“My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk”
Echo Beach, Todd's and other lists, Grammys and jazz crimes, fulsome coverage, Sarah Hanahan returns, Kaia Kater
I still enjoy doing this format after trying it out for a month. Are you cool with it?
I've been working as hard as I can while also being a hermit for the past week – not a bad week for it to snow! – so these are the notes of a shut-in, relative to some of January where I was out at a lot of shows. There's a time and place for everything.
1
I heard the Tony Wilson / John Korsrud Octet at Zameen Art House last Friday: Brent Mah joined as another saxophonist on top of what I had listed as a septet. The music rocked and rolled but also got sensitive enough to focus the house's attention toward the two guitar veterans Ron Samworth and Wilson in key moments. Neither the horns nor guitars ever got too loud for the small room. My friend Kevin Romain on drums even sounded like he had some headroom for energy and fury.
The group played an arrangement of this song "Echo Beach" by Martha and the Muffins, which I'd describe as new wave, I guess? I'm too young for this. My title for this article is a lyric from the song, and it does not apply to me anymore, thank you very much! The Wilson/Korsrud version drills the main chorus riff into your brain and then washes it away with a respectable amount of noise.
Korsrud has a big show on Thursday featuring his even-larger Absolute Unit ensemble:
2
The China Cloud is our latest venue to launch a GoFundMe. "Operation costs, bills, unpredictably slow business during usual high seasons, and infrastructure issues we were dealt all mounted at once to create a type of sudden financial struggle we had not been met with since 2020," they write in the description. They continue:
"We have set our fundraising goal at $20,000. A contribution toward this goal will help us to pay off retroactive rent fees, standard operating bills, and building maintenance costs accrued. This will allow us to settle accounts, get back to ones [sic] and reorganize to effectively create and manage our new business framework."
What's especially tough is they copied that passage verbatim, same dollar amount and all, from their last GoFundMe in 2020. I wish them the best.
3
Todd Stewart
I love publishing a 5,000+ word contribution by a passionate fan of the music. Thanks to Todd for doing it again this year. For what it's worth, some of the ones that I listened to the most last year and which appear on his list (and that aren't Cellar albums, which are of course all my favourites) are:
- Sam Wilkes - iiyo iiyo iiyo (Todd ranked 42)
- Bill Frisell - Orchestras (Live) (ranked 32)
- Charles Lloyd - The Sky Will Be There Tomorrow (30)
- Jeff Parker, ETA IVtet - The Way Out of Easy (15)
- Josh Johnson - Unusual Object (5)
- Mary Halvorson - Cloudward (4)
4
Roots Music Canada
I didn't get a notification when it published back in early January apparently, but I was invited for the second year to join Roots Music Canada's "critics poll". