THE ALAN BRECKER QUARTET, Saturday November 21, 2015, 8pm at Stage 64 (Centre 64) in Kimberley. This was the last concert of the Fall Jazz and Blues Series.
This is what I call “Four on the floor straight ahead Jazz”. A solid rhythm section and one or two melody instruments, a copy of a Jazz Fake Book, pick a tune and let’s hit it , one and two, and three and four ….., and that was the name of the game on Saturday night with The Alan Brecker Quartet at Stage 64 in Kimberley. The solid rhythm section, Alan Brecker on piano, Stefano Valdo on electric Bass, Taylor Hornby on drums with the lead solo Tenor Sax of Pat Belliveau. There were added vocals by Alan and some magnificent melodic bass solos by Stefano on a huge 6-string bass that added variety to the sonic spectrum. These four session musicians from Calgary love to play jazz and the gig here in Kimberly gave them ample opportunity to delve into a selection of songs and tunes from the Jazz Fake Book. The Jazz Fake Book, for those who don’t know, is one of several published, copyright approved, collections of a huge number of jazz standards and songs from the American Song Book. It is almost a bible for improvising jazz musician. “Want to play some tunes? What have you got in the Fake Book that we could play?” That’s pretty well how an “off the cuff” session would play out. There are no elaborated arrangements, the tunes are usually presented as an abbreviated one or two page chart that notates the basic melody, chords and possibly some brief instructions about style and tempo. Nothing is set in stone and the musicians are free to make any number of musical choices in performing the piece. In doing so, some of the “off the cuff” choices can yield some adventurous and interesting musical moments. Case in point is the quartet’s rendition of the well known I Remember April. Who would have thought that this ballad had such potential as a hard driving Samba. Thier version would be right at home at a carnival in Rio. Alan has a thing for the songs of Jimmy Van Heusen and and during the evening he indulged his passion with more than one Van Heusen song. The standout, of course, was Here’s That Rainy Day (from the show Carnival in Flanders) with some brilliant mallet and brushes work by Tyler Hornby behind Stefano’s extended bass solo. Some other tunes that came off the pages of the Fake Book were Somewhere Over the Rainbow, How High the Moon and the Louis Armstrong classic What a Wonderful World. Another high light of the evening was Alan’s Stride/be-bop solo version of Summertime. Despite their popularity there are some tunes that just never wear out. Summertime is one of them.
Here are the images from a wonderful evening of “Four on the floor, straight ahead Jazz”
This was the last concert in the brilliant fall series organized by the “Alive at the Studio 64 Committee”. Many, many thanks from me and others I am sure. I for one am looking forward to what will be another brilliant Spring Concert series in the New Year.
Elizabeth Shepherd Trio at the Green Door in Kimberley, Tuesday November 17, 2015, 8pm. The trio features the talents of Michael Occhipinti on guitar and Scott Kemp on acoustic fretless bass.
Elizabeth and a number of her band mates are on a cross Canada tour and perhaps the tour could have been named the “The Almost Famous Tour”. Between them, Michael Occhipinti and Elizabeth Shepherd, two of the finest musicians on the Canadian scene today, have scored 10 JUNO Nominations (Elizabeth – 2; Michael – 8). I guess that is as close as you can get without actually becoming famous. A small audience in The Green Door were very fortunate to hear the trio in a very intimate setting as the trio stopped off for a brief respite from the larger sites on the tour. In the press Elizabeth has been hailed as “a jazz virtuoso blessed with a pop sensibility”, ” praised by critics worldwide for her arrestingly original writing and soulful delivery. Along with artists like Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, and Jose James she is seen as part of a wave of jazz musicians bringing the art form to a new generation of music fans”. That’s pretty high praise indeed. But that’s not all. Elizabeth has released four widely acclaimed records and toured extensively in North America, Europe, Japan and Mexico. She has sold out legendary clubs from Tokyo to Detroit, played major festivals like Montreal and North Sea Jazz Festivals, shared the stage with Victor Wooten, Branford Marsalis and Christian McBride, and opened for Jamie Cullum at The Hollywood Bowl. Elizabeth is also the only jazz vocalist to ever have been long listed for the Polaris Prize – Canada’s most prestigious music prize.
If you have ever spent any time listening to CBC radio and TV Michael Occhipinti will be a familiar name. Michael is a cross-cultural “dabler” with projects that have explored the music of John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Bruce Cockburn (Creation Dream) – and more recently the music of Sicily in Muorica. Michael has collaborated with many jazz musicians of note and in his spare time he is an educator at Humber College in Toronto.
Scott Kemp is nominally an upright Bass player originally out of Manitoba but now resident in Toronto. On this tour he is using an Ephiphone fretless Bass Guitar that he managed to pick up almost as gift on Craig’s list. The original owner felt that such a great instrument need to be played. It is easier to transport and more robust that an upright bass. It has taken it’s share of beatings on the road but is still holding together.
