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.”
The Home Grown Coffee House, October 24, 2015; Centre 64 – The first of the season.
Once again the Home Grown Coffee House Society with the aid of MC Bill St. Amand, has plundered the human resources of the community to present another marvelous evening of music. The cross section of the community was ably represented by the older cadre of musicians – Jim Marshall (and his one man band); The Blarney Pilgrims (Wally Smith and Rod Wilson on percussion, button accordion and cittern). The Blarney Pilgrims played a selection of Celtic tunes (Malchy’s Set, The Mudgee Waltz / Bucks Camp Down at Monroe) and also a little splash of Eastern European influences (The Sarajevo Set) thrown in for good measure. The young were out in force with Nick Skibsted on piano with a selection of instrumentals that included the ragtime masterpiece The Entertainer; Mac Watson with some original materialon vocals and guitar; Maddie Keiver and Kyle Albright also on vocals and guitar. The ladies of the town were well represented by the vocal harmonies of Wild Honey (Laura Cain – fiddle, Shelby Knutson – guitar and Jessica Neidermeyer on vocals). Newcomers to the community were represented by Tamara Sonntag (vocals and guitar) and Robin Periera and his sidekick Curtis. All in all the evening once again demonstrated the musical depth of this community. Here are images from the night
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So that’s it for this show. The next Home Grown Coffee House will be November 24, 2015.
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
FINALE PRINT MUSIC 2014 for quickly creating customized notated music.
There is the old joke – “How do you stop a guitar player from playing? – The answer “You just give him a page of sheet music.”
Unfortunately it is just so true. Most amateur, and a sizeable number of professional guitarists, cannot read music. Not only that, they often take great pride in their inability to read musical notation. Just think about that! Is there any other profession where professional practitioners would take pride in their inability to master a basic skill set ? Who has ever heard of say, an actor, who can’t read. Just think about how professionally limiting that would be for an actor. How would he or she learn their scripts? Would they have to get some one to teach them the parts and try and memorize the entire performance. Just imagine the nightmare of rehearsals. And for each new play or script the whole process would begin all over again. In the very early days of Greek Drama that may not have been a problem. There were the classic plays that once committed to memory could be trotted out year after year without any real need for change. Present day rock/pop musicians are in a some what similar situation. Once you have the classic rock repertoire down pat you can roll on year after year without any need to develop or change. But the other side of that coin is to just think about the limitations that imposes on one’s repertoire and possibilities .
I confess that my ability to sight read has been limited. Throw me a piece of sheet of music with a simple melody line and I have to laboriously work my way through the piece and commit it to memory. As I have grown older and my appetite for new and interesting music has out stripped my ability to memorize new music it has become imperative that I find a better way expand my repertoire. That means I need to improve my sight reading skills to the extent that I no longer need to memorize every piece of music I want to play. I want and need to improve my reading skills. Perhaps not to the level of interpreting a symphonic score but at least to be able interpret and perform music at a reasonably professional level. This is where Music Notation Software comes in. I used a program called SONGWORKS for a few years. It was cheap ($60) and clunky. I have been aware of the SIBELIUS software for years but the cost put that out of my reach. FINALE is a competing piece of software that also has a flagship version that is functionally competitive with Sibelius. It is also is some what expensive. FINALE has another product called FINALE Print Music 2014. This is a down scale version that is both affordable ($120 from Amazon.ca) and very easy to learn. My experience with SONGWORKS was probably a good primer for the FINALE product but I suspect any musician could get a handle on the software in one or two weeks. The notation entry is fairly intuitive, with lots of options to produce sheet music or a score that when printed looks and is very professional. Transposition of music from key to key is a breeze. Transposition within a key is also very quick and simple. Have you ever wonder how a piece of music would sound a third, fourth or fifth, etc, higher or lower? No need to wonder any more. A few clicks of a mouse and there it is. There is the option in the software to harmonize music in the fashion of Band-in-a-Box. There is a playback feature with a bank of sample sounds that enables you actually hear the music. The canned sounds are not the greatest but I suspect that there are opportunities in the software to access more realistic sounds. For melody lines I tend to just use the Flute or Oboe selections. The guitars are okay but the mandolin is horrible.
