The Jennifer Scott Quintet will bring an electric jazz program to the Yukon this weekend In one sense, Jennifer Scott’s newest CD, due to be released sometime in the next few months, is a fitting tribute to the Vancouver singer/pianist’s own musical upbringing. Titled Music for Bigs & Smalls, the album consists of what Scott calls …
The Sam Taylor Trio will present an evening of jazz standards at the Yukon Arts Centre on Sunday, Jan. 26, as part of the Jazz on the Wing series. Besides Taylor, personnel will include Aaron Seeber on drums and Neal Miner on upright bass.
Without question, Phil Dwyer was the only first-year law student at the University of New Brunswick in 2014 sporting an Order of Canada pin in his lapel. Odds are strong he was also the only frosh who could claim a 30-year career as one of Canada’s most in-demand jazz musicians. Or that his other option for …
Vocalist-bass player Katie Thiroux brings her jazz trio to Whitehorse for a Jazz on the Wing concert
Lonnie Powell’s passion for percussion dates back to a childhood night in B.C.’s Kootenay region, when he attended a wedding reception with his mother and watched a “really animated” drummer strut his stuff.
By her own admission, Jodi Proznick, an award-winning bassist and member of Triology, has enjoyed an “incredible performing career, and had opportunities really beyond anything I could have imagined for myself at the beginning of this journey.”
After more than two decades as a jazz guitarist, Sheryl Bailey still invokes the name of a player who first inspired her love of the genre, but who died when she was just two years old. “I got into jazz when I was about 15. I heard Wes Montgomery on the radio. I just fell …
After two acoustic solo albums, Bluesman’s Plea (2011) & Here on Earth (2014), Brandon Isaak’s Spiritual Undertones marks a departure.
Fate has a habit of steering flute and saxophone player Jane Bunnett in unexpected directions. If tendinitis hadn’t forced a break from her intense piano practice regime, for instance, she might not have gone to San Francisco and met Charles Mingus’s pianist, Don Pullen, who would become her mentor, friend and musical collaborator. If she …
Cory Weeds credits the influential jazz label, Criss Cross Jazz, for his initial introduction to long-time friend and musical collaborator, David Hazeltine. In the mid-’90s, the Vancouver sax player, impresario and Juno-winning producer had finished his studies at the University of North Texas and returned to his home roots. Before long, he was spearheading a …
Café des Voix at Cafe Balzam at the Takhini Hot Springs on Jan 31. PHOTOS: courtesy of Elaine Schiman Café des Voix is always looking for new talent Yukon accompanist Grant Simpson helped found Café des Voix in 2016 as an extension of Jazz Yukon workshops that had been occurring since 2011 and as “a …
When a band calls itself Peripheral Vision, you might be excused for thinking it’s a rock group, or possibly a folk/roots, or even bluegrass ensemble. But you’d be wrong.
The email said Jeremy Pelt was between engagements in Europe and China, with just a “sliver of time” of time for a phone interview from his New York City home. For the first few minutes, the answers were terse, non-committal, perhaps a bit jetlagged. Or maybe he just wasn’t into it. Asked about his earliest …
Tamir Hendelman’s list of players who have inspired him as a performer and composer includes unsurprising names such Evans, Davis, Corea, Hancock and Peterson. But how many other jazz musicians could also such early influences as a grandmother continuously humming everything from Yiddish songs, to opera, to Frank Sinatra in the apartment below? Or, for …
After several vocal jazz workshops “There was no outlet for the singers to practice what they’d learned.” said Simpson. Enter Café des Voix
Memphis, Tennessee has been dubbed both the “Home of the Blues” and the “Birthplace of Rock and Roll”. But it’s no slouch in the jazz department, either. In a four-year span from 1934 to 1938, at least half a dozen future jazz luminaries were born there. That mid-’30s crop included trumpeter Booker Little, as well …
Full disclosure: Steve Maddock and I have a few things in common. We’re both PKs (preacher’s kids) who grew up in southern Ontario adding our piping, angelic treble voices to the choirs in our fathers’ churches. Point of departure: I struggled through the guy-hood change of voice as a scholarship student of an Ursuline nun, …
If you go by way of Laos and the U.S. East Coast, the journey from France to Yukon is anything but a straight line. But a brief reunion of two lifelong friends in Paris two summers ago proves you can get from there to here. “We had a great time together, and I told him …
