residing in Halifax, to hook up. Unfortunately the one new music gig he had in August fell on an evening when I was in Cape Breton. I quickly came to appreciate the rarity of such gigs in Halifax, maybe once a month at the best of times. Yet again, I am grateful to be a part of the Vancouver scene, where the improvised music community is relatively healthy and quite active (but still not lucrative!).

Whilst in Cape Breton, we sought out live music every day. The area is justly famous for its fiddle music, producing acts like the Rankins, Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac. As a kid I was never a fan of this genre, and really haven't changed that much. What I do appreciate as a musician is that this is a living music, and that these people perservered for decades, regardless of being perceived as cool or not. Even though the Celtic music craze has cooled off somewhat in recent years, it continues to thrive in Cape Breton. It was great to go to a restaurant to hear an old pro play and to see the young musicians coming up, paying their dues, no different from jazz. And that this music comes from the hearts of the people of Cape Breton and much of the rest of the province, this is not something I can dismiss.

There is more money at play in Nova Scotia now, with offshore oil revenues starting to pour in. I noticed that many houses, even in poor fishing villages, have been spruced up. A lot of this is due to tourism - people there know it is a major employer in the province, second only to the goverment, especially the Armed Forces. People take pride in their way of life. Very few times did things ring false, in a tourist-trap way. There is also money flowing into the province as wealthy people "from away", mostly Americans snap up every inch of oceanfront property. Europeans, particularly Germans, as well as western Canandians (west being anything past New Brunswick) are also in the real estate game. Two hours south of Halifax, at the end of a nondescript road in the middle of absolutely nowhere, we found million-dollar-plus homes sitting on rugged headlands.

Fortress Louisbourg - fantastic! ->
Another factor, particularly in Cape Breton, is that an entire generation, maybe two, have left the province to work in Toronto, or more likely in northern Alberta in the oil patch. Money is being sent back home, and it's a rare person, especially a Caper or a Newfoundlander, who doesn't dream of returning home sometime.

A nice spinoff of all of this is that the food is way better. We ate at quite a number of great restaurants all around the province, some of them absolutely spectacular. Clara had a bit less luck than I did. She ordered a couple of Greek salads of dubious provenance, and got stuck with fake crab in crab cakes when they ran out of the real deal. That was pretty lame - you can fool the tourists but not someone who's lived their life on the East and West Coasts of the country.

My absolute favourite was the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou, owned by the Rankin sisters. Obviously they learned what made for a great restaurant while they spent so many years touring with their band. They took that concept home and adapted it to home cooking with some real flair, and added live music every night. It worked for me.

That same night, we enjoyed the bar at the Glenora Distillery, where we stayed with friends from Vancouver. Glenora is the only distillery in North America to make single malt whiskey (it can only be called scotch if it's made in Scotland), and Glenora's Glen Breton 10 year old holds up pretty well to a random sampling that we tried at the bar. The tasting was all quite erudite and dignified until the four of us got plastered. Then we retired to one of the guest chalets on the grounds. That's where I fell down the stairs - I've almost healed up from that one.

Clara was feeling a bit too wee the next morning when we did the distillery tour, and passed her glass over to our friend David, a born Scot, who was more than happy to oblige. I have Stan Karp to thank for turning me on to the ultimate single malt. Glen Breton still has a way to go to catch up to Lagavulin.

While on vacation, I had planned to do some composing, a graphic score for a string trio in particular. I also thought a few quiet days at my brothers' beatiful and isolated beach cottage would be conducive to going through a pile of various recordings that I've made over the last 5 years, with the aim of compiling the best onto two or three cds. None of that happened - we were just too busy and to boot, my laptop display packed it in after a few days.

So I returned to Vancouver with a couple of unfinished projects and a bunch of gigs. Clara is one of those fatalists who declared that summer is over on the Labour Day weekend, but I've decided that summer will officially continue until I finish these tasks. So I may be wearing shorts and sandals well into January, given my rate of production when a firm deadline is not looming...