In the past I have had my printed music stored in a zillion three ring binders and the task of finding an older piece of music has always been problematic. But once you have notated the music with FINALE it is always there in an organized directory on your computer. Similarly, word processed lyrics can be treated in the much same way. If you need a hard copy, for whatever reason, just print it as required. Alternatively, transfer the files to a Tablet. Although not the complete answer there are advantages to this approach. With an appropriate clamp a tablet can be attached to a microphone stand and all your music is just a finger tap away. A thing to note is that FINALE Print Music 2014 files can only be read with the original software. It is possible to install that original software on a tablet. The license allows you a month of full use before the license needs to be activated. That doesn’t really need to be a problem. I do all the entry and editing on a desk top computer then transfer a copy of the files to the tablet for practice and performance. Even when the license has not been activated on the tablet it is possible to view and playback the files and that’s all one needs from the Tablet. You won’t be able to edit or save the altered file on the tablet but those functions are more easily done on the desk top.
I use FINALE in conjunction with two data bases of traditional tunes. THE SESSION https://thesession.org/tunes has just about every traditional tune in as many versions you could possibly wish for and it also has a lot of background information on sources, recordings, composers and artists. JC’S ABC TUNE FINDER http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind is another useful source.
http://balkanarama.com/charts.htm and http://voluntocracy.org/Music/tunes.html are useful sources of Eastern European melodies. I am sure there are a lot more out there. I am still looking for Middle Eastern and Turkish data bases. Of course a little surfing of YOUTUBE often turns up some interesting tunes that you can search the databases to get the notation of the tune. Type the notation of the tune into FINALE and use that as a learning tool. The down side to all this is the shear number of tunes that will end up on your tablet that are just begging you to practice, polish and move into your repertoire.
So that is my recent experiences with FINALE Print Music 2014. It is a piece of software I can readily recommend. It is available from many on-line sources but the cheapest and easiest is probably Amazon.ca. For $120, plus taxes and no shipping costs it could be on your doorstep in three days.
There’s an old joke that goes: Why did the Canadian cross the road? Answer: To get to the middle of the road. Likewise (so they say), if you cut the average Canadian open you would find two words engraved on his or her heart. One would be “moderate”. The other would be “nice”.
and also
Stephen Harper didn’t do “nice”. His default setting was “nasty”, and he positively revelled in it. He was a control freak who instinctively tried to hurt and smear those who disagreed with him, and in his government even the time of day was a state secret.
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.
Cranbrook Community Theatre – Making God Laughfull dress rehearsal at the Studio Stage Door in Cranbrook. Wednesday October 7, 2015, 7:30pm.
A play written by Sean Grennan, Directed by Trevor Lundy, starring Melodie Hull as the mother Ruthie and Michael Prestwich as her husband Bill; Gina Martin as daughter Maddie, David Booth as older son Rick(y) and Woody McGuire as Father Tom, the youngest son.
Movies are about the wham, bam, bang factor with lot of action an unlikely plot twists. As a general rule, films do not emphasize inter-personal relationships and character development. Of course there are exceptions, but I think the general rule applies. Live theater does not lend itself to spectacular car crashes, chases, sinking ships and space Opera cliches. As a result plays tend to have more elements of human relationships. That is the case with the latest Cranbrook Community Theatre production of Making God Laugh. Here, without giving too much away is the synopsis of the play – “Making God Laugh follows the lives of Bill and Ruthie and their three adult children through more than 30 years of holiday gatherings. Sometimes uproariously funny and other times very moving, the play examines all of the facets involved in being part of a crazy, messed up, but mostly normal, dysfunctional family.”
Tickets are available at Lotus Books and at the door for October 9, 10, 14,15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24 performances at the Studio Stage/ Door in Cranbrook.
Here are the images from the Dress Rehearsal:
THANKSGIVING
CHRISTMAS
NEW YEARS CELEBRATIONS AND THE IMPEDING CHAOS OF A “Y2K” MELTDOWN
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.
