Montreal Sessions December 16, 2008

Electro-Soul

*Moonstarr - "Broken Bossa" (Instrumentals Forever)
Heliponto f/ David Ryshpan & Mara TK - "Algodão Doce" (Eletronia)
Kez YM - "A Cup of Ocean" (Sweetly Confused)
*David Ryshpan - "Serpent's Cave" (BNL MTL remix)
*Arch_Typ - "3333" (Next Stop)
Ron Blake - "Tom Blake [DJ Spinna RMX]" (Sonic Tonic)
Kat Heath/Torreblanca/Sarah Lahey - "Qué Esperas?" (Various Assets 2007)
Luis Davis f/ Ben Lamar - "Hype Clouds" (Peace Love and Sound)
Sly & the Family Stone - "Sing a Simple Song" (Stand!)
Medeski Martin & Wood - "Think" (Shack-Man)
Herbie Hancock - "Watermelon Man" (Headhunters)
Stevie Wonder - "Creepin'" (Fulfillingness' First Finale)
*GrooveAttic - "By My Side"
Interview w/ Dali & Metik
*Dali/Metik/The Doctor - "Use Me" (Live on air!)
*Dali - "How Sweet it Is"
Electric Wire Hustle - "Perception"
Flying Lotus & Andreya Triana - "Tea Leaf Dancers" (Various Assets 2006)
Pat D & Lady Paradox - "Summertime [Think Twice rmx]" (Kind of Peace)
Elektro4 & Bombay Sapphire - "Elektro4 for President" (Drop the Needle vol. 1)
*Dali - "New Beginnings"
Radio City f/ Bajka - "The Hop" (Music is my Art)
*Incubator - "Dakar Pockey" (Next Stop)
Peixe Kru - "Nostaugia"

Attention fellow Brazilian fanatics

As many of you know, I've been heavily into Brazilian music for the past few years, to the point of starting a trio to play my favourite tunes. More on this project to come in the next year. But this post is to share a link I just discovered, a fantastic site created by a team of Brazilian music fanatics (including Zecalouro, the force behind Loronix): Musicos do Brasil. At the moment, it's only in Portuguese (and mine isn't very good) but it seems to be easy enough to navigate.

Muito obrigado to everyone involved. We need more of this stuff. What's always impressed me about Brazilian music is how keen certain people are to preserve and disseminate it. At Upstairs, we premiered a new tune called "Keeper of the Flame," which I wrote as a tribute to Almir Chediak. He took on the project of collecting the music of the great bossa and MPB songwriters and putting them into accurate songbooks, working alongside them to make sure everything was correct. If only somebody would do that for Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon - all the stuff I've ever seen is full of errors.

Montreal Sessions December 9, 2008

The record is out, and winter is here with a vengeance. Time to warm up with music by some influences, colleagues, and friends. A big hello to those coming here from Ropeadope and the Red Bull Music Academy sites. Click around and make yourselves at home.

Theme: Free-For-All #1

*David Ryshpan - "Dancing Serpent in Dawn's Quiet"

Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos - "El Espejo" (Live in Barcelona 2005)

FLY - "JJ" (s/t)

Alison Wedding - "This Fear" (Sometimes I Feel)

Jean Rohe - "Lead Me Home" (Lead Me Home)

*Sienna Dahlen - "One Man" (Off the Floor...Into the Garden)

*Jon Day - "Cantilever" (Exhibit B)

*Ben Hammond - "What I'm Supposed To" ([Reasonably] Honest)

*D.W. Lee Trio - "Speaking Voice" (Somnambulist Love)

*Nista - "Water" (s/t)

Lumi - "Staying Here" (Two Tears in Water)

*Ndidi Onukwulu - "Move Together" (The Contradictor)

*Fieldtrip - "The Lioness, the Hunter and the Wal-Mart"
Interview with Colin Power (Fieldtrip)

*Common Thread - "Gnawa" (The Guessing Game)
Ablaye Cissoko/Volker Goetze - "Faro" (Sina)
Bill Frisell - "Baba Drame" (History, Mystery)
Gilfema +2 - "One Mind's Eye" (s/t)
Punch Brothers - "Punch Bowl" (Punch)