Like a lot of jazz influenced musicians and music today Elizabeth’s music is hard to define. She is a jazz singer but not in the classic senses of say Dianna Krall. She doesn’t dive too deeply into the “Great American Song Book” but rather delivers highly original material in a somewhat soul tinged timbre. Songs from her new album Signal include Willow, What’s Happening, BT Cotton, The Signal, Lion’s Den, This, Another Day, and Baby Steps.
Here are some more images from an intimate evening of Jazz behind The Green Door in Kimberley.
James Neve and his Return to Roots Music at BJ’S Creekside Pub, Saturday November 14, 8pm
Over the past 10 years 60 Hertz has been my favorite local Band. James Neve, with his stellar writing, vocals and hybrid guitar picking was the foundation of a band that included Rob Young on backup vocals and lead guitar, Marty Musser on drums and Dave Birch on electric bass. This was a band with great arrangements, who rehearsed religiously and was super tight in performance. All that work paid off. Alas the band is no more. They disbanded in April of this year. Oh well, nothing lasts for ever. The musicians have gone on to other projects. James Neve’s current project is a solo effort where he continues to bring new songs to the stage with each performance. As always he infuses his repertoire of original material with a selection of cover tunes that on this night included John Mayer’s The Heart of Life and Cat Steven’s Moon Shadow. That’s what the audience were treated to Saturday night – stellar songs, great 12 String guitar and the electronic gadgets that filled out the sound for an impressive night of music.
“Everybody” knows that the standard tuning for guitar is EADGBE (low to high) and most guitarist are aware that there is more than one way to tune a guitar (or any stringed instrument for that matter). One of the most popular non-standard tunings is DADGAD. The December 2015 edition of ACOUSTIC GUITAR published the following article that profiled the DADGAD tuning and four of its famous advocates and performers. Here is an except from the internet download of the article:
The DADGAD Way: Davy Graham, Pierre Bensusan, Sarah McQuaid, and Daithi Sproule Talk Tuning
A few years before George Harrison put world music on the pop charts with his 1967, Indian-inspired “Within You Without You,” from the Beatles’ landmark Sgt. Peppers album, another Brit, the late folk musician Davey Graham, had already invigorated western acoustic guitar music with his brilliant cross-cultural contribution, DADGAD tuning.
Inspired by Graham’s travels in India and Morocco, and his subsequent introduction to the region’s lute-like oud, DADGAD revolutionized the folk genre by allowing the guitar to mimic the piping, or “droning,” sound that defines authentic Celtic music. The D-based, open-string DADGAD effectively transforms the guitar into a modal—rather than chord-driven—instrument, thus allowing for easier shifts between minor and major keys, with the open strings on either side of the treble and bass strings serving as the drone generator.
Embraced by such British folk greats as John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, and Martin Carthy, the genius behind DADGAD tuning is that Graham had offered up something akin to a tonal Rosetta stone: It was now possible to do justice to traditional Irish music on the guitar, particularly the outpouring of works by blind, 18th-century harper and composer Turlough O’Carolan. It wasn’t just Celtic music acolytes from the British Isles who appreciated the versatility and range that this alternative tuning provided. Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Paul Simon, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Wings’ lead guitarist Laurence Juber, Jimmy Page, among many others, gave DADGAD a chance. (Page termed it his “CIA tuning,” for Celtic/Indian/Arabian.)
DADGAD has found its way into genres including classical, blues, gospel, and jazz, and into the hands of acoustic guitarists everywhere. As one of DADGAD’s most notable practitioners, French-Algerian-born Pierre Bensusan, advises “DADGAD is not a genre—it’s a tuning.”
Multi-award-winning guitarist, singer, and composer Pierre Bensusan, lauded by the LA Times as “one of the most unique and brilliant acoustic guitar veterans in the world music scene today,” is regarded as one of music’s greatest exponents of DADGAD. Almost every performance and recording of Bensusan’s is a celebration of DADGAD tuning. Currently on a world tour to mark his 40-year career, Bensusan’s style includes Celtic, folk, world, new age, and chamber music.
His Take on DADGAD: Bensusan has described DADGAD as a tool that “helped me to be identified, and to identify myself. It gives me confidence.” Introduced to DADGAD by a friend who had learned it from Graham, Bensusan was experimenting with different tunings at the time, anxious to settle on one that he could make his own. DADGAD won out.
Bensusan realized that embracing DADGAD meant he would have to relearn the guitar if he wanted to translate the new tuning style for an across-the-board repertoire of music normally played in standard tuning. It was a guitar lesson to-do list that included taking a second look at the neck, the chord shapes and positions, the sounds, and the intervals. He mastered the task and highlighted the journey in Pierre Bensusan Presents DADGAD Guitar. Published in 2000, it is primarily a songbook featuring comments and DADGAD selections from James Earp, Laurence Juber, Doug Smith, Bill Mize, David Surette, Eileen Niehouse, and Peppino D’Agostino, among others.
