Len Aruliah Sextet gig and end of semester

The Spring Semester is over and I am taking a little breather this afternoon before plunging into the many other projects and piles of work that have been put on hold over the past few weeks. After adjudicating a bunch of grad recitals and hearing some of the wonderful work that was done by the students at Capilano this semester I feel very grateful to be a music educator and to work with such intelligent, creative, and interesting students.  Thanks all for a great year!

Wednesday night I played a great gig with the Len Aruliah Sextet at Presentation House Studio.  The house was packed to capacity  Len had a new batch of tunes beautifully and intricately arranged for the band:  Joe Poole (drums), Brent Gubbels (bass), Kristian Alexandrov (piano), Colin Maskell (tenor), plus Len and me.  I always have a great time playing with any of these players, but it was the first time with this particular grouping.  I thought the band played especially well.   Joe really kept things exciting and challenged everyone to play on a higher level.  What an amazing drummer and musician he is.  I'll be playing with him again next week at the same venue with Coat Cooke (saxes) and Clyde Reed (bass).

Gig with Len Aruliah Quartet

Looking forward to another gig tonight with the Len Aruliah Quartet at El Barrio.
Len has a book of new tunes and some Kenny Wheeler compositions as usual.  Stan Taylor on drums, Tommy Babin on bass.  Tommy and Stan can get quite rambunctious as a rhythm section so it should be a lot of fun.

I met Tommy in Montreal in 1998 when I was there auditioning for the MMus program at McGill.  Tommy already knew Len, who was also living in Montreal then, and Len arranged for Tommy and a drummer (either Karl Jannuska or Claude Laverne, can't remember which...) to play on my audition.  The audition was successful and I thought I'd be heading to McGill, but greener pastures in Oregon seemed more appealing to my wife (we just got married a few months before) so we didn't go to Montreal.

A few years after I returned to Vancouver, Tommy came out here as well, following his wife Tamara, who had just got a faculty job at SFU.  He called me up and we played a gig that very week.  Since then we've been pretty regular collaborators in a variety of different bands: East Van Jazz Orchestra, Djangophilia, Koan, Len's band etc....  He is a marvelous player with a very aggressive and powerful time feel and right-hand attack plus a very fluid and seemingly effortless technique and flow of ideas.

Gig with Jennifer Scott and Rene Worst at Presentation House Studio

I'm playing a gig with the fantastic jazz vocalist, Jennifer Scott, tomorrow at Presentation House Studio  Jennifer's husband Rene Worst is one of this town's best-known bassists and he will be on the gig too.  Bernie Arai will play drums.  I have never played with Jennifer before, though I have known her and her musical talents since I first started playing here.  Rene is of the generation of musicians preceding mine and I got to hear him a lot when I was coming up.  We haven't played together, nor have I played with Bernie, since before I left for the States so it will be great to musically reconnect with everyone.  We're playing the Vancouver Club next Wednesday, so if you are a member and happen to be around, come and say hi.
Jennifer and Rene have put together a lot of great arrangements and original tunes.  It is going be a fun night!

Gary Bartz on Jazz Education

I respect Bartz' right to a point of view based on what he has personally  heard and seen of jazz education and its products, but it seems very facile and uncritical to think or propose that there is some monolithic thing called 'jazz education' that is all 'backwards'. He is using his (considerable) weight as a musician of note to lend creedence to a subjective personal observation of a very small sample.  A broad-stroke condemnation doesn't seem either helpful or truthful. He himself teaches at Oberlin so does that mean he is the only one who can get it right, the only one who can't see the very obvious problems of which he speaks? If so, it seems very convenient for him.

Like it or not, we are now living in an era where the majority of jazz musicians out there have some degree of formal education.  Brad Meldhau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ethan Iverson, Joshua Redman etc etc etc.   Do they all sound the same as Bartz suggests?  Do they 'have no ears' ?  There are great jazz educators and institutions and there are terrible ones too.  Some get it 'frontwards' and some get it backwards.  Do they all teach the same way and turn out students that sound the same way?

The video seems to be excerpted from something longer.  It would be interesting to hear his comments in their full and original context.  Perhaps in that context it would come across as less self-congratulatory, narrow and poorly-considered.