* = Canadian Content

Montreal Sessions December 2, 2008

Music for Strings

*Indigone Trio & Strings - "Driscollage" (Cycles)
Quatuor Enesco - Debussy's String Quartet in Gm, op. 10, 2nd mvt. (Debussy/Ravel)
Bournemouth Sinfonietta - "Summa" (Arvo Part: Fratres)
Quatuor Enesco - Ravel's String Quartet in F, 1st mvt. (Debussy/Ravel)
Edo de Waart (San Francisco Symphony) - "The Chairman Dances" (The Chairman Dances)
*Byproduct - "Erostratus" (Le Mur)
Interview with Chet Doxas
*Chet Doxas/David Ryshpan - "Eighty One" (live on air!)
*Byproduct - "Le Mur" (Le Mur)
*Quinsin Nachoff - "A River Remembers Rain" (Horizons Ensemble)
The Beatles - "Eleanor Rigby" (Revolver)
Elton John - "Sixty Years On" (Elton John)
Djavan - "Agua" (Djavan)
Ethel - "Arrival" (Light)
Mark Feldman/Sylvie Courvoisier - "Azriel" (Malphas: Masada Book 2)
Osvaldo Golijov/Kronos Quartet - "Tenebrae II" (Oceana)
*Indigone Trio & Strings - "Shahgely" (Cycles)

Notes on Cycles

From the Maria Schneider interview that's been circulating amongst the blogs, this is her perspective on sharing the stories behind compositions:

I like it when people get it because I think it helps bring people inside the music and relates the music to their own worlds. They kind of dive into it as a story, especially people who aren't musicians.

I agree. The majority of my music is programmatic to an extent, be it a full-on tone poem, or merely that the catalyst for the piece comes from something I've experienced or read. Much of the music on the album, Cycles, is coming from a very specific emotional place. Consider these the program notes.

1. Driscollage - Named after our friend, drummer Chris Driscoll, who passed away in January 2005. After former Indigone Trio drummer Liam O'Neill called me to tell me the news, this melody popped into my head. I was thinking of the music Driscoll loved, especially David Binney. He and I shared a love for bad puns in song titles. I wrote the majority of it on the bus to Prince Edward Island for his funeral, finished it at the house where I was staying, and it was premiered at a memorial concert for Chris, in PEI.

2. Bella - A text setting of a Pablo Neruda poem from The Captain's Verses. It was the first Neruda poem I read, and as I was reading it I immediately heard the voice of Caetano Veloso singing the words, which is the bass solo at the beginning. The rest came from there.

3. Shahgely - Bassist Graig Earle brought this traditional Egyptian melody into our ensemble at the Banff Centre, and the group, led by Dylan van der Schyff, came up with an arrangement that juxtaposed a drone with burning free-bop. This arrangement is very similar.

4. Love is the Reason - Written by Alex Mallett for his girlfriend, Lina. As he writes, "When I was in my third year of college, I was exchanging e-mails with my good friend in New York, Dave Moore. Lina had recently moved to Montreal and (as always) I was having trouble balancing everything. I wrote him that things were going well, but I was finding it distracting having Lina around. Dave wrote me back, 'Love is never, never, never a distraction. Love is the Reason.'" Lina's been a great supporter of the band - that's her cheering on the live EP.

5. Smacked - I wrote this at the Banff Centre, and was really stuck on it. I met with Dave Douglas, and he shared some sage advice that I rely on to this day. But even after the meeting, I was still stuck. I left to go to the club, and while putting on my sweater outside, a bird flew into my head. Once I got to the club, the tune wrote itself. I'm never sure whether to credit Dave, or the bird. Michael Bates came up with the idea for the backgrounds.

6. Piece for Open Strings - Alex's experiment with minimalism, exploring the basic texture of a string group based on rhythm and timbre, rather than pitch. It was originally written for just strings and bass, but Alex later revised it to have Phil and I improvise texturally to contrast with the strings.

7. Heraclito - A tone poem based on the Jorge Luis Borges poem of the same name. I was taken with the structure of Borges' poem, and allowed that to guide my writing. I assigned musical phrases to the phrases that repeat in the text.