The pitfalls in the beginning, he notes, included fighting against “a ready disposition to fall into all the predictable trappings of such a modal tuning as DADGAD”—notably by doing the obvious, such as playing almost exclusively in the key of D. “If I wanted a key change, I’d simply use a capo,” he writes. But as Bensusan discovered, relying on capos limited the possibilities for chord voicings, which he recalled, “got me right back to the point of really learning the fret board. There is certainly nothing wrong with using a capo—sometimes you have to. Still, though, with a limited understanding of the fingerboard, it was very easy to get stuck in the ruts of standard positions and chords.”
Another challenge: the disposition of the open strings. While DADGAD tuning is famous for its open, ringing strings, that’s not always a plus: It can get in the way of the music, Bensusan advises. “You want to be able to control the sustain and the length of the sound,” he says. Bensusan’s goal was to make DADGAD “completely disappear. I don’t want there to be any active consciousness of the particular tuning I happen to be using. And I certainly don’t want my audiences to be distracted by it. You have to play the instrument—the music—not the tuning.”
Player Tip: “Virtuosity is not showing off what you can do on the guitar,” Bensusan told Acoustic Guitar last year. “Virtuosity is making the guitar and the musician completely transparent, and having the music just speak out. This is a high, high standard of virtuosity for me. The music is using you as a channel. So you have to be ready for it. Technically, you have to be ready. You work your ability, your tone. But when you play, all of this has to be forgotten.” Visit pierrebensusan.com for more information on his work, concerts, numerous songbooks, and more.
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SARAH MCQUAID : She Wrote the Book on DADGAD, Literally
Born in Spain, raised in Chicago, and now living in rural England, Sarah McQuaid’s music is an eclectic mix that, as noted on her website, segues from original compositions “to a 1930s Cuban jazz number, a 16th-century lute piece, or an unexpected contemporary cover.” Regardless of the genre, the tuning is always in DADGAD. McQuaid is the author of The Irish DADGAD Guitar Book, described by the Irish Times as “a godsend to aspiring traditional guitarists.” She has developed two workshops: “An Introduction to DADGAD,” for players with little or no experience, and “DADGAD Song Accompaniment,” for experienced DADGAD guitarists. Her workshops have been held at music schools, festivals, arts centers, private homes, and other venues in the UK, Ireland, the United States, Holland, and Germany.
Her Take on DADGAD
“In my teens, I was a big fan of Windham Hill Records artists like Michael Hedges and Will Ackerman, and also of Joni Mitchell,” McQuaid says, “so I was tinkering around with different tunings all the time. Then, when I was 18, I went to study in France for a year, and quite by accident wound up singing and playing guitar with a traditional Irish band. At a festival gig somewhere in France, I got to chatting with a French guitarist, who said to me, ‘You know, most of the Irish guitar players these days are using DADGAD—you should try it.’” She did, and never looked back. “I tuned my guitar to DADGAD straightaway, started experimenting with chord shapes, and it was a real eureka moment—suddenly I could make all the sounds I’d been trying to make for years,” McQuaid says. “I loved the fact that it freed me up from the limitations of major and minor [and that] I could play in all these weird modal scales.”
McQuaid has been playing in nothing but DADGAD for more than 20 years. “I write all my own songs in DADGAD, and I play everything from Elizabethan ballads to blues in DADGAD,” she says. “It’s a wonderfully versatile tuning, especially when you get out of the mentality that you have to play in D all the time: E minor, G, G minor, A, A minor, and B minor also work beautifully, to name a few. “I love the way it encourages you to focus on notes rather than chords,” she adds, and “to work with the song, interweaving the guitar melody with the vocal melody so that it’s a case of the guitar [in duet] with the voice, rather than merely accompanying it. I don’t think there are any two songs that I play the same way in DADGAD.”
Player Tip: “Don’t forget that lots of other keys besides D work beautifully in DADGAD! E, G, A and B, to name just a few—all work really nicely and offer great scope for expanding your repertoire of chord shapes and picking patterns,” McQuaid says. “Also, remember that sometimes it’s nice to just suggest a chord by playing a note or two, rather than filling out the full shape.”
For more about Sarah McQuaid’s work and workshops, visit sarahmcquaid.com.
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DÁITHI SPROULE: Magically Irish
A guitarist, singer, and composer of traditional Irish music, crowned “a seminal figure in Irish music” by the Rough Guide to Irish Music, Dáithí Sproule began using DADGAD tuning not long after Graham introduced it to the folk music world in the 1960s. A native of Derry, in Northern Ireland, who now calls Minnesota home, Sproule began his career with the traditional Irish music group Skara Brae, collaborating with fellow DADGAD pioneer Michael O’Domhnaill of the Bothy Band. Later he became a founding member of the internationally known Irish band Altan, considered one of the best in the world. He continues to perform with Irish music greats, including box player Billy McComiskey, fiddler and composer Liz Carroll, and flute and fiddle duo Dermy and Tara Diamond. He continues to influence a new generation: Sproule’s “The Death of Queen Jane” was featured in the 2013 Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. Sproule has taught at the University College Dublin and the University of Minnesota, and is a DADGAD guitar instructor at the Center for Irish Music in St. Paul, Minnesota.