Jazz in Moscow

The annual conference of the Pacific Northwest chapter of the College Music Society met in Moscow, Idaho this weekend with the faculty of the Lionel Hampton School of Music as out hosts.  Many thanks tomy colleagues Leonard Garrison, Bob Dickow and Barry Bilderback for all their hard work making it happen.  I'm currently the chapter president and have been involved with CMS since my grad student days in the late 90s.  The conference was a great success with lots of interesting presentations and, as always, many performances of great new compositions.   I presented a workshop on some of John Stevens' free improvisation teaching strategies with some of my fellow delegates as willing and very able guinea pigs.   I've used these improv 'games' with students on many occasions, but never with musicians of such high calibre.  What a pleasure!

I was lucky enough to top off my weekend with a great gig at Bucer's Coffee in Moscow with some wonderful local players:  Dav Bjur (bass), Jon Anderson (piano) and Joe Covill (drums).  A U of Idaho student called Andy Rayburn sat in on tenor as did my trombonist friend Don Bowyer (from Huntsille Alabama).  The venue is a very hip cafe/pub with lots of bookshelves, amazing desserts (it is America after all!) and very nice people. Lots of students and some of the conference delegates turned out to hear the music.

I'm always amazed by small towns in America.  Even in a little place like Moscow, with no major cities for miles around, you can find really fine jazz players and make some music.  Dave, Jon and Joe were really generous and welcoming and they played beautifully.  All are really swinging players who listen hard.  there are no attitudes and posturing with these folks - it's all about the music. It reminded me again of how powerful music, especially jazz music, can be in helping strangers communicate, create and form meaningful relationships.  I just love the rush of going to someplace new and meeting new people and then improvising together to create something beautiful.  It really is a celebration of the best aspects of being human

Here's a post-gig pic taken with Joe's phone.  From left - Joe, me, Jon, and Dave.

My old U of Oregon office-mate, Barry Bilderback, and his wife put me up at their house kindly drove me to and from the airport.  They are two of the kindest and most genuine people I know.   Barry also set up the Bucer's gig for me.  He is a professor of ethnomusicology and music history at the U of Idaho now.  UI is a classic American university with frat houses and old brick buildings covered in ivy - the kind of institution we just don't have in Western Canada.

I'm a little tired after a late gig and catching a 6am flight this morning, but all in all it was great weekend.

A Note to my students...

MP3s from Wednesday's Gig

I recorded the gig on Wednesday night (the subject of my previous post).
I had a great time and Kristian and Stan played amazingly as usual.  The recording was made with one of these little Zoom H4 recorders and the sound quality is pretty decent, though I had to downsample substantially to get the longer tracks to work on my website.

Three mp3s are available for listening at my website here:

http://www.jaredburrows.com/music

There should be more to come as I get some time to process and upload them.  Enjoy.

Alexandrov/Burrows/Taylor

I'm playing a gig tonight at Presentation House Studio with one of my favorite groups, a trio with Bulgarian-Canadian pianist and keyboard player, Kristian Alexandrov and my old friend Stan Taylor on drums.  A little over a year ago, Kristian showed up at one of my quartet gigs and introduced himself and gave me a CD.  After hearing him play I immediately thought of how much fun it would be to play in a trio with Kristian.  He is a virtuoso keyboard player and a great composer as well.  It always amazes me when pianists, organists, and keyboard players can simultaneously improvise melodic lines and accompany themselves by playing independent bass lines.  Kristian does this extremely well and has a great groove with Stan.  He's a very versatile player who is comfortable doing rock, funk, jazz, classical, R&B; you name it and he can do it authentically with energy and passion. As I've mentioned in previous posts, Vancouver really is loaded with great players and I feel very lucky to be able to make music with so many of them.
I'm really looking forward to the gig tonight.

Here's a youtube video of a gig from last year featuring our hit version of Besame Mucho in 5/4 time.

Swinging

I played a lovely gig last night with Len Aruliah (saxes) and Lorne Kellett (piano).  I hauled out my electric bass for the first time in nearly a year.  The event was an in-class concert for my Douglas College "Intro to Music" class.  Len brought in a few standards "That Old Feeling" and Alone Together", plus a few of his tunes and a few by Kenny Wheeler and Lee Konitz.  Of particular note was Len's contrafact on the chord changes of "I Can't Get Started", a thing that he calls "Initiation".  He wrote a really beautiful and inspiring melody.  As usual, it was a lot of fun to play with Len.  Lorne was in especially fine form and the two of us really stretched the standard material; almost to the breaking point at times.  I had forgotten how much fun it is to play bass and have the ability to affect the harmony and time feel in such a fundamental way and I also enjoy the extra sustain that the electric bass gives in comparison to the guitar. I think I will be playing more bass this year. The students had a great time listening and asking questions and we had a lot of visitors from outside the class.

