DAY 8
UGETSU +4 @ The Art Gallery
After a good night’s sleep – finally! – and with no work to go to, I was ready on this day to let loose and really dig into the fest. Waking up to more gray and pissing rain was not part of the picture I had in my head about how the day would unfold, and, unfortunately, it sorta set the tone from there. (Come on, don’t tell me it hasn’t been getting YOU down…)
So, I set out for the Art Gallery, determined that since it was now July, and the oft-crappy June was over, it was officially summer and I was going to dress as such. (I can recall another fest, maybe 6 years ago when a writer friend came up from Minnesota for the fest and had to go out and buy a pair of pants because it was so cold and wet and all he’d brought were shorts. It was summer, right? Who needs pants?) Of course we all know that summer in the rest of the hemisphere doesn’t equal summer in Vancouver, at least weather-wise.
So. Where was I? Dressed for summer, which had to be happening somewhere in the world. (But I’m not bitter.) I found the Art Gallery crawling with people, but not all of them appeared to be jazz fans. A legalize pot smoke-in ‘event’ (not so much a rally, really – everyone was too baked to stand up for long, I think) was happening on the steps beside the stage, and was slightly distracting. I suspect each camp was surprised as the other, to find the other occupying the space on “their” day. Anyway, residual smoke not necessarily a bad thing, especially in light of the music being performed and other external and internal factors.
Ugetsu, the terrific, punchy, huge energy tribute group added a few instruments for their homage to the phenomenal music of the late, great, crazy composer/pianist Thelonious Monk. That just HAD to get through the persistent fog in my head, right? I’m distracted just thinking about it. There was one other thing I could try. To the beer garden. Thank god they were serving Hefeweizen or they might’ve had a scene on their hands (hey, considering this is a Granville Island Brewing sponsored fest, you’d think they’d have their (and my) ‘Beer of Summer’ available at all venues serving alcohol. Not so!) So, beer in hand, good seat w/ a pretty decent view of the stage, I figured I was as ready to enjoy the music as I was gonna get. Unfortunately there was to be no connecting for me, and frankly, I was getting really pissed off by it.
PEGGY LEE BAND @ The Ironworks
After sleeping off my contact high and slight breakfast beer buzz, I made my way to everyone’s new favourite venue, The Ironworks. It’s the new Studio 16, if ya know what I mean. Hey, what happened to Studio 16 this year anyway? Anyone know? Must find out. Anyway, The Ironworks is gonna have more music shows, right? That’s what I hear.
The plan was to check out first set of Peggy Lee Band and head to Cultch for Italian Instabile Orch. Found out in advance Lee’s band would be one 90-minute set, and it became decision time. Something pulled me toward Ironworks, and so I went with it. It may have been familiarity. Lee’s beautifully touching compositions played by some more of our great musicians felt like a comfort zone to me, and that felt right. The power of the bop didn’t get me earlier, but there was to be no avoiding the raw emotionality of Lee’s music, and it was not such a comfortable thing in the end. It reached me in a way it hadn’t quite before – it was so deeply affecting that it almost broke me wide open. Sitting here nearly 24 hours later, it amazes me yet again how the power of music can take you away from your reality, and other times it can just nail you right where you live. Last night, it was the latter, and that was a really hard thing to deal with at the time. But Lee’s talents as a player and her gifts as a composer are tied up in an honesty and a realness that come through in her performances, and it would be unfair to not be reciprocal in a sense. Not that I was going to run on stage and confess myself, but I felt compelled as a member of her audience to listen and truly feel what her band’s music was helping me to feel, despite my urge to flee the short film I was screening inside my head to their soundtrack.
(Peggy Lee, cello; Jeremy Berkman, trombone; Brad Turner, trumpet; André Lachance, e. bass; Ron Samworth, guitar; Dylan van der Schyff, drums)
NOW ORCHESTRA @ Performance Works
The only smart thing to do next was to be pummeled, shaken and cleansed by the big band of on-the-spot creativity called the NOW. I needed my clock cleaned, as they say, and this was the group to do it. I had been determined to avoid what I was sure would be a gigantic mess of people on Granville Island on Canada Day, but the call of free jazz and improv in large ensemble format was too strong to resist. It was a full house when I arrived at show time, and to the credit of the people (and no doubt, years of slow, but sure training by Ken Pickering’s jazz fest programming), most stayed throughout the last show of a big day, to hear some pretty crazy, off-the-beaten-path sounds as music. Especially thrilling were a four-sax ‘short but sweet’ piece featuring the entire sax section (Coat Cooke, t. sax/artistic director; Graham Ord, t. sax/s. sax/flute; Bruce Freedman, a. sax; Saul Berson, a. sax); a trippy duo section of a piece featuring J.P. Carter on his specialty of breathy, puckery trumpet sounds and Stefan Smulovitz on electronics; and a tentative-at-first, then boisterous and adventurous sampling of a piece off the group’s forthcoming disc entitled ‘Pola’. A very fine and well-received set of the way out there we’ve come to expect and love from the NOW. (Ron Samworth, guitar; Kate Hammett-Vaughan, voice; Clyde Reed, Paul Blaney, basses; Kevin Elsashuk, trumpet; Rod Murray, Ralph Eppel, trombones; Kenton Loewen, drums)
After a good night’s sleep – finally! – and with no work to go to, I was ready on this day to let loose and really dig into the fest. Waking up to more gray and pissing rain was not part of the picture I had in my head about how the day would unfold, and, unfortunately, it sorta set the tone from there. (Come on, don’t tell me it hasn’t been getting YOU down…)
So, I set out for the Art Gallery, determined that since it was now July, and the oft-crappy June was over, it was officially summer and I was going to dress as such. (I can recall another fest, maybe 6 years ago when a writer friend came up from Minnesota for the fest and had to go out and buy a pair of pants because it was so cold and wet and all he’d brought were shorts. It was summer, right? Who needs pants?) Of course we all know that summer in the rest of the hemisphere doesn’t equal summer in Vancouver, at least weather-wise.