8. Visions - All this music grew out of an assignment in advanced arranging class to write for trio and string orchestra. I couldn't decide which song to use, so I booked the recital (which later became the EP) as an excuse to write all the arrangements I had in mind. This was the assignment. Stevie Wonder's melody is gorgeous, and though we're working on achieving the vision in our mind, we're not quite there yet.

9. Erghen Diado - Dave Douglas gave a lecture on his work with odd meters and Balkan music at the Banff Centre, and gave the names of artists I'd never heard of before, like Le Mystère des voix bulgares. When I got back to Montreal, I found their first record, and this song immediately captivated me. I had a visceral reaction to the music, similar to the first time I heard A Love Supreme. It's really a simple song, and its power and beauty lie in that simplicity.

10. Throughout - This Bill Frisell song has become incredibly important to me. It was played as part of Driscoll's funeral; saxophonist Becky Noble and I performed it in Banff; and that summer I got to meet Frisell at the Montreal Jazz Festival. The song in all its contexts came to epitomize the cycles of life and death, and provided a means of closure. On another level, it was the last piece on the recital, which was the last concert of my undergraduate studies. In French, undergraduate and graduate studies are sometimes referred to as cycles. I feel that this is my best string writing on the whole album.

Expozine Set (Nov. 29, 2008)

My first real DJ set (not counting radio) was today at Expozine. I was astounded by the amount of indie 'zines, postcards, posters, CD/record designers and others that were exhibiting: the quality of the work was uniformly excellent. The crowd that turned out to support these underground, fiercely independent artists was heartwarming, though one exhibitor joked, "They're just here working off their hangovers."

Beck - "Black Tambourine"
Jamie Lidell - "Little Bit of Feel Good"
Herbie Hancock - "Actual Proof"
Ed Motta - "Eu Avisei"
Curumin f/ Lino Crizz - "Olhando De Lima Janela, No Centro Da Cidade"
Lekan Babalola - "Elegba (Bob Sinclair RMX)"
The Cheebacabra - "Sneak Attack"
Gilfema +2 - "Question of Perspective"
Fly - "JJ"
Joel Miller - "Cabeza de Vaca"
The Bad Plus - "Flim"
Floratone - "Floratone"
Makoto, DJ Zinc, Denius & Om'Mas Keith - "Close to Me"
Mara TK & Jake One - "Look What You've Made of Me"
Me'shell Ndegeocello f/ Sabina Sciubba - "Aquarium"
Jaco Pastorius f/ Sam & Dave - "Come On, Come Over"
Shuggie Otis - "Inspiration Information"
Stevie Wonder - "Creepin'"
The Roots - "Long Time"
Bad Medicine - "Trespassin'"
Blackalicious f/ Chali 2na - "4000 Miles"
Karma & Lotus - "Monk Swing"
Juba Dance - "We Will Wait for You"
Flying Lotus f/ Andreya - "Tea Leaf Dancers"
Elizabeth Shepherd - "Start to Move"
Kate McGarry - "The Target (Miracles Like These)"
Medeski Martin & Wood - "Pappy Check"
Bruce Hornsby - "Big Swing Face"
Domenico +2 - "Te Convidei Pra Samba"
Elton John - "Out of the Blue"

Radio Residency

First of all, thank you to everyone who donated to CKUT during our past funding drive. I think the final tally was somewhere around $32,000 - a bit shy of our $50,000 goal, but we'll take it. Of course, you can still donate online.

To celebrate the release of the new Indigone Trio & Strings record, and to motivate me to stay out of hibernation mode, I will be curating a show called The Montreal Sessions on CKUT which airs every Tuesday from 3-5 pm EST. Each show will feature an interview and a live performance, as well as music from my friends, colleagues, and the records I love. The themes and guests will be:

December 2 - Music For Strings w/ Chet Doxas (whose group, Byproduct, has released their own fantastic album with strings, Le Mur)
December 9 - Freeform Free-for-All 1 w/ Fieldtrip
December 16 - Electro-Soul w/ Kweku
December 23 - Montreal Brasileira w/ Robin Gorn
December 30 - Freeform Free-for-All 2 w/ Jon Lindhorst of Turtleboy

Of course, if you can't tune in live, there's always the CKUT archives. And the playlists will go up here after the shows. Tune in!

