Last night's show was the second of four Special Projects presentations, and what has stuck out for me about both (Amanda Tosoff's show was a few weeks back) is the quality of the original compositions featured in the shows.
Our second Special Projects presentation of 2016 is next Wednesday, March 30 at Lula Lounge - the CD release party for Petal, the debut album from Sundar Viswanathan's AVATAAR. Prepare for a musical journey!
Every once in a while, when standing in front of my big band, and especially after someone within the band has made some smart-alec remark, I'll ask the audience - "Anyone want to run a big band?" It's always in jest, of course...
A bit ironic, I suppose, that for my first post in many months, I’m going to talk about a project called Words since, you know, I haven’t written many here recently…
Is perhaps what you've been saying to yourself this past week, waiting impatiently for my final festival post. (Also possible: I'm giving the impact this blog has on your daily life far too much credit.) Well wait no longer - here it is!
And suddenly, it's kind of the last day of the festival. Most of our official programming wraps up today. We'll be celebrating our volunteers at a party tomorrow evening, we've got Jamie Culllum on Monday night, and there's still a plethora of music in the clubs, but for the hub of the festival (Nathan Phillips Square) today marks the end of activity. It's been an incredible week - excellent music, great turnout overall, and a lot of fun.
Looking back at the last 24 hours I realize it's been a sort of "around the world" musical adventure, with a variety of cultures and countries represented.
If jazz - and all its various kinds - can be represented by a rainbow, all of the colours were on display last night…
(Hey. Gimme a break. Opening lines are hard.)
As the days get busier, these posts might get shorter. Whether that's good news or bad I'll leave to you to decide…
Let's skip right over the weak attempt at humour contained in the title of this post and get to today's festival activity recap…