June and July Gigs

Hi All

June and July are looking amazing with a lot of fun gigs to play.  I'll be celebrating my 40th birthday, then Vancouver Jazz Fest time will be upon us, followed immediately by South Delta Jazz Festival, my musical BFFs, Len Aruliah  and Rob Kohler will be in town....I'm positively buzzing with excitement about every one of these events.  Life is good!  Hope to see some of you blog readers out at these shows.

• June 6 Lyle Hopkins String Trio. Propohouse Café, 8-10pm
• June 8 Lyle Hopkins String Trio.  X-Cite Grill (El Barrio) 9:30- late
• June 19 Jared’s 40^th Birthday Party – Jared Burrows Quartet plus many guest musicians.  Presentation House Studio 8:00-10:30pm. $10 at the door.
• June 22 Dave Robbins’ Electric Band.  Pat’s Pub. 3-7pm.
• June 25 Dave Robbins Electric Band. (opening for John Scofield!!!) Vancouver Jazz Fest event at Vogue Theatre.  See http://www.coastaljazz.ca/ for details
• June 29 Len Aruliah Sextet at Place Des Arts, Coquitlam. 7pm.
• July 1 Jared Burrows Sextet – Vancouver Jazz Fest. Event at  Ron Basford Park  at Granville Island. 5:30pm  See http://www.coastaljazz.ca/ for details
• July 2-5 South Delta Jazz Festival – performances at noon every day with various bands.  Ladner Community Centre. See www.southdeltajazzfestival.com for details
• July 5 Jazz Workshop Faculty Octet. St. John's Anglican Church, Ladner. 8pm. See www.southdeltajazzfestival.com for details
• July 11 Len Aruliah Sextet at X-Cite Grill (El Barrio) 9:30- late

The Simulacrum: My Blog Post About a Blog

I spent the long weekend on holiday away from telephones and internet.  Mostly I paddled a canoe, chopped wood, and sat by a campfire. Coming back to 'civilization' was especially difficult this time for some reason.

In post-modern cultural theory, the term simulacrum refers to a copy of a copy where the relationship to the authentic and original has been lost or disconnected.   The distorted, disconnected copy becomes its own reality.  Is the internet the great simulacrum?  Are we living in it? It seems so to me at times, especially when I spend so much time updating websites, blogs, youtube channels, facebook etc.  It seems so much energy is poured into the virtual world that we often have little left for the real world, whatever that is.  What would Jean Baudrillard say if he were here?

Of course, all this talk is just an excuse to draw you deeper into the simulacrum of the blogosphere and invite you to visit the new Capilano U Jazz Studies Blog.  In my new gig as co-ordinator of the Jazz Studies Dept. at Capilano U, I am making an attempt to toot our horn (pun intended!) a little louder on social media and spread the word about the cool people who study and work at our school and the amazing (and very real and authentic) things they do.

And, in the event that you have not spent enough time in the simulacrum today, you can also visit our Cap Jazz youtube channel  or our facebook group.   Baudrillard does have a page on facebook and I did invite him to join, but he hasn't responded yet.  Don't worry, I hear facebook is working on a way to get status updates from the Great Beyond so I expect to hear from him any day now.

Meanwhile, I will hold on to what is left of my real life by drawing the line at tweeting or owning a cell phone.........

Hari

In early 2005 I got a phone call from Hari Pal, a tabla player who had just moved to town.  He asked if I was interested in playing music in an Indian classical style.  I was immediately interested as I had always been intrigued by Indian classical music, though I had no understanding of how it worked.  We had a short try-out session at SFU where I was a PhD student in Education at the time.  We played for about 30 minutes and Hari said, "You are very strong in rhythm.  This will work."  Very shortly after that, Hari contacted me to say he had found a sarode player by the name of Ken Wells and that we should try to make some music.  We hit it off very well and both Ken and Hari started showing me the rudiments of raga and tala - just enough to get me into real trouble!