Blogroll Update

A couple of additions to the sidebar:

- Montreal DJ Cheeba Cheeba Kid is a crate digger par excellence and has his own little web warehouse at Soundological Investimagations. Big ups for representing Henry Threadgill and Monty Alexander in the same space.
- New reader and commenter Amanda maintains her own ivory-centric blog at My Piano Friends. It looks to be in the starting stages but there is some promising work over there.

Big shoes to fill

I'll be subbing for my former teacher, Jeff Johnston, at Upstairs November 16, in a group led by drummer Karl Schwonik. Karl's a good friend, and we've played together as sidemen for vocalists May Cheung and Julie-Claire Carter. This is the first opportunity I've had to play his music, and his composing shows a similar musicality to his wonderful playing. Joel Miller is on saxophone, someone whose music I've long admired and advocated, but we don't play together often enough. The always solid Adam Over is on bass. We hit at 8:30.

Sound System, or CKUT needs your help!

Most of you know that I've been an avid volunteer at CKUT 90.3 FM for five years now. I'm part of two of the music collective shows, Jazz Euphorium (Wednesdays from 20h00-22h00) and World Skip the Beat (Mondays from 12h00-14h00). I've also done numerous fill-ins, sat on the Programming Committee for two years, and co-organized a big band (with Sean Winters) for their 20th anniversary. I'll also be hosting The Montreal Sessions every Tuesday in December.

Being involved at CKUT has fostered my love for radio and music journalism, but more importantly having the access to the amazing library, production and control studios, and fellow programmers has made me a better musician. I've grown to love so much music I wouldn't have otherwise discovered; programming radio has made me acutely aware of how to present my own music on record and in concert. CKUT is the only English-language community station on the island of Montreal that serves so many diverse cultures - not only musical but ethno-cultural, GLBT, and many more.

For the next week (Nov 13-23), CKUT is asking for your financial help. The goal is $50,000, which covers the maintenance of the facilities, the upkeep of our stellar library and our newly renovated studios to keep bringing you the tuneage and the non-mainstream news. $50 is the cost of one hour of airtime. I know the economy is tough right now, but please pledge what you can to keep this vital pillar of Montreal culture on air. Check the funding drive page for gift lists, prize draws, and more! I'll be co-hosting both World Skip and Jazz Euphorium this week, so tune in and PLEDGE!

Make this moment sweet again

Last week I had the great honour and privilege of working with vocalist, improviser and teacher Rhiannon. Her group of students, called the Vocal River, were in town for their third and final retreat of the year, giving various performances around the city. On Tuesday, at the Yellow Door, I was more of an observer, watching the various improvisational scenarios Rhiannon set out for her students. Rhiannon and I did a duet, with myself on melodica.

Friday's performance, more of an open rehearsal session at Studio 303, was thrilling. Four instrumentalists - myself (piano, melodica, accordion, percussion), Michael Reinhart (guitar, accordion, percussion), Vovô (percussion) and Sarah Wendt (French horn) - joined the choir, and Sarah, Katie Ewald and Lin Snelling danced on a couple of pieces. This concert was a fantastic learning experience on so many levels. Rhiannon and her students embody a truly "anything-goes" philosophy of improvisation - from the full choir building McFerrin-esque circle songs, to soloists varying from spoken word to various vocal traditions from around the world to incorporating standards on top of improvised backgrounds. As Dave Douglas said, "'Free' means having the freedom to make any musical decision in real time."

Contexts were shattered among the instrumentalists as well: I've only ever played Michael's songs with him, with minimal improvising, and when we do work together I play his accordion. Friday marked the first time we had improvised together, and the first time he had ever really heard me play piano. Not only did I have the opportunity to use different musical vocabularies - from dissonant tone clusters to two-fisted gospel piano to re-interpreting standards - I got to work on a variety of different instruments. It was really a mental and aural workout. I only know Vovô from Estação da Luz, his batucada here in Montreal. As an improviser he is truly responsive, and of course, any time we locked onto a groove it was stunningly tight.

Experience in free improvising lends a certain openness to all the music I play, whether it's through-composed, semi-composed, or completely free. All the singers in the choir were fantastic, and I look forward to hearing their own music. Here's three of them: Alison Wedding; Katia Leonardo; and Patti Shaffner.