His Take on DADGAD: “I first heard of DADGAD in the late ’60s on the sleeve notes of a Bert Jansch solo album. His playing, in whatever tuning, was of course inspiring,” Sproule recalls. “I used it then occasionally to accompany songs. Around 1973 or so I accidentally discovered it worked well for me in accompanying Irish dance music—reels, jigs, and so on—and I began to use it a lot for everything. . . . [And] it works well for instrumentals I compose myself.” Among the benefits of using DADGAD, Sproule notes, is the “very versatile tuning enables us to get an immense amount of variety in voicing. I generally don’t use full chords in DADGAD and I think this suits Irish music, which is really a genre that has developed as a purely unilinear, non-chordal music. It complements the melody and doesn’t trap it—at least the way I try to play. It truly has a literal quality of openness. “Since the tuning comes down to D and A with built-in droning, it magically reproduces the situation of the Irish Uilleann pipes, on which so much of our music was formed—and those pipes have D and A drones.”
Player tip: “Standard tuning—which I also love—as most people play it, boxes a melody in, traps it,” Sproule says. “DADGAD is quite literally an open tuning—it harmonizes, resonates, but doesn’t tie things down. “Resonance is one of the beauties of the tuning—it makes us aware of the sound of the strings we are not actually playing.” In 1996, he told Acoustic Guitar: “The way I put chords to songs is totally intuitive. I can’t really describe how I do it. Most of the time, I’m not playing full chords at all. I’m playing basses and bits of chords and there are always droning strings in the background. You could break it down into chords, but it’s not a matter of chords. It’s a matter of varying the bass lines and the harmonies.”
I ran into one of the Symphony Board Members a couple of days ago and she reminded me that this was the 40th anniversary of the Symphony. So I felt it was worth reminding people that $20,000 symphony concerts don’t “just happen” and that there is a lot that goes into a concert. Here is a reprint of an article that I sent to the Townsman some years ago. Nothing much has changed; each concert is still a masterpiece of music and organization.
IT’S SYMPHONY SEASON AND IT’S A JUGGLING ACT: Symphony of Kootenays 2010/2011 Season. Article published in The Townsman, Wednesday October 13, 2010, page 23
It would seem to be simple enough. A bunch of musicians figure they have a potential audience and decide to give a public performance. They practice and rehearse; rent a venue; put up the posters; sell the tickets; play the gig and maybe walk away with some change in their pockets. For a rock quartet it is almost that simple but for a symphony orchestra there is nothing simple about the whole venture.
Some of the problem is simply a product of scale. There are more musicians and more complex music. This in turn creates problems with financing and logistics. The Symphony of the Kootenays has been around for over 35 years and each year it is a juggling act of obtaining grants, sponsors and pull together the actual logistics of staging a concert. The organization’s annual budget is around $150,000 and each concert costs around $20,000 to $30,000. Naturally ticket sales only cover a fraction of the costs.
As with most not-for-profit organizations the grant process has become more challenging. The monies available to not-for-profits have shrunk and there is fierce competition for what remains. Most available grants have strings attached. There are demands for Canadian content and prerequisites for adventurous programming. The granting organizations want to see the “best bang for their buck”. They feel it is important to have significant Canadian content and to promote adventurous programming. Compliance with these prerequisites, because of copy right issues, further increase costs.
Local corporate sponsors have been most generous over the years but often the decision to support local arts programs is out of local control. The final decisions are made at corporate headquarters and these may be located half a continent away. Despite this the symphony has managed to attract significant corporate sponsors and these have made the idea of a symphony season feasible and possible.
The whole process of a concert season starts with the musical director and conductor Bruce Dunn and his selection of music for the up coming season. Bruce has to balance his duties as musical director of both the Kamloops Symphony, The Symphony of the Kootenays and his teaching activities across the province. He must strike a balance between the conditions of the grant applications, the skill set and availability of musicians (including soloists), the relatively small amount of rehearsal time available and the costs of the music. The latter is no small amount. The music has to be rented, distributed to the musicians and returned to the publishing house at the end of the concerts. Late compliance with the conditions of the rental can involve financial penalties. If the work is recent there are additional copyright costs as well. Printed music is not cheap. For example, the Arvo Part choral music for the Christmas concert last year cost an additional $1,500.
Once the season’s concert programs have been selected then the logistics kick in. The composition of a Symphony Orchestra is not set in concrete. The size and variety of the orchestra is dictated by the music chosen. An orchestra to perform the early music of Haydn is significantly smaller than, say, the music of more modern composers. The equation is simple, the more musicians required then the greater the expense. More modern or adventurous music invariably requires more musicians and more expensive music.
