Somewhere There March 2009 Newsletter

February was simply the busiest and best month Somewhere There has seen. Odradek completed their two-month residency with tremendously creative programming that culminated with their live soundtrack to the extraordinary 1920s animated classic, The Adventures of Prince Achmed. The Element Choir also completed its residency with massive turnouts and tremendous collective music-making, with momentum and spirit generated through their Barnyard Records recording project, mid-month – we look forward to the record (and to the record release party!) A related project heard a vocal ensemble comprised primarily of choir members working with visiting composer and conductor, Sarah Weaver. And, last but not least, the Evan Parker Interface Series, February 13-15, was a wonderful musical and social exchange, by all accounts. Rumour has it that an extensive review is in the works for Signal to Noise, so keep eyes open for that. Thanks to the AIMToronto Board of Directors for running to joint so smoothly during the Interface weekend.

This month’s residencies have more to do with jazz music in general than they have pretty much at any point in Somewhere There’s history. Thursdays in March will continue to feature Drumheller drawing on the wonderful material from their expansive book of tunes by all five members. Wednesdays host a new residency by Drumhellerite, Rob Clutton, primarily with his newish band, The Cluttertones (with Lina Allemano, Tim Posgate, Anthony Michelli, Brodie West, and Ryan Driver), though other weeks will feature guests like Marilyn Lerner and Paul Cram in small groups featuring Rob. The Sunday 6pm slot has been taken on by Jeremy Strachan, and features similarly newish bands, Canaille (with Mike Smith, Nick Buligan, and Colin Fisher, and Dan Gaucher) and a duet with Mike Smith on guitars and banjos. With a record twenty-nine shows booked in March, there’s still certainly no shortage of live music at Somewhere There. We hope to see you around!

Two More Glances

There are two more shows in the fray that really deserve special mention and that I’ve been neglecting. To follow, I’ll endeavour to stay more current and to write about concerts more immediately in their wake.

Saturday, 22 March

I’ve now written several times, separately, about guitarist Eric Chenaux and bassist Rob Clutton, who played two sets of improvisation last Saturday night. The duo, in this context, was the residue of Rob’s original plan to play with Teena Palmer and Brandon Valdivia with Eric opening, a plan that got scuppered by scheduling vagaries. Such circumstances, in addition to the consummate affability of both guys, fostered a laid-back, almost ‘down home’ environment that was most welcoming for the dozen or so lucky ones on hand. The music was absolutely tremendous, showing simultaneous playfulness and total absorption by both players. Eric showed relative restraint in the use of his signature ‘wah’ sound and, to my ears, was honing in on rhythmic detail more than he usually does throughout the first set; it was surely a generative area, given Rob’s tremendous rhythmic acumen. The second set had Rob stepping out more, with more declarative melodic ideas. In turn, Eric sought timbral extremes as a kind of accompaniment, and focused at length on sustained episodes of quasi-hardanger-fiddle bowing and harmonic swells. Overall, there was a breathtaking stillness to their music that was amplified by the accommodating ST acoustics, yet it was never overly precious, always amiably experimental. An ideal night of chamber music, all in all.

Since Eric (and some of the audience members) had to run off to the Tranzac to play the music of Josh Thorpe, it wound up being an early night at ST. Good thing, too, since I had to run off early Sunday to Montréal for the Casa del Popolo version of the Barnyard Records launch that happened at ST in February. What a treat it was to play with Lori Freedman, Jean Martin, Bernard Falaise, Christine Duncan, Evan Shaw, and Colin Fisher!

Thursday, 27 March

Speaking of Mr. Jean Martin (about whom I’ve also written a fair bit), I was pretty excited to host his Trio with guitarist Justin Haynes and trumpeter Kevin Turcotte this past Thursday. Their Get Together Weather CD is something of a classic of new Toronto creative music, but I hadn’t heard the group live since they opened for the ICP Orchestra at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2000. Jean set up this gig in advance of the Trio’s appearance at a festival in northern Québec sometime soon, and the idea was to dig into what is, apparently, a pretty massive book of tunes that they have accumulated. Instead, greeted by a meagre audience of two (Nicole Rampersaud and David Sait, who have great taste) they opted to improvise one absolutely extraordinary set of music and pack it in. Jean and Justin kept shifting the terrain with detail-rich strata of tune-like ideas, grooves, and textures, which Kevin animated in an understated way with his impeccable trumpet sound and ever-intelligent musical ideas. The set ended with an elegant climax that left the us three in the audience rather gleefully stunned.

I’m generally unfazed by small audiences at ST or anywhere for creative improvised music, and recognize how some nights are simply going to be duds, ‘business’-wise. However, Thursday night was the first time I was genuinely annoyed by the lack of attendance. I can hear in my head the chiding that I wanted to broadcast: “People! That was the shit, and you missed it!” But I’m over it now. I will, however, keep reminding readers that Toronto has some of the finest and most creative improvising musicians anywhere, and that, if I may say so, you’ll be lucky to hear them in the intimate confines of ST. Otherwise, if you wait too long, you may be relegated to buying costly tickets to hear them from poorly mixed festival stages, which are, often and unfortunately, the natural habitat for our best and brightest musical performers.