Finally, a shot of me attempting to surf. It would have been great to have had a picture of me standing up on the board, but that would have required that I actually managed such a feat. Maybe Photoshop can help.

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.

Departure

I woke with only two hours sleep. I had a decision to make. I was totally out of clean clothes, and either I had to do laundry or go home. So I packed up.

Rather than sleep in, I wanted to spend my last few hours there connecting with people one last time, and just making my farewells to the place. Very few of the musicians were around, small wonder given the previous night's excesses.

My roommate Ken Hoffman left before I had gotten up, as did several others. I had hoped to see some of the regular staff to say goodbye, but again many were not there. The was a subtle but significant change at the music and sound building as the next round of musicians were about to arrive. All of the signs and notices for our program were removed. I went to the studio that had been my home for the last two weeks and there was a sign on the door "Don's room". I was history.

I had hoped to run into some of the people who had worked in the studio recording program. They were on extended residencies up here. In previous years, these people seemed more like aloof tekkies to me, but this year was much different.

The recording engineers had become part of our extended team. We got to know each other fairly well and they were totally charged up by working with us, just as we were with them. I realized that the night Ken and Robin and I did that surround sound recording. They would ask us to do something and we would run with it. They were also totally pumped about our marathon orchestra recording session. I had hung out with them quit a bit during the final after party - it was just another indication how there had been a confluence of events during this program.

In the end, I saw mostly Vancouver musicians, all of whom were preparing to leave. I had been keeping an eye out for some of the arriving people, but didn't see anyone. I left a note on the bulletin board for Greg Sinibaldi, a great sax player from Seattle and a fellow member of Paul Rucker's Large Ensemble. I was also looking for Marilynn Crispell, who was part of the incoming faculty. I think I saw her arrive as I pulled away in the airport shuttle.

Every year I swear that next time, I'll stay a few extra days so I can connect with the next bunch of musicians, but it never happens.

The return to Calgary passed quickly as Jeremy Price and I talked a lot about what had happened. He was also a partcipant in the Maria Schneider and Kenney Wheeler programs, so we have share a lot of great experiences at Banff. He too had been blown away by Chucho.

As has been my habit in previous years, I spent a few hours visiting some dear friends in Calgary before departing for Vancouver. Visiting Angie Parkes and Rob Penner has always been an important part of my Banff time. Angie was my girlfriend in grade 11 (another fairly significant time in my life) and we have always been cherished friends, though we rarely get to meet any more. Her husband Rob is a violinist with the Calgary Philharmonic and has been on a long path of shamanistic spirituality. They have two lovely boys, Justin and Jonathan, who were startling in how much they had grown in the last two years. Visiting them gives me a chance to ease back into the real world. They have seen what I've gone through at Banff since 2002 and I value the short time we get to spend together. They are also just a few minutes from the airport, so everything dovetails nicely.

I scanned the airport for any musicians that I recognized, but found none. I did meet somebody I knew, and we flew home together. Rob is a good friend of Mia Weinberg, from whom I bought the laptop that I took to Banff and upon which I wrote most of this blog. Another non-coincidence in my books.

Homecoming was as it was meant to be. I love my family dearly and I missed them greatly.

But this blog is entitled 14 Days in May, and those days have now passed. I will probably add some pictures and a few supplemental entries as things happen that pertain to this experience.

Thanks for taking the time to share it with me.

Saturday #3 The Finale


This post has been somewhat delayed, as there has been no break in the action for a while.

The afternoon's sound check went relatively smoothly, other than a bit of persistent feedback in the monitors which took way too long to correct. Robin Jessome took a photo of Chucho and me together. He should be able to recoup his Banff expenses by charging us top dollar to get our pictures from him.

In previous years, my habit had been to have a glass of port at the pub before retiring for the night, but this year, other than the very first night, I had not had very much at all to drink, which resulted in a considerable saving of money.

