Musical first dates with chemistry

Here's a 10 Things that's all about shows and venues from May or items related to the jazzfest to come.

1

What a great pleasure it was to hear Norma Winstone sing, and to meet her after our advance interview, at the BlueShore on May 10th. Sorry to the more offline contingent who somehow missed news of the show, I regret not doing even more to tell you about it in advance! A lot of VIPs and vocalists did come out, but it wasn't sold-out. I went up to her and shook her hand right after the set. I thanked her for the great show and for doing an interview with me; she said, "Oh yeah, I recognize you! Thank you!" That was it. I shuffled out with the house and we moved on.

2

The new venue on the gig list has been the historic hotel bar of the Astoria, 769 East Hastings. It may have had an unflattering nickname in the early 2010s, but it hosts jazz-adjacent stuff on Tuesdays now. It's a DIY affair: none of our more active presenters have gone into this room.

One that I did notice and tell you about was back on April 1st, where names emerged of young musicians who are now the series' regulars: saxophonist Brad Vitick, keyboardist Winston Matsushita, bassist-cellist Emilio Suarez, to name a couple. These happen to be some of the same folks who run an artist space on Main not far from the venue.

I've tracked some other shows on the list since then. Los Duendes played late into the night on Good Friday, Suarez led a triple bill plus a jam hosted by Vitick on April 29th, a band called Beat Spirit played May 20th with pianist Clara Lin's trio, and Matsushita brought his Keyboard Grinder project there this past Tuesday. I still have yet to attend for the first time and will be watching.

3

The night before Norma, on May 9th, I heard Ottawa pianist Peter Hum lead a quartet at Frankie's with his old McGill friends, Steve Holy and Dave Robbins, plus the younger but also McGill-trained Steve Kaldestad. Hum is a writer, so of course I've long admired him. He used his writer's wit to describe the gig with Kaldestad as a "musical first date". I was emceeing, so I joined him in carrying the bit through the evening. And in musical terms, Hum writes a mean jazz waltz.

My favourite number the band played was "Yeah!" by Kaldestad, a track from his record New York Afternoon. He recorded that one in March 2014 on a New York with Weeds trip, featuring a hard-to-beat band of Renee Rosnes on piano, Peter Washington on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums. "Yeah!" is like a spun-off mix of "Tricotism" and "Stompin' at the Savoy". I want to play this tune now.

4

On May 17th, I went to the Fox for an Infidels double-bill free jazz album release party: KneeJerk as well as Kenton Loewen and JP Carter released new albums on vinyl. KneeJerk began as a trio but now includes Cole Schmidt on guitar; dig the surprisingly straight-ahead "Old Rookie" linked above.

Loewen and Carter's duo launched the Infidels label back in 2021, as Tim Reinert and I discussed on the podcast way back when...