chris wong in sync

Last July, Victoria's Daniel Lapp and his band Lappelectro performed a set at the WOMAD Festival in Redmond, Washington that was astoundingly brilliant. Anyone who was fortunate enough to be in the audience for the show experienced something rare and profound. As for the band members, Lapp sums up the performance this way: "It was the highlight of our lives."

I could have easily missed Lappelectro given the premier world music groups that were playing simultaneously on the festival's various stages. But I wanted to catch Lapp, in part because he's Canadian. So I shlepped my family over to the stage where Lappelectro was performing, not knowing what to expect.

What I ended up hearing was an exhilarating fusion of jazz, electronica (without a DJ) and roots music. Lapp showed amazing facility and vigour on instruments he switched between including trumpet, six-string electric violin, keyboards and tenor saxophone. The other players made a strong sonic impact and contributed killer grooves. My daughter somehow slept through it, but like the rest of the ecstatic crowd, I became totally immersed in the band's entrancing music. Among all the groups from around the world I heard at WOMAD, surprisingly, Lappelectro turned out to be the most compelling.

Now Lappelectro is doing a short Pacific Northwest tour that includes a March 4 show at the Element Lounge. Just in time for the tour, Lapp got 500 copies made of a CD that documents the unforgettable festival gig: Live at Seattle WOMAD. I was eager to hear the disc to see if the music held up away from the euphoria of the event. Despite the lo-fi quality, the CD reconfirms Lappelectro's incendiary power.

So how did an unknown band from Victoria become a huge hit at a major festival like WOMAD? In January 2001, Lappelectro started playing a weekly Sunday gig at Victoria's Steamer's Pub. Lapp, bassist Rick May, drummer Jason Deatherage and DJ Kita Kaze improvised the performances and recorded them for seven home-burned, limited edition CDs.

Then, on the strength of Lapp's international reputation as a vigorous fiddler, WOMAD booked Lapp to perform solo at the festival. Lapp, who was also playing with the Puentes Brothers and Northumbrian piper/fiddler Kathryn Tickell at WOMAD, decided to do the solo slot with Lappelectro. But while May and Deatherage joined Lapp, he didn't bring along the DJ and instead enlisted guitarist Justin Haynes from Toronto.

That was a key change. Haynes is adept at "live sampling"-using technology to grab musical fragments played on stage, which he then manipulates to create absorbing soundscapes. That's exactly what he did at WOMAD to great effect. Lapp did the same, often with lines he played himself. Lapp "stacked" multiples samples of his playing and harmonized on top of the layers to create the illusion of a trumpet or violin section. If this is the future of jazz, I'm all for it.

Lapp says his experience of living in Vancouver and contributing to the improvised music scene, as a member of New Orchestra Workshop and groups including Unity, prepared him well for Lappelectro's completely improvised approach. Actually, he played many styles of music in Vancouver, especially when he was a member of 13 bands at once. In Victoria, there aren't as many high-level musicians to collaborate with, but Lapp has developed a good mix of playing local shows (including concerts with the Victoria Symphony), working on projects such as collecting more than 1,000 fiddle tunes that are indigenous to BC, performing a tribute to Chet Baker, and touring as a solo artist and with groups such as Bowfire (11 violinists).

The 36-year-old multi-instrumentalist hopes to focus on Lappelectro, which plans to eventually record an album. If the studio-recorded bonus track on Live At Seattle WOMAD is any indication, that recording will nicely complement the deep pleasures of hearing Lappelectro live.

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I first heard the Pat Metheny Group play live in 1982 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. According to the review I wrote in the Ubyssey, it was an "awesome" concert. I don't use that adjective anymore, but I can say that each subsequent performance by Metheny and his group that I caught since then was equally tremendous. So I'm excited that two decades later, on March 16, the group will play at the Q.E. Theatre.

Three members of the band remain the same: the always-compelling Metheny on guitar, keyboardist Lyle Mays and bassist Steve Rodby. But the group has some interesting new additions, including multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Richard Bona, trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu and drummer Antonio Sanchez. The group's just-released Speaking of Now, featuring the new line-up, stays true to the distinctive sound that has drawn me to Metheny's group over the years. But while Speaking of Now doesn't make any radical new statements, the musicians create subtle colours that I haven't heard from the band before.