So. Where was I? Dressed for summer, which had to be happening somewhere in the world. (But I’m not bitter.) I found the Art Gallery crawling with people, but not all of them appeared to be jazz fans. A legalize pot smoke-in ‘event’ (not so much a rally, really – everyone was too baked to stand up for long, I think) was happening on the steps beside the stage, and was slightly distracting. I suspect each camp was surprised as the other, to find the other occupying the space on “their” day. Anyway, residual smoke not necessarily a bad thing, especially in light of the music being performed and other external and internal factors.
Ugetsu, the terrific, punchy, huge energy tribute group added a few instruments for their homage to the phenomenal music of the late, great, crazy composer/pianist Thelonious Monk. That just HAD to get through the persistent fog in my head, right? I’m distracted just thinking about it. There was one other thing I could try. To the beer garden. Thank god they were serving Hefeweizen or they might’ve had a scene on their hands (hey, considering this is a Granville Island Brewing sponsored fest, you’d think they’d have their (and my) ‘Beer of Summer’ available at all venues serving alcohol. Not so!) So, beer in hand, good seat w/ a pretty decent view of the stage, I figured I was as ready to enjoy the music as I was gonna get. Unfortunately there was to be no connecting for me, and frankly, I was getting really pissed off by it.
PEGGY LEE BAND @ The Ironworks
After sleeping off my contact high and slight breakfast beer buzz, I made my way to everyone’s new favourite venue, The Ironworks. It’s the new Studio 16, if ya know what I mean. Hey, what happened to Studio 16 this year anyway? Anyone know? Must find out. Anyway, The Ironworks is gonna have more music shows, right? That’s what I hear.
The plan was to check out first set of Peggy Lee Band and head to Cultch for Italian Instabile Orch. Found out in advance Lee’s band would be one 90-minute set, and it became decision time. Something pulled me toward Ironworks, and so I went with it. It may have been familiarity. Lee’s beautifully touching compositions played by some more of our great musicians felt like a comfort zone to me, and that felt right. The power of the bop didn’t get me earlier, but there was to be no avoiding the raw emotionality of Lee’s music, and it was not such a comfortable thing in the end. It reached me in a way it hadn’t quite before – it was so deeply affecting that it almost broke me wide open. Sitting here nearly 24 hours later, it amazes me yet again how the power of music can take you away from your reality, and other times it can just nail you right where you live. Last night, it was the latter, and that was a really hard thing to deal with at the time. But Lee’s talents as a player and her gifts as a composer are tied up in an honesty and a realness that come through in her performances, and it would be unfair to not be reciprocal in a sense. Not that I was going to run on stage and confess myself, but I felt compelled as a member of her audience to listen and truly feel what her band’s music was helping me to feel, despite my urge to flee the short film I was screening inside my head to their soundtrack.
(Peggy Lee, cello; Jeremy Berkman, trombone; Brad Turner, trumpet; André Lachance, e. bass; Ron Samworth, guitar; Dylan van der Schyff, drums)
NOW ORCHESTRA @ Performance Works
The only smart thing to do next was to be pummeled, shaken and cleansed by the big band of on-the-spot creativity called the NOW. I needed my clock cleaned, as they say, and this was the group to do it. I had been determined to avoid what I was sure would be a gigantic mess of people on Granville Island on Canada Day, but the call of free jazz and improv in large ensemble format was too strong to resist. It was a full house when I arrived at show time, and to the credit of the people (and no doubt, years of slow, but sure training by Ken Pickering’s jazz fest programming), most stayed throughout the last show of a big day, to hear some pretty crazy, off-the-beaten-path sounds as music. Especially thrilling were a four-sax ‘short but sweet’ piece featuring the entire sax section (Coat Cooke, t. sax/artistic director; Graham Ord, t. sax/s. sax/flute; Bruce Freedman, a. sax; Saul Berson, a. sax); a trippy duo section of a piece featuring J.P. Carter on his specialty of breathy, puckery trumpet sounds and Stefan Smulovitz on electronics; and a tentative-at-first, then boisterous and adventurous sampling of a piece off the group’s forthcoming disc entitled ‘Pola’. A very fine and well-received set of the way out there we’ve come to expect and love from the NOW. (Ron Samworth, guitar; Kate Hammett-Vaughan, voice; Clyde Reed, Paul Blaney, basses; Kevin Elsashuk, trumpet; Rod Murray, Ralph Eppel, trombones; Kenton Loewen, drums)
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