So on this final full day at Banff, I took about half of the money I had saved and bought a very nice bottle of vintage port, something I would not normally do, but dammit, I had worked hard and deserved it, just like the three desserts each meal on the final day. I also located some decent souvenirs for everyone at home, no small feat considering the mountains of kitschy crap for sale in town. It was time to get ready for the gig.

Altoist Don Berner had dubbed the concert "Bay of Gigs" earlier in the week, possibly fearing that we would be massacred by impossible Irakere charts, which never manifested themselves. Had the gig not gone well, this would have been the title of this posting.

But we all knew that we were about to be part of something very special. The program Hugh and Chucho worked out started with Chucho playing solo, then add Hugh, next the faculty plus rhythm section, then the bones would do Manteca, and finally the trumpets and saxes and flutes would come out for the last four numbers, about 90 minutes in total. It turned to be simple yet very effective programming.

Many of us stood in the wings to watch Chucho play two solo pieces, the first being a medley of jazz standards, the second being more traditional Cuban folk melodies. Chucho played with mastery and again had some standing in the wings reaching for the Kleenex. Hugh then joined him in a duet of Body and Soul. After that the faculty and rhythm section entered for a rousing rendition of Billie's Bounce. Manteca was next and then the rest of us walked onstage. We then played the three tunes that Chucho had brought.

Everyone was very focussed and all of the tunes went extremely well, each building the excitement in the room. Hugh opened up the finale, Mambo Influenciado, and we all got several choruses to solo. I had debated whether or not to play it in the pocket, but finally decided to go for it in a much freer manner, as that is when I am best able to access my most emotional core. I had intended to look straight at Chucho and direct my solo to him. When it was time to blow, perhaps out of habit, I faced the audience so I could not personally guage his reaction. I did receive compliments from quite a number of people, sufficient for me to believe that I made the right stylistic decision.

The Mambo went on for quite a long time, until everyone had worn themselves out. Then the show was done. The Eric Harvie Theatre holds about a thousand people and it was totally sold out. The house erupted in an extended standing ovation. An encore was out of the question as the show clocked in at almost 2 hours and Chucho's limo was waiting to leave for the airport as soon as he was off the stage. He stood at the stage door and individually thanked each of us as we exited, and then just like that, he and Lorena were gone.

The arc of the show was just right. Chucho had played brilliantly and the band had given it their all, most likely the finest concert that I've ever been part of.

In rereading this before I post it, I realize that this is a fairly dry recounting of a concert performance, and in no way imparts what sort of feeling that was there. I just can't adequately write about the experience that I had - does that qualify me to become a critic? Put it this way - there have been concert experiences in my life when everything lines up perfectly and certain moments a captured in a crystalline memory, seared permanently into my few remaining neurons. There were many such moments at this show.

Chucho's playing was stunning and yet I now realize that he did not recreate his Giant Steps performance onstage. That was his private and very personal gift to only us in the orchestra. That memory resides in my heart.

I have never seen an artist deeply inspire so many people in such a short time, and cause so many to be overcome by emotion. Hugh and Lorae knew that Chucho was capable of this. They had extreme difficulty in making all of the arrangements to bring him here this year, but I would venture to say that the results exceeded any reasonable expectations.

Just before playing the concert, Chucho gave Marianne a handwritten page of manuscript paper with a special montuno for her to play, with a very personal and appreciative message to her on the bottom. Over the three days, he had inspired her playing to even higher levels. She constantly amazed us with her progress, and she's always been a formidable pianist. She rarely took her eye off him and his piano the whole time he was here, absorbing as much as possible. It was her turn to lose it after he left for the airport.

We retired back to the Music and Sound Building and had an afterparty that went into the wee hours. That bottle of port was an excellent way for me to send off this latest year at Banff, and much of the evening's proceedings will have to be permanently filed in the "What Goes On In Banff, Stays In Banff" folder. A lot of goodbyes were said and the general concensus was that it was a totally mind-blowing experience for all concerned.

I got back to the residence around sunrise.