On the way home I was thinking about how energizing and life-affirming it can be to play swinging music with such great musicians.  Every once in a while, I have an experience like this that reminds me that it is a privilege to be a musician and to have ready access to this kind of profoundly human creative interaction. I will now coast through a peaceful weekend on that high and try to relax a bit.

Don't just stand there.....

Some local and 'ex-pat' Vancouver musicians have once again been wondering aloud in their blogs, on forums and facebook why Vancouver doesn't have more jazz venues.  It seems another round of complaining and moaning is beginning again.  I really don't get this.  Yes, there is absolutely no doubt that jazz venues are thin on the ground in this city and that the arts in general are treated with utter contempt by our provincial government.  Yes, the liquor laws are antiquated, real estate and lease rates are incredibly expensive, taxes on small business are high, most people here seem to like kayaking and skiing more than going out to hear a concert etc.  And yes, it certainly can't compare to New York or London  as a center for artistic creation (can anyplace compare?).

My response to all of these issues is, SO WHAT?  What are the complainers doing to change things, to create venues, to find innovative ways of getting the music heard?  There are plenty of people here doing positive things to keep the music happening: Ken Pickering and the Coastal Jazz and Blues folks, David Pay and Music on Main, Cory at the Cellar, the 1067 collective, Coat Cooke and NOW, Cole Schmidt's series at El Barrio, Clyde Reed and I with Presentation House.  I'm sure there are many others of whom I am unaware.  Just imagine what would happen if everyone who opened his or her mouth to complain used that energy to create an opportunity for playing music.

Vancouver is a wonderful place to live.  It is, as everyone seems ready to admit, a very, very beautiful place. For many of us that counts for a lot.  The arts here are not well supported by government or the general public but, for whatever reason, there are huge numbers of great musicians, dancers, painters, film makers and other cultural producers here making great work.  It is not London, New York, or Toronto and, for many of us who live here, that is exactly the point!

Here is my challenge for anyone who doesn't like the way things are:  Do something to improve the situation!  If every musician in this town made some small attempt to create an opportunity to play, lobbied their local MLA, MP or Arts Council for increased funding, and actively supported others who are already making things happen (asking other people for gigs doesn't count as support) just imagine the changes that would take place.

 

Odds and ends

Last night, some of my students mentioned that they are actually reading my blog.  I have been quite delinquent in my blog writing duties of late. Despite the fact that Capilano U is on reading break this week, I have been quite busy with my usual range of performing activities and other teaching jobs.  I did take a morning to buy myself some lovely new Italian shoes (on sale of course!).  That made it feel a little more like a holiday.  My wife and kids often tease me about the number of shoes that I have, but for someone who performs all the time it is actually pretty important to have some options for the stage. Shoes and chocolate are really my only serious vices.

On Wednesday I had the perfect opportunity to put those new shoes to work as I played at Presentation House Studio with Joe Poole (drums), Coat Cooke (saxes) and Clyde Reed (bass).  Joe is a fellow shoeist and he thoroughly approved of my purchase. The music was superb.  Clyde and Joe were in particularly fine form, grooving very well together and creating a kind of buoyant, joyful swing feel that such as I have rarely experienced.  Coat was really wailing as usual.  His sound is always so powerful and his ideas very original and fluidly connected.  It was a privilege to make music with them.

Last week the jazz choir I direct at Cap U, the 'Combo Choir'  (must think of a catchy name...), performed with Len Aruliah at two concerts, one at Cap and one at the West Van Community Centre.  Both gigs went very well and the students did a fine job with Len's music.  Len had a very good time as well and was impressed with the ability of the students to playing such difficult music.  I spent yesterday arranging a whole new concert worth of music for the group: five Kenny Wheeler tunes.  I think these will be great fun for the students.

I have no big plans for the coming week.  For a change there are no gigs or significant projects.  I will just enjoy my teaching and get some practicing and composing done.  Lastly, Adrian Caballero finally sent me a picture from the gig I did last month with the Australian saxophonist Jason Thornton.  Jason has now asked me to play on some tracks for his new recording.  It should be fun to send digital tracks back and forth across the world.  From left to right: Jason, Me, Joe Poole, Brent Gubbels.