Somewhere There November Newsletter

November brings with it the start of three new residencies at Somewhere There. Wednesdays feature the wonderful See Through Trio, with Pete Johnston (bass), Tania Gill (piano), and Mark Laver (saxophone), one of the great, undersung groups in Toronto’s scene. None of these wonderful musicians are self-promoters, but their music – a thoughtful and inviting take on a tradition that stems from the great Giuffre/Bley/Swallow trio which features beautiful compositions by all members – really shouldn’t need it. Furthermore, The Rent plays Steve Lacy repertoire every Sunday at 6pm. Susanna Hood (voice & movement), Scott Thomson (trombone), Wes Neal (bass), and Kyle Brenders (soprano saxophone) welcome drummer Nick Fraser (and, in his stead on a few dates, Dave Clark), replacing Brandon Valdivia, who is traipsing about God-knows-where.

The third new residency is a good-natured response to those who chirp about shows starting and ending too late for comfort. Morning Music features a trio that formed for the Suoni per il Popolo Festival in Montréal last June – John Oswald (alto saxophone), Scott Thomson (trombone), and Germaine Liu (percussion) – every Friday morning at 7:55 AM (Yes. In the morning.) The cover charge is $5 or free if you bring pastries and/or fruit to share. Scott will make you a mean coffee (or a normal, not-so-mean tea) at no cost.

Moreover, Scott Peterson continues his Thursday-night residency through November, featuring a different assemblage each week – check the Somewhere There calendar for details. Also among the new developments is the migration of Steve Ward’s Panic Density Series to Somewhere There from the Tequila Bookworm, where it was recently ousted by unsympathetic management. This series will be on alternating Monday nights, starting on 16 November. Lastly, the end of the month, 27-29 November, will featuring an AIMToronto Interface Series with the terrific Bay Area percussionist, Gino Robair. The details of the programming are to be announced (check the AIMToronto website), but a Toronto version of Gino’s improvisation opera, “I, Norton,” is planned.

We look forward to seeing you this month.

Crickets

Despite the surfeit of excellent music and landmarks like the first anniversary and show #200, September attendance at ST was significantly lower than average; last month's numbers were roughly 60% of the total average since opening and, strikingly, only half of what August's numbers were.

Can anybody say why this is the case? I detected a bias against booking in August that is based on a (false?) assumption that "everybody's away." More influential and indicative of the numbers, I'd guess, is an overwhelming "Holy Moly! It's September!" sentiment -- back to school, work, nice apples, whatnot -- that kept folks away.

October is a nice time to hear live music, though, don't you think?

Speaking of which, Laurel MacDonald's VIDEOVOCE residency began last (dark and stormy) night to a meagre crowd. It's quite different from pretty much anything else that has been booked here. The eight-speaker surround sound work is lovely, and includes segments from A Time to Hear for Here, John Oswald's Royal Ontario Museum sound installation that he executed with Laurel and Phil Strong. Luckily, Laurel and Phil will be presenting the same program throughout the residency, Thursdays in October and November.

Folk Forms (or Folks Form)

Try to say that one ten times, quickly.

Due to some scheduling vagaries, I’ve had a string of Thursdays become available, and I was very happy to offer last night to violinist & violist David Prentice and bassist Aaron Lumley for a Valentine’s joust. This pair was here about a month ago (just before the inception of this site) and I was quite taken by the rapport between them and, once again, how totally brilliant David is. Last night, they picked up right where they left off, twisting knotty, this-follows-that improvisations into what may as well be folk songs. David has the rare ability among improvisers to play idiomatically ‘free’ but to develop his ideas tunefully and melodically (broadly speaking), as if a narrative logic overrides the temptation to shorten ideas within the gestural logic of the moment. It’s a capacity that he shares with the ‘likes’ of Leroy Jenkins, Paul Rutherford, and Mario Schiano, each a hero of mine for similar reasons.

Aaron is clearly the junior partner in this duo but, while he tends on occasion to default to ideas with short shelf lives, he demonstrated again how high he’s climbed on a steep learning curve. It’s obvious that Aaron relishes the big, Mingus-y sound he’s getting out of his gut strings, and he really digs into his instrument in an occasionally self-absorbed search and discovery of fantastic sounds, but last night he proved how fine and supportive an accompanist he can be in this kind of context. It’s a context, perhaps ironically, where a successful ‘accompanist’ generates roughly half of the material.

For the second set, David and Aaron invited audients John Oswald and myself (a group known in the annals as JOUST) to join them for a good-natured spar. No folk songs were in the offing here, since both John and I were feeling perhaps too fanciful to let things reside anywhere too simply. Instead, the quartet lived in a web of darting lines and little blats that resulted in a joyful disorientation. Great fun. For arcane reasons that tickle my most nerd-like sensibilities, I propose that the four-piece – if and (hopefully) when we play together again – be called PLUTO. We’ll travel the spaceways.