Sky of memory and shadow

Just briefly - watching Obama's acceptance speech tonight reminded me of the feeling I had the first time I heard Oscar Peterson's "Hymn to Freedom." Both are emotionally stirring in the most powerful way, life-affirming. Hopefully, we truly are on the verge of a new world order. May Obama be able to really usher in the era of change he has campaigned on, that he has come to symbolize, and that a hell of a lot of us have been hoping for.

Calendar addenda

Guitarist and composer Michael Reinhart has invited me once again to join him in some musical adventures. He and his partner, Lin Snelling, have brought up the great improvising vocalist Rhiannon for a week of workshops and performances in Montreal. I had the distinct honour of improvising with Rhiannon and Ruth Zaporah during their last Montreal visit a year ago; it was a thrilling ear- and eye-opening experience. As always whenever Michael asks me to join him, I'll be playing accordion.

Rhiannon & the Vocal River
October 28, 2008 - The Yellow Door Coffeehouse (3625 Aylmer)
7:30 pm - $8/$5 (students)
October 31, 2008 - Studio 303 (372 Ste-Catherine W., 3rd floor)
8 pm - $12
I'll be playing accordion, melodica, and perhaps piano at the Yellow Door, maybe some percussion if the mood strikes.

Michael Reinhart & Friends
November 1, 2008 - The Yellow Door Coffeehouse
8:30 pm - $8
With: Jérémi Roy (bass), David Ryshpan (accordion), and more.

Pushing towards the end of the calendar

Here's a quick rundown of what's on my agenda for the coming months:

Tonight, October 16, I'll be indulging my addiction to musica popular brasileira (MPB) with singer Juana Lepine at Centre St-Ambroise (5080-A St. Ambroise). Yes, the McAuslan brewery is home to a small music room, a cozy space for intimate groups. As they say, "it's like a coffeehouse, with beer!" Opening the evening is beatboxer extraordinaire Jason Levine. $5, starts at 8:30 SHARP! Incidentally, you can check out the new Brazilian trio featuring Nicolas Bédard (bass) and Mark Nelson (drums) here.

I'll be back on the airwaves of CKUT this week, filling in for Jazz Amuck at 9 am October 17, and hosting Jazz Euphorium Wednesday, October 22 at 8 pm. CKUT will be starting a fall Funding Drive shortly, check their site for details.

Starting October 30, a bassless trio of myself, Dave Goulet (guitar) and Maxime Bellavance (drums) will be supplying the groovy tune-age at Casa Luna (2077 University) on Thursdays.

Finally, December 2, 2008 marks the release of the full-length Indigone Trio & Strings album, Cycles, on Ropeadope Digital. We recorded this in March at the beautiful Studio 270 with Hendrick Hassert behind the board. There will be a limited number of hard copies pressed, available at gigs. Many of you know we released a live, self-titled EP on Ropeadope last December. It was surprisingly well-received, so we re-recorded the six tunes from the original EP, plus four additional compositions by myself and Alex Mallett. I'll be celebrating the launch by performing at Upstairs Jazz Club (1254 Mackay) on December 7, 2008, with Indigone pinch-hitter Sebastien Pellerin on bass, and Mark Nelson on drums. We hit at 8:30 SHARP, $10.

Mission statement

POP Montreal is far from my natural habitat, and while I ran into people I knew, it was more often the case that I made new acquaintances. It's been a while since I had to tell people what it is I do, and questions that came up from both the film score and improvising panels sparked some reflection.

Much was made at the improvising panel of genre-specific labels, and dealing with genre-specific traditions. I remember at Banff, Vijay Iyer asked whether most people at his master class would call themselves jazz musicians. Many, including Dave Douglas, adamantly did not raise their hands. Vijay later qualified it as being a musician who has intensively studied and dealt with the jazz lineage, and most raised their hands. I don't really have a problem with the "jazz" label, at this point. Jazz is the music I've spent most of my life studying, both officially and not. It's the root of how I've learned how to play my instrument, and how to think about music. My sense of groove, time, harmony, melody, phrasing, inter-band communication, development, etc. is all influenced by jazz. Maybe "jazz-trained" is a better phrase, the same way many musicians, whether they pursue the concert path or not, are "classically trained." Matana said on the improvising panel that she often tries to push against the jazz tradition; I endeavour to find my own little nook within the tradition.