Glances in the Rear-View Mirror

In an effort to keep tabs on a bunch of interesting stuff that’s happened at ST during the past few weeks, I’m offering up a few snapshots. I wrote these two last week but haven’t got around to editing and posting them before now:

Wednesday, 12 March

Arthur Bull, formerly of Toronto during the Music Gallery’s heyday, has long since set up shop in Digby Neck, NS. Luckily, he contacted me shortly after I’d opened ST while planning a Toronto trip and, since the program was still skeletal then, I was able to offer him a gig without any hassle. What luck! This guy is a real improviser’s improviser, and deals with the situation with a minimum of surface gloss and maximum ideas-per-minute. Since his original, exceptional trio with Nick Fraser and David Prentice in September, Arthur has been back twice, and this time with the ever-provocative pair of Nick and guitarist and ST regular, Eric Chenaux. Their music unfolded at a beautifully measured pace and, while each player was clearly taking the others' cues throughout, one could parse each player’s discrete musical ideas as they were introduced, developed, and wrapped up. Still, the lushness of Eric’s guitar and Nick’s exquisite snare attack assured that this was more than a musical chess match. To follow, March/April residents, Ronda Rindone’s Quorum, had a busy set featuring two-bassists (Aaron Lumley and Rob Clutton) that was lively enough, but no match for the subtlety brought to bear by Arthur, Eric, and Nick.

Thursday, 13 March

It was terrific to host two old friends from Montréal, gambist Pierre-Yves Martel (picture) and trumpeter Gordon Allen, who were joined by bassist Rob Clutton for a delicate and extremely thoughtful trio improvisation. It was lovely to hear Pierre-Yves and Rob hook up in actual or fanciful counterpoint, with plenty of little rhythmic and harmonic interplay, while Gordon (as he so often does) cleaved beautifully to his own breathy, almost ethereal furrow. The silences that permeated the set’s texture were an excellent contrast to the opening set, an in-concert development of their Piano Music collaboration by alto saxophonist Evan Shaw and drummer Jean Martin. Jean and Evan played extroverted duet music that kept an ongoing and productive connection with jazz tradition, without ever referring to it overtly. Jean’s capacity for simultaneous subtlety and ebullience, so often a key factor in any ensemble in which he plays, was certainly in evidence, but was muted a bit by his fumbling with an MP3 player to trigger saxophone-choir samples that is a hallmark of the duo’s recorded work. Unfortunately, each such moment brought the energy level of the music down considerably. Still, it was as-ever wonderful to hear these two deep thinker/feelers dig into long, jagged, superbly rhythmic streams of music for good chunks of their generally excellent set.

Railroader Reviews

I’m writing from the train that’s taking me to Montreal for a week of work on Joane Hétu’s Récits de Neige project, the third in her Musique D’Hiver triptych, to be performed this coming weekend at Théâtre La Chapelle. Thus, this is my first full week away from ST since it opened, and I’m sad to be missing this week’s program: Christine Duncan’s Element Choir on Wednesday; the return of Kyle Brenders’s seven-piece Ensemble on Thursday (to close out his residency); and HuffLigNon, a chamber jazz project by New York-based Canadian saxophonist, Peter Van Huffel, on Saturday. I’m also very grateful to Joe Sorbara, who is presiding in my stead.

This past week has again featured some very fine music, starting with the Element Choir, with Idiolalla (Christine, DB Boyko, Jean Martin) in support, on Wednesday. The trio played just one piece, sandwiched between choral sets, and it was striking how it galvanized the choir following their rather tentative opener. The sheer physicality of DB’s and Christine’s delivery seemed to grant the choristers permission to pursue the same, much to the benefit of the last set, and the contrast between them – Christine mostly digging down and DB sailing overtop – reinforced how utterly dynamic this pair is. They shared conduction duties and their dance-like flurry of signals surely caused some confusion within the ranks, though it left the singers intriguingly to their own intuitive devices, and resulted in some marvelously unpredictable responses through the improvising.

(A heads-up: My favourite Bramptonian, Maestro Ricardo Marsella, has enlisted me to curate the “Rotundus Maximus” series at the Brampton Indie Arts Festival, and I’ve given all of Wednesday 13 February to Christine and the Choir. My shortlist of things for which it’s worth braving 400-series highways includes hearing this squad in the Rose Theatre Rotunda.)

Thursday, Kyle Brenders brought in his trio with bassist Rob Clutton and drummer Brandon Valdivia, a group that, to my ears, paints the clearest picture of Kyle’s vision as a composer and bandleader. Their first set was dominated by a version the modular, episodic “Flow Line Follow Line Flow,” a signature piece that has had performed by Kyle’s septet and the AIMToronto Orchestra as well. The crispness of response by Rob and Brandon beautifully animated what can be a fairly static, unexpressive piece. The trio’s second set was comprised of shorter, diverse, perhaps more idiomatic pieces of which “Black Bile,” a quirky blues fantasy with a nifty palindromic form, was most memorable.

Rob was back again, much to my delight, on Saturday night with his Cluttertones, one of the first groups to have played at ST back in September. To my mind, the band fits the spirit and scope of the place perfectly, and everyone in the band – Rob, Tim Posgate on banjo and guitar, Lina Allemano on trumpet, Ryan Driver on synth, melodica, and voice – clearly revels in the chance to play here. Rob’s writing is deeply wrought and so very personal, and pieces like “Lion and Ant,” featuring Ryan’s fragile vocal delivery, left at least a few of us in tears. Gracefully, Rob followed up with the delightful “Porch,” a whimsical, almost faux-naïf diatonic swing tune that seems tailor-made for Tim’s banjo, with Ryan’s demented melodica comping as a brilliant foil. Lina’s burnished-toned trumpet solo went from singing to sputtering and back again, but it’s her reiteration of Rob’s wonderful melody on the out-head that I haven’t been able to stop humming.