If you’re doing a stage show about a highly-admired guitarist, being able to render the music is a big help. Fortunately, Whitehorse musician Nicholas Mah has been playing the music of his dramatic subject, the late Lenny Breau, for decades. Mah was 12 when he first encountered Breau at a guitar society meeting in his …
Musical talent is over-rated, and taste is under-rated. At least, that’s how Canadian-born sax player Grant Stewart sees things. “I know many, many, many players who can play anything they hear, and that’s kind of what you’re told is the ideal to shoot for,” he says. “But if you don’t develop the things that you’re …
Anyone contemplating starting a small musical group to perform on a cruise ship would be well-advised to contact Lache Cercel. The Romanian-born fiddler, who now lives in B.C., teaches a course in how to develop a successful repertoire for just such a venture. “This is something I know myself, because from when I was 18 …
Your first perception of Duncan Sinclair may be of a reserved, buttoned-down guy – a civil servant, most likely. You wouldn’t be wrong. Sinclair spent decades in the territorial public service, rising through the ranks before retiring in 2002 as top dog of the Yukon Development Corporation. Next time you see him, he has …
Forget the metronome, and don’t even bother trying to play like someone else, no matter how much you admire them. “When I was young, I figured that out real quick, because it was uncomfortable; it didn’t work,” says legendary drummer Louis Hayes. “You’re influenced by all sorts of things, and you can do certain things …
Campbell Ryga has a thing about saxophones. When he’s not playing them, chances are you’ll find him at a workbench repairing one, or conducting clinics to teach others to do it. “Saxophones and clarinets always kind of interested me. I like to take them apart and I have an aptitude for the repairing of those …
According to Tim Tamashiro, there’s “thinky” jazz and then there’s “drinky” jazz . “I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the serious nature of jazz, so I wanted to come up with some sort of a name to put it into a bit of a context for the greater population,” he explains. Oh, …
She later met Tucker at a Whitehorse Folk Music Society coffee house gig. “Ray must have been talking to Scott Wilson, and then we all just came together,” she says. The group’s biggest outing so far was a slot last fall in the Junction Arts and Music (JAM) series in Haines Junction. It was Wilson’s …
Jazz Yukon is delivering yet another one-of-a-kind show next week. On April 23, Toronto bass player George Koller will perform alongside Yukon percussionist Ken Searcy and muti-instrumentalist Daniel Janke in a concert dubbed George Koller: Jazz Reunion. It has been decades since the three musicians have played together. “I have been trying for quite some time …
Learn, listen, and play is what Jazz in the Hall events are about. On March 6 Jazz Yukon is presenting a Jazz in the Hall event featuring youth musicians. The Jazz Kids with Their Jazz Hands Project is a show with an open jam session tucked in at The Old Fire Hall. The feature performers …
Playing solo is something Robi Botos loves. The jazz piano player, born in Hungary but has called Toronto home these past 10 years, loves to play with his two brothers, too, but there is something special about playing solo. “It has a different vibe,” he says over the phone. “I love playing in a trio, …
In The Netherlands it is almost 2 a.m. and yet Amina Figarova is bursting with energy and she wants to talk. Even better: she wants to talk to someone from the Yukon. “How is it up there?” she asks, straining to offer silence to allow an answer. She apologizes, saying she just came from a …
After a career of 70 years playing jazz piano, on every continent in the world, Oliver Jones is finally coming to the Yukon. “I guess someone up there figured an old man should get up to Whitehorse at least once in his lifetime,” says Jones over the phone from his summer home in Florida. He …
Some have called Marc Atkinson’s music “gypsy jazz”. Over the phone line, I could almost feel Atkinson shrug: “It’s a common denominator,” he says. “The fact that I play the guitar, I get associated with it.” And audience members often ask him if he is influenced by various guitar players and he sometimes has to …
Don Ogilvie’s love affair with Gypsy jazz dates back 40 years. Like most budding musicians in 1970, Ogilvie was mostly into rock music at the time, but he also played with a New Orleans-style band. Then he discovered Jean “Django” Reinhardt, the Belgium-born Romani gypsy who pioneered the distinctive sound that became known as “hot” …