Yet I understand the desire not to be boxed in by a genre label; not to be confined to only jazz. A fellow panel attendee asked me what music I would like to score for film. My answer was whatever the film required. If it calls for a jazz score, I'll be happy to compose in that vein. If it calls for more electronic elements, or a chamber ensemble, or whatever, I'll be happy to oblige if I have the requisite tools to do so. Obviously, my composition for any instrumentation belies my jazz roots and my other stylistic predilections, but I'm not limited to writing spang-spang-a-lang, nor do I really want to. I find my music, and the music I love most, sits at the apex of multiple styles and influences.

I have a complex relationship with the term "authenticity." In some cases, I demand it of myself and my colleagues. In others, it's the least of my worries. If I'm playing in an R&B band, I'm not going to load up my comping with dissonant extensions and blow bebop all night long. There is, however, an element of bebop and post-bop that's inherent to my improvising language, and so when I step out for a solo, it'll probably come through in some way. When Indigone Trio plays "Erghen Diado," I have absolutely no pretension that we're a Balkan band, and I have no desire to be authentic in that case. The tune is our canvas to paint on, and it just happens to be a folk song. I suppose it's the divide between my music and other people's music. I strive to make my music on my terms - music that is personal, and I don't really care which traditions it draws from and how loyal it may be to them. When I am involved in other people's music, though, I do my best to maintain my own personal character while devoting my creative energy to their ends.

My feelings may, and probably will, change in five or ten years, but this is how I feel now. I'm truly curious to read what other musicians think of their own creative roles and approaches. It always forces me to re-evaluate my own.

POP Saturday 2008 - 10/04/2008

The only day I really explored POP Montreal was Saturday. Taking a cue from festivals like Canadian Music Week, North by Northeast, and a Montreal visit from the Future of Music Coalition a couple of years back, there was a Symposium element to this year's festival. I unfortunately missed the international festival panel, and Andy Williams' two-hour interview with Irma Thomas earlier in the week.

The day began with the Film Score as Genre panel, featuring filmmakers Jem Cohen (Instrument) and Matt Silver (Who is KK Downey?), Mirror film critic Mark Slutsky, former McGill professor Jamshed Turell and Alicen Schneider from NBC Music Services. I was hoping for some shop-talk discussion about what makes the best film scores work, and why, and how filmmakers and composers interact. For the most part it was a more philosophical discussion of the role of music in film, and the requisite discussion of whether licensing one's music to film, television, or advertisements constitutes "selling out." Cohen stated that in his view, films should be able to function without music, and too often, there's more music than necessary in a film. That started a discussion of great films without music (or with very little music). I would have preferred to discuss what makes film music effective.

Following that was a history lesson with doo-wop masters the Persuasions, led by Nomadic Massive's Butta Beats. The elder statesmen of the Persuasions treated the crowd to snippets of various songs, all of them in fine voice, with Butta beatboxing to fine effect and the delight of the group. I missed their show at the Portuguese Association that night, which was stellar by all accounts. I'm glad I got a taste in the afternoon.

While waiting for the Improvising and Community panel to get started, I checked out a roundtable called the Herstory of Hip Hop, featuring reggae pioneer Sister Nancy with young guns Eternia and Tali (also of Nomadic Massive). Sister Nancy didn't seem very talkative, sticking to curt answers, and attempts to really get some cross-panel discussion seemed to flounder, everyone deferring to the woman who paved the way for all female MCs (DJ in Jamaican parlance).

The Improvising and Community panel featured some of the usual suspects: the always intriguing Matana, McGill's Eric Lewis, painter/drummer John Heward, Suoni's Peter Burton, and a couple of new faces to me in percussionist/electronics manipulator Lisa Gamble, and cellist and moderator Mark Molnar. The usual topics of dealing with the jazz tradition, ego in improvising, the role and treatment of the audience, etc arose, but I always find such panels make me re-evaluate my stance on the music. I'll deal with that in another post.