For each concert the musicians have to be selected, contracts agreed upon, fees organized, and travel expenses negotiated. The musicians are all professionals and as professionals they need to be paid at a rate that is consistent with the going rate. Musicians for the concert come from far a field and there is fairly stiff competition for their services. Financially the local symphony is at a disadvantage when competing with larger population centres in Alberta. The musicians’ contracts are generally a five service agreement, three rehearsals and two concerts, spread over a three day week end. Once in town the musician have to be billeted. The cost of hotels for all the musicians would be too onerous for the organization to bear. If there is also a concert is out of town then transport of the musicians and instruments also has to be arranged. So apart from the organization, funding, music and logistics there is an army of volunteers to take care of the musicians while they are here.
That’s a lot of balls to keep in the air. And, of course, inevitably the question arises, why bother? Classical music is definitely not at the top of most local resident’s agenda. Then again why bother with an Arts Council, a Railway Museum, local theatre and the Key City or for that matter a Hockey team. At the best of times, apart from perhaps the Hockey team, local support for these activities is probably at fairly low ebb. Most of us do not spend a lot of time at any of these events, functions or facilities but they are all part of a “value added” profile for the City of Cranbrook. It attracts new residents, business and builds the profile of the city as a business, cultural and educational hub. For all residents this can only be a plus.
So here we are in October at the beginning of the Symphony season. All the balls are in the air and the first concert is scheduled for Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 at the Key City Theatre. This gala concert will feature a program of music by one of the big “Bs” of classical music (Bach, Beethoven & Brahms). Of the three the music of Ludwig Van Beethoven is probably the better known. The piano concerto #5 (The Emperor) will feature guest soloist Sarah Aleem. Currently Sarah lives and studies in Montreal but is returning to her home town for this concert. Also on the program will be Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture and his Symphony #6 (The Pastoral)
The annual Christmas concert will held December 3rd & 4th and will feature music of a Christmas fair by Purcell and Handel, including the Messiah. Other concerts are scheduled for February and April. In total there will be 5 concerts in the season.
– Rod Wilson
The following image was published in the Townsman following the early concerts of the 2010 / 2011 season.
Published in the Townsman, October 29, 2010, page 23: “A Triumphant Home Coming”.– Rod Wilson
A LITTLE VOODOO – Contemporary Blues, Centre 64, Saturday October 17, 2015, 8pm. This is the third concert in the fall Jazz and Blues Festival series.
Everyone would like to play music but for a potential musician the first step is deciding to actually go ahead and do it. The next step is to get hold of an instrument, take some lessons and start practicing. Then there is the whole process of developing a professional skill set to make it all worth while. It is supposed to be fun, and it often is, but as the old saying goes “10% inspiration, 90% sweat”. So it isn’t as easy as some people imagine. Then there is the search for musically compatible partners to maybe form a working band. By this time you and your musical partners have been playing for years and the aim is then to develop a really tight group sound. And, of course, if you are a rock/blues musician you have “to have the moves” for an on stage performance. At last you have arrived. The sound is tight, the moves groove, but lo, everything is not quite as it should be. It all starts to become a little to rote and stale. Even in the most popular and successful bands then comes a time when every performance starts sounding the same. The music has all been done before and even the banter in between tunes sounds just a little bit too rehearsed.There are no surprises and, often that is exactly what the audience wants, but musically it may not be that satisfying. But then along comes A Little Voodoo (Ron Burke – lead guitar; Tom Knowles – bass guitar; and Rob Vulic – drums) a Blues / Rock outfit whose avowed aim is to go beyond tight and loosen it all up a bit. Risk is the name of the game and the result is “real live music”. The last set list Ron put together was back in the 90’s so the performances are coming out of the air and everybody has to be on his toes. This Calgary band was a real treat for a Kimberley audience that may not have been used to loud, in your face blues/rock music that owed a lot to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Hendrix and the like. Never-the-less they took it in their stride and obviously enjoyed the opening tune with the refrain “I’m tired of living hand to mouth”. What followed was a night of exciting music that included a stellar version of Donovan’s (remember him, a soft sell folkie from way back in the 60s) of Sunshine Superman. There was nothing soft sell about this version!! Not to be outdone by all that came before in the evening the band finished the night with a lesson in constructive feed back. At the end of which Ron finally left his Epiphone guitar standing in the rack while it continued to echo its way through its feed back riffs. To help those riffs reverberate in your mind’s eye here are some images from the evening.
I hate to sound repetitive but the Stage 64 / Centre 64 organization have scored top marks again. Another sold out show, another stellar performance and mucho thanks to the organizers, sponsors and volunteers.
Remembering Phil Woods – DownBeat Posted 2015/10/02
Phil Woods, a trail blazing bebop saxophonist and an NEA Jazz Master, died Sept. 29 in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He was 83.