Hari is a real go-getter and soon after that one rehearsal he set up a concert for us.  I have always been wont to jump in at the deep end. We quickly put together some traditional tunes by Ali Akbar Khan (Ken's guru), and I wrote a couple of original things.  The concert went extremely well and luckily someone had a video camera and some kind of audio recorder.  This video has been languishing in an outmoded file format on a broken DVD-R disc until today when I figured out how to extract the data and put the old video together with the audio from another source.  There are a few glitches in the video which have been filled in with still images, but the music is pretty good.  I must say that I am surprised listening to this eight years later at the fact that I did so well on my first time out. 

This show was the start of a long and very fruitful relationship with Hari and Ken in the band Ta Ki Ta and also the beginning (and I'm still just at the beginning 8 years later) of my study of Indian classical music and further collaborations with other musicians from the Hindustani and Karnatic traditions.

More video from this concert to follow if I can salvage it....

New Video - Lyle Hopkins String Trio

One of the really great things about teaching in the Jazz Studies Department at Capilano University is that I get to meet young students with outrageous amounts of talent and musicality.  Lyle Hopkins (bass) and Stefan Thordarson (violin) are two of those wonderful musicians.  Lyle graduated from our program last year and Stefan should graduate next year.  I have watched them develop from quite raw beginnings into mature players with a lot of depth, confidence, and vision.  While teaching Lyle in an ensemble class a few years ago, I had the pleasure of introducing him to the music of the Jimmy Giuffre Trio and showing him some notational ideas I had developed for structuring improvisations.  Based on his interest in the Giuffre material, Lyle wrote some new music and invited me to join his trio.

Fortunately, I was able to record the performance at Presentation House Studio last Wednesday with video and audio.  Unfortunately, a helicopter kept hovering over the venue and spoiling the sound.....you might hear a bit of that at the end of this clip.  At any rate, it was a fun gig and so much fun to play with these fine fellows.  Here we are playing Stef's tune, "You're Wearing My Shirt".

I am finally learning to edit video a little better these days. I am doing this because young people seem to be more interested in accessing music through youtube than by buying CDs.  That used to distress me to some degree, but I think I am getting used to it.  The video is just fine as is, but I do wish you could hear the sound as it was recorded in 24bit 96khz resolution. Here is Lyle's tune, "Little Bit".

South Delta Jazz Workshop 10th Anniversary Edition

The South Delta Jazz Festival and Jazz Workshop celebrates its 10th anniversary this year!  This year's event runs July 2-6.

The Workshop is a summer music program focused on jazz improvisation and small ensemble playing. The Festival provides a variety of jazz concerts and events centred around and easily accessible to the community that supports us. Students learn to play jazz through intensive small ensemble rehearsals, daily faculty concerts, masterclasses, ear training and improvisation classes in a fun and friendly environment that nurtures our student’s unique talents and abilities. Both audience members and students get a chance to develop relationships with our amazing group of teachers and performers from Vancouver, the US and the UK. The teaching component of SDJW and many of our concert events take place in and around the very relaxed riverside community of Ladner Village.

The Workshop is open to players of any instrument and singers age 12 and up, but jazz camp isn’t just for kids! Adults are very welcome at SDJW and we always have a strong contingent of mature and semi-pro players around. For many of our students, SDJW is a great opportunity to take a week off from their regular jobs and just focus on music. Musicians of all levels from beginner through college and university are welcome. We provide a fun and friendly environment that nurtures each student’s unique talents and abilities. 

Registration is open now and early-bird discounts are available no until May 30.

DOWNLOAD REGISTRATION FORM HERE. 

In addition to our usual amazing international faculty, this year we will have percussionist Curtis Andrews as a special guest faculty member.  Curtis will be teaching us West African music on a daily basis and we will incorporate what we learn into our jazz playing.  I'm really looking forward to playing with and learning from Curtis.

I must say that there were many times when I never thought we'd never get here.  It has been a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. The best thing about staying around for 10 years is the community of friends, students, faculty, and audience that has developed.  

Performance with Daniela Elza, April 24

I'm playing this week with members of the Vancouver Improvisers Orchestra and acclaimed poet, Daniela Elza.  Musicians will be Clyde Reed (bass), Emma Postl (voice), Duncan Maunders (alto sax), Stephen Robb (clarinet), Rory Hislop (trumpet) and me (guitar).

Clyde Reed and I have collaborated with Daniela and other poets on several occasions and I really enjoy it.  We don't usually read the poetry beforehand, but focus on reacting musically to what we are hearing. To get an idea of how this works, have a look at the clip below from the 2012 Words and Music series at the Prophouse Cafe.

Hope to see some of you there!

Wednesday, April 24
Presentation House Studio
333 Chesterfield, North Vancouver
8pm
$10 at the door
Free tea and cookies

Concert Review: Dave Liebman at Capilano University

Last night at Capilano University our students had the wonderful opportunity to perform with saxophone legend, Dave Liebman.  Liebman performed with Capilano's top large ensembles, the A Band jazz orchestra and the vocal jazz ensemble, Nitecap.  I had the pleasure of playing some tunes with Liebman and his band  (with Phil Markowitz and Jamey Haddad) when I was a graduate student in Oregon many years ago and his playing and personality made quite an impression on me.  Indeed many of the things I learned in that short but intense exchange have stayed with me as central aspects of my playing and approach to music.  He is one of the true masters of the music today and a living link to the great musicians he has worked with including Elvin Jones and Miles Davis.

Of peripheral interest to last night's show was the fact that Liebman had been stuck in Chicago for more than 24 hours waiting for a flight to Vancouver and was unable to make the scheduled rehearsal times with the student ensembles the day before the show.  In fact, our Capilano ensembles had only an hour or so each to rehearse a concert of very challenging music - and all of this in the middle of exam week!  I was so impressed by the level of musicianship that our students displayed in taking on this huge musical task.  Also part of the back-story to this gig is that Liebman's horn was broken when he arrived and he was rushed over to the fine fellows at Massulo Music  to have it repaired just before he concert.  I'm surprised he had the time to eat and change his clothes - there was certainly no time for sleep or rest of any kind after grueling days stuck in an airport.

None of these trials seemed to have affected Liebman's playing.  He is obviously a true road-warrior of the old school.  His complete mastery of the soprano saxophone and the power of his unique improvisational language were truly awe-inspiring. I can't remember having seen or heard anyone play any instrument like that for several years.  He certainly didn't hold back because he was playing with student ensembles and the students responded by pushing themselves to the utmost.   His compositions were equally impressive in scope and originality.  The A Band portion of the show featured excellent arrangements of his music by Jim McNeely and Vince Mendoza and the band was ably directed by my friend, Brad Turner.  I know Brad is a big fan of Liebman's music and seemed just as excited as the students to be sharing the stage with the great man.   Brad's incredible talents as a player give him a unique insight and intuition as a director that is a pleasure to see and hear.  All the students played really well and managed to navigate some very tricky charts with great energy and creativity.

For the Nitecap portion of the show, Réjean Marois, the ensemble's director, had arranged Liebman's music for SATB choir and rhythm section.  In my opinion, Réjean is the finest vocal arranger anywhere and his work for this show proved that to be true once again.   As much as I enjoyed the big band music, I must say that I thought his arrangements were a much more interesting setting for the soprano saxophone.   Liebman made special mention of the fact that he had never performed his music with a vocal ensemble before and it was a wonderful textural and timbral experience to hear his horn (and penny whistle on a couple of occasions!) blend with the high soprano voices.  Indeed, this setting seemed to emphasize the liquid, vocal quality of Liebman's playing and sound. His compositions take a comprehensive view of 20th century harmonic practices, incorporating the richness of both jazz and classical traditions. The singers did an amazing job with some of these very challenging harmonies and the rhythm section players were pushed to their limits to match the surprising twists and turns of Liebman's wild melodic inventions. I think the audiences at Cap are used to hearing Nitecap perform all this 'impossible' music so they don't really understand how unique and beautiful it is that our program supports such an amazing community of vocalists. Réjean has worked so hard to develop our Jazz Studies program over the years and has put in so much effort behind the scenes to make concerts like this happen.  It is nice to see him in situations like this, reaping the rewards of creating a tradition of hard work and high standards among the students.

I feel very lucky to be working with such dedicated and talented colleagues and students and I'm inspired by their excellence!