Having missed his last large ensemble outing at this year's Suoni, I checked out Sam Shalabi's POP-commissioned suite, Symbols of Egyptian Light Spectrum at the Masonic Temple. Performed by a very large ensemble with reeds, strings, keyboards, two bassists, multiple percussionists, and a cast of 6 singers, led by Shalabi's oud and laptop, the hour-long piece melded North African motifs with slamming rock drums, brilliant free exchanges featuring baritone saxophonist Jason Sharp and violinist Josh Zubot among others, a litany of vocal techniques from operatic caterwauling to tender folk singing (courtesy of our own redheaded siren, Katie Moore), and the computerized robot voice spewing dirty pillow talk. An epic piece, to be sure, and while it took me a while to get into it, Shalabi and friends won me over in the end. In the dark room on the top floor of the temple, with low-lit Masonic artifacts adoring the room, the piece took on Easily one of the best concerts of the year.

RIP Earl Palmer

The founding rock 'n' roll drummer is gone. Earl Palmer, the New Orleans drummer on the seminal Little Richard and Fats Domino singles, as well as lesser known New Orleans R&B tunes of the period, died this weekend at the age of 84. The jazz blogosphere has often dealt with the issue of groove, rhythmic authority, etc.: Palmer wrote the modern book on it. The early rock 'n' roll groove, a derivative of New Orleans second line drumming in Palmer's hands, is semi-swung and semi-straight. Many younger drummers miss this nuance, playing straight eighths and the groove is robbed of its momentum. I could listen to, and play, that feel all night.

I can't even remember the first time I heard an Earl Palmer beat; my parents raised me on the "oldies" station and so the classic Little Richard and Fats Domino sides were etched in my memory from an early age. When I started getting into New Orleans R&B in high school, and first heard the name Earl Palmer as dropped by Stanton Moore of Galactic, I found him on various Allen Toussaint and Dave Bartholomew tunes, too. I gained an entirely new level of appreciation for songs like "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally," whose rhythms I had taken for granted. May Mr. Palmer's beats live on in eternity.

More stolen goods

When I was going down to New York, great players would drop by the jam sessions at Smoke & Cleo's. One night at Cleo's, the sharp-dressed and sharp-playing Wayne Escoffery showed up. It pains me to pass this along:

...On Thursday (September 11, 2008), we - in a rush - hailed a white Lincoln gypsy cab in front of our Harlem apartment at 153rd and Saint Nicholas Place, packed our son and my horn to go downtown for some family time while I brought my saxophone in for some quick repairs. Two minutes after exiting the cab in midtown, we realized the unthinkable had happened! We had left my irreplaceable 1951 Super Balanced Action Tenor Saxophone in the trunk of the car--a car that had no company name or any identifying logos. The only details of note were that the car was an older white Lincoln and the driver was female.

Because no two horns are alike, the instrument a musician chooses to use becomes an indispensable part of his or her sound. It is impossible to re-create the horn, especially one that is as old as this particular saxophone. It's value therefore is not only monetary, but artistic. My #9 NY Otto Link mouthpiece was also in the case.
This is the only instrument I have used for the past 8 years, and I have used the mouthpiece for as long as I can remember. The saxophone and piece are an indispensable part of my sound and now they are gone. But I truly hope and pray they might be returned.

We got the car at 153rd and Saint Nicholas Place and took it to 50th street and 7th ave. at 1pm on Thursday September 11th 2008. We have spent the last days reaching out to drivers and dispatchers in our neighborhood in the hopes of locating the driver and retrieving the horn, but have had no luck. Please keep a lookout and any help you can offer is much appreciated - and will be rewarded!

Thank You,
Wayne
917-353-7733
wayne.escoffery@verizon.net

Remember Griffintown

Griffintown is the name given to the area of Montreal west of Old Montreal, south of downtown. Historically it's been home to immigrants - first the Irish, and later Jewish, Italian, and African-Canadian communities (the last probably due to spillover from St-Henri and Little Burgundy). In the 1960s, it turned into an industrial ghost town, the facades of which still remain. Nowadays it's home to artist loft spaces and low-income housing - some reports place half the population of Griffintown under the poverty line.