The cause of death was complications from emphysema. Woods, who had battled respiratory problems for years, announced his retirement from music on Sept. 4 after a concert at Pittsburgh’s Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. That Sept. 4 concert was a tribute to Charlie Parker’s album Bird With Strings. It was, perhaps, a fitting conclusion to the career of an alto saxophonist who was deeply influenced by Parker. But Woods developed his own voice and subsequently became one of the most revered alto players of his generation. Over the course of his illustrious career, Woods toured with jazz icons such as Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich, Clark Terry and Benny Goodman.
Born Philip Wells Woods in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1931, he began playing saxophone during childhood. As a young man, Woods studied improvisation with pianist Lennie Tristano, and he studied classical music at The Juilliard School in New York City. In 1968 Woods moved to France, where he formed the European Rhythm Machine and composed music for Danish and Belgian radio. Upon his return to the United States in 1972, he recorded the seminal albums Images (1975, with Michel Legrand) and Live From The Showboat (1976), both of which won Grammy Awards. One of Woods’ most well-known solos was on Billy Joel’s 1977 hit single “Just The Way You Are,” which earned Joel two Grammy Awards. Woods also played on recordings by Paul Simon and Steely Dan.
Other albums in Woods’ discography include Dizzy Gillespie Meets Phil Woods Quintet (1987), All Bird’s Children (1990), The Rev & I (a 1998 Blue Note date featuring Johnny Griffin) and Man With The Hat (a 2011 collaboration with saxophonist Grace Kelly, to whom he was a mentor). Woods topped the Alto Saxophone category in the DownBeat Critics Poll seven times between 1970 and 1980.
In a January 1982 cover story for DownBeat, Woods reflected on his career and the origin of his style: “Jazz has been good to me, it really has, but I would hate to think that any young man would feel that by copying the Phil Woods sound he could have the same life and career. I never began by imitating. I began by trying to become a musician and an alto sax player. I never thought I sounded like Charlie Parker, though he was an inescapable shadow in the ’40s or in the ’50s, if you were a sax player. You couldn’t be a musician without having his licks pop up. And without Louis Armstrong, we wouldn’t have any jazz licks at all; Bird would be the first guy to tell you that’s the truth.”
In addition to his contributions to jazz as an artist and bandleader, Woods was also a jazz educator who frequently worked with college students at institutions such as DePaul University. Woods was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2007. In a 2006 interview with the NEA, Woods described his first saxophone lessons: “I got a teacher by the name of Harvey LaRose and that’s where my life changed because I was going for lessons and I was faking it. I wasn’t practicing, but I’d go back the following week and I could play the lesson. Now if I’d had one of those more or less straitlaced teachers, he might have said, ‘OK, kid, you’re faking it.’ Mr. LaRose said, ‘You’re using your ear to play music. This ear thing is your most important gift.’ He realized that immediately. Mr. LaRose played alto clarinet, violin, guitar, piano—taught all of those instruments, repaired all of those instruments—and arranged with the local big bands. He … recognized that I had something to say on the saxophone because he drew me in. Within three, four months I was hooked. I loved it.”
(Note: DownBeat will publish a tribute to Phil Woods in our December 2015 issue. To read a DownBeat 2007 interview with Woods, click here. To read a review of Woods’ performance at the 2013 Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles, click here. )
This is Phil Woods in mid-career before his chronic lung disease forced him to use canned oxygen on stage just so that he could play. He literally performed right up to the end. He announced his retirement September 4 and died September 29th. Remarkable eh!
LOCALS COFFEE HOUSE Saturday October 3, 2015, 7:30 pm at the Studio / Stage Door in Cranbrook.
Fall must be well under way if LOCALS and the HOME GROWN MUSIC SOCIETY are getting ready to kick off the season. LOCALS is the first out of the gate with a line up of fresh young talent, new performers and old regulars. On the bill for this show was 11th Avenue Stopover (Beth Crawley – vocals and guitar, Doug Crawley – percussion and Rod Wilson on Cittern) and their brand of traditional songs and tunes from mostly down east; Dawson Rutledge is a fresh new face with an original approach to a one man band configuration. He plays guitars, sings and uses foot pedals to play the Cojon (Peruvian Wooden Box drum) and muted tambourine; The soft edged (for this show) rock quartet Every Other Tuesday (Lou Wiliams – guitar and vocals, Wes – lead guitar, Adrian – Djembe and Reiner on electric bass. Bill Renwick (Guitar and vocals) once again graced the stage with a bracket of his original songs that always leaves a wisp of Neil Young hanging in the air. Stellar vocalist Shauna Plant has hooked up with the relatively new performer Ian Jones (guitar and vocals) for a very country flavored bracket of duets that was almost breath taking. And, last but not least, a bunch of young performers (Sarah – Red Heads Rule, Sheldon, James, Harry and Dawson) under the banner of Lucas Hanny and the Fable Hoppers demonstrated that there is a musical life outside the confines of rock and roll. Their particular mix of guitars, vocals, Cojon, Ukeleles and fiddle are some what in the tradition of Cranbrook’s run-a-way success of a few years back – The Good Ole’ Goats. To keep everything on track the MC Carter Gulseth alone was worth the price of admission. Here are some more images from another great evening of local music.