At some point in 2007, Devimco thought it would be a good idea to uproot the entire Griffintown community to make way for strip malls, chain cafés and other markings of suburbia. My biggest issue with the whole process is that the residents of Griffintown were never consulted in the process; the Tremblay administration rubber-stamped Devimco's plans, hoping nobody would get wind of it, or at least that nobody would mind. It doesn't make much economic sense either - Devimco's last project, the Dix30 in Brossard, is just barely complete and finding its feet; and the western edge of downtown, from Guy over to Atwater, has been in dire straits for years. The neighbourhood wouldn't be able to sustain the development planned for it, and it would wreak havoc not just on Griffintown but on the aforementioned strip of Ste-Catherine.

A couple of Concordia students, in conjunction with Indyish, threw a protest/awareness festival called Remember Griffintown this weekend, with walking tours and scavenger hunts through the hood, gumboots demonstrations, a makeshift art gallery in a dilapidated cave, and stellar indie artists in the tent. Luckily, Devimco has been struggling to find investors for the project which has bought residents and protesters some time. And while the neighbourhood is maligned as a somewhat sketchy and low-rent part of town, it holds some of Montreal's most colourful history. I cringe to see it steamrolled by a half-baked development project.

Cinematic Orchestra - Club Soda, 08/30/2008

Jason Swinscoe and his band of Brits touched down at Club Soda, appropriately enough, during the final weekend of the World Film Festival. I'm not that familiar with their music, having only listened to Man With a Movie Camera a couple of times, but I'm always curious how electronic musicians transfer their creations to live settings. This is especially heightened with Swinscoe, whose productions are reliant on jazz samples and live vocals.

Opener Grey Reverend, by his own repeated admission, had had too much to drink on the short flight from Brooklyn. I wouldn't mind seeing him again in a more sober set to make a fuller judgement. He's a solid guitar player, though I found his lyrics to be overly wordy and filled with self-conscious attempts at abstract imagery ("cauliflower girls and olive-skinned boys" was the only line I remember, and actually not quite as fraught with word games as the opening tune). His vocal delivery tempered an indie-folk style with the laidback drawl of Jack Johnson. The best song of the set, to me, was a tune called "Belafonte," with a strongly delivered melody, great rhythm guitar playing, and a rein on the Reverend's lyrics.

Once I got over the punishing subwoofer volume, with the kick drum and electric upright vibrating my chest and teeth, the details of the Cinematic Orchestra were quite provocative. Many of the tunes were started by Swinscoe, triggering a loop or arpeggiated figure from his laptop, and he'd be joined in the build-up by the rest of the band, who would gradually overtake him. It was really a case of presence being emphasized by absence - Swinscoe didn't feel the need to trample over the high-calibre band with his electronics. Nick Ramm's Nord Lead, Stuart McCallum's guitar ambiences combined with Swinscoe for lush textures. Featured vocalists were Reverend, Heidi Vogel with her soulful, honeyed alto, and "surprise guest" Patrick Watson. Watson was a guest last time the Cinematics rolled through town, and has a spot on the album Ma Fleur, and unleashed his delay-laden falsetto to heartbreaking effect, as usual. The highlights, for me, came when the band broke down to the quartet of Ramm, McCallum, bassist Phil France and drummer Luke Flowers. Saxophonist Tom Chant had a couple of solos, but his role was mostly blending in with the horn samples on the heads - he seemed content to let Ramm do most of the heavy improvisational lifting.

The fact that many of the tunes were in 5/4 or 7/4 with tremendously strong melodies called to mind jazz performer/composers that deal in similar sensibilities - Aaron Parks' Invisible Cinema, for one, and David Binney's work on Balance, South and Welcome to Life. I wonder what kind of overlap exists there - whether Swinscoe was inspired by Binney, or vice-versa, or whether they exist independent of each other and it's just artistic coincidence.

Other observations:
- To the very eager, older gentleman behind me who insisted on being conspicuous in his applause, his adulation for Patrick Watson, and incessantly repeating "My hands, my hands" during Grey Reverend's tune of the same name: I'm happy you're in late middle age, know who the Cinematics are and still go out to shows, but chill out. Please.
- A note to promoters and venues: it's nice to let journalists, especially photographers, know the rules of engagement before the set starts. My show-partner was repeatedly questioned as to why she had a camera, and unflinchingly gave her name and her outlet. She was escorted into the foyer of Club Soda by security to prove her identity, missing Patrick Watson's guest spot. If you're only allowed to snap the first three songs, it's nice to know that before the first three songs.