And the many personas of the Master of Ceremonies Carter Gulseth. So that raps it up until THE GROWN MUSIC SOCIETY steps up to the plate with their Coffee House in Kimberley’s Centre 64 on Saturday October 24, 2015.
TYLER HORNBY B3 TRIO, Centre 64, Saturday September 26, 2015, 8pm. This is the second concert in the fall Jazz and Blues Festival series.
The Tyler Hornby B3 Trio is basically a Jazz organ trio with Tyler Hornby on drums, Steve Fletcher on B3 organ keyboards and Aaron Young on electric guitar. They play Bluesy, Funky, rock solid music in the style of the classic Hammond B3 Trios of the 50s and 60s (a la Jimmy Smith).
To play an organ as a professional musician is a tough gig. Maybe not as much now as in days gone by. But in Bach’s day the musician had to have access to a pipe organ and that usually meant a trip to church to play a huge pipe organ in a monumental church or cathedral. Similarly, in the early days of Jazz, pipe organs were only found in churches and big theaters. Once again “Mohammad had to go to the mountain” just to play. For a jazz musician there was the added obstacle of the mechanics of the keyboard. There is a significant delay from the time the organ key is depressed until the sound is produced by the pipes. “On a normal Pipe Organ the lag from striking the key to hearing the sound is about half a beat behind and this plays hell with a musician’s mind” – Clare Fischer. The great Jazz pianist Fats Waller was probably the first, and possibly the only successful jazz musician to manage to make the pipe organ “swing”. Although, in the late 80’s, Dick Hyman recorded some Fats Waller pieces on the Emery Theatre Wurlitzer in Cincinnati that sound pretty good. By and large Jazz musicians left the pipe organ alone. That started to change in the late 1930’s when the Hammond B3 Company started manufacturing “portable” Electric organs. Portability is a relative term – the instruments still weighed 400lbs with an additional 100lb for the Leslie speaker. Jazz musicians did start to take notice. Earliest jazz performers included Wild Bill Davis, Sir Charles Thompson, Milt Buckner, and even Count Basie at one point. It was in the late 1950s when Jimmy Smith exploded onto the jazz scene with an engagement at Small’s Paradise in Harlem. This, and the classic Blue Note records that followed, initiated a tectonic shift in the way jazz organ was played. His playing ushered in an era of the classic “Hammond B-3 Trio” of organ, guitar and drums. He used his right hand to play single note lines on the top keyboard console, his left hand to play chords on the second keyboard and his feet to play bass lines on the foot pedals. The whole concept sounds, at the very least, to be energetic, athletic and musically very challenging . On top of that he manipulated the draw bars to emulate the organ stops of the conventional organ. He literally set the musical standard for organ trios. Over the years the instrument has under gone changes. The original company folding at one stage before it was resurrected by a new company to produce more contemporary versions of the classic Hammond-B3. Modern electronics and programmable keyboards have reconfigured the organ and eliminated the weight problem. The weight of the huge Leslie Speaker remains but it does work well with the light weight electronic keyboards. Still there are musicians like Larry Goldings, Dr. Lonnie Smith and Joey Defrancesco who still chose to haul the cumbersome Hammond B-3 from gig to gig. In the Tyler Hornby Trio Steve Fletcher gets the job done with two electronic Keyboards, pedals and a Leslie Speaker.
This concert was a good bookend to the Gabriel Palatchi Band concert in this same venue a couple of weeks ago. Gabriel’s band was a stripped down trio of drums, keyboards and bass (no guitar) and performed music out of a funky Latin sensibility. The Tyler Hornby Trio is more into the classic Hammond B3 groove. Of course the presence of such an outstanding guitarist as Aaron Young cements the basic B3 sound. The band kicked off the evening with Locus, an original tune by Tyler and followed that with a Sam Rivers ballad called Beatrice. The first set included Larry Goldings Crawdaddy, To See Your Eyes Again (another Tyler original – who said drummers can’t write ballads?) and Aaron Young’s Chisel. By this time one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be impressed by Aaron’s superb fleet of fingers and funky guitar playing. We rarely get to see and hear guitar player of this caliber. The band kicked off the second set with Miles Davis’ classic Nardis followed by Aaron’s Rabbit Hole and Tyler’s Tessla’s Trance. This tune was a slow burner that built up a head of steam. Two more tunes, Alone Together and Tyler’s Big Mountain Bounce followed before the final blow out encore on the classic Charlie Parker’s Billie’s Bounce. So that was it – a nice mixture of original and classic tunes to resurrect one’s taste for the classic Hammond B3 trio sound. Needless to say I spent the following week digging though my collection of Jimmy Smith and Larry Young’s Hammond B3 recordings just to perpetuate Saturday night’s groove. Here are some images from the evening.
I am always a little surprised by Kimberley audiences. The Centre 64 Concert series offers up some pretty hard core music that normally, given the demographics of the area, might not be the music of choice for Kimberley. However, as I said, surprise, surprise, Kimberley audiences turn out in full force. Once again this concert was sold out. And, of course, thanks must go to the organizing committee and the volunteers that make it possible.
And here is a bonus. I tried to find Aaron Young’s version of the Charlie Parker classic Billie’s Bounce but this is the best I could find. It is a version by the Swedish guitarist Andreas Oberg. This may introduce a new guitarist and give you some of the flavor of the Tyler Hornby Trio’s encore for the evening.
Tommy Emmanuel is a monster acoustic guitar player and in the past I have reviewed some of his You Tube performances – Tommy Emmanuel. His forte seems to be in the country / pop arena and while that is fine there is a whole world of music and many guitar players that never make it to the front page of the “show bis” press. The one guitar player that immediately comes to mind is Martin Simpson. Martin celebrated his 60th birthday recently so he has been around a long time. He first came to my attention when he performed several times at the Studio Stage Door in Cranbrook. That was many years ago in the late 90’s and I have been hooked on his music ever since. He is not a pop musician. His music has a lot more substance than that. He started out in the traditional music scene in Britain and for a significant period of time he was the accompanist for June Tabor (who can forget their version of Richard Thompson’s Strange Affair). Martin has always been a restless individual traveling the world. He was a resident in North America for a number of years before returning to Britain. He plays music from all across the musical spectrum. His emphasis has always been on music with a solid traditional basis. His guitar and banjo playing has always been noted for spectacular precision and beautiful sound. I think that is what really set him apart from most other performers. He has a natural acoustic sound that your average acoustic guitarist would absolutely die for. I know a lot of people don’t care for his singing but I find his voice is more than appropriate for the material he performs. In fact I rather like it. So the attached You Tube video below is basically an interview in which Martin takes the opportunity to display and review the instruments that are part of his professional arsenal. It is interesting to note that he is not particularly interested in vintage instruments. He is a great believer in modern instruments and, with the exception of only one Martin guitar, all his instruments are modern instruments hand crafted by some of the top luthiers of today. I am of the same mind. Why spend thousands and thousands of dollars on instruments whose value has been inflated by the collectors who may only want to hang the guitar on the wall? Isn’t it better to spend $5,000 – $10,00 on a superbly crafted modern instrument that can only improve with age. Martin also takes the opportunity to demonstrate his technique, tunings and approach to music. The side trip into how he prepares his nails is also of interest. For British Columbians his recent acquisition of a hand crafted Romero Banjo (27 minutes into the video) should give us some sense of pride in that a local luthier has proven to be more than note worthy on the international scene …… Romero handcrafted custom instruments . So here he is – Martin Simpson, his instruments, superb sound and technique. Enjoy………………………
and here is a bonus of June Tabor and Martin Simpson performing Richard Thompson’s Strange Affair. Written by the Sufi poet Si Fudul al-Hawari, translated and set to music by Richard Thompson.
and some magnificent melodic bass solos by Stefano on a huge 6-string bass that added variety to the sonic spectrum. These four session musicians from Calgary love to play jazz and the gig here in Kimberly gave them ample opportunity to delve into a selection of songs and tunes from the Jazz Fake Book. The Jazz Fake Book, for those who don’t know, is one of several published, copyright approved, collections of a huge number of jazz standards and songs from the American Song Book. It is almost a bible for improvising jazz musician. “Want to play some tunes? What have you got in the Fake Book that we could play?” That’s pretty well how an “off the cuff” session would play out. There are no elaborated arrangements, the tunes are usually presented as an abbreviated one or two page chart that notates the basic melody, chords and possibly some brief instructions about style and tempo. Nothing is set in stone and the musicians are free to make any number of musical choices in performing the piece. In doing so, some of the “off the cuff” choices can yield some adventurous and interesting musical moments. Case in point is the quartet’s rendition of the well known I Remember April. Who would have thought that this ballad had such potential as a hard driving Samba. Thier version would be rig
ht at home at a carnival in Rio. Alan has a thing for the songs of Jimmy Van Heusen and and during the evening he indulged his passion with more than one Van Heusen song. The standout, of course, was Here’s That Rainy Day (from the show Carnival in Flanders) with some brilliant mallet and brushes work by Tyler Hornby behind Stefano’s extended bass solo. Some other tunes that came off the pages of the Fake Book were Somewhere Over the Rainbow, How High the Moon and the Louis Armstrong classic What a Wonderful World. Another high light of the evening was Alan’s Stride/be-bop solo version of Summertime. Despite their popularity there are some tunes that just never wear out. Summertime is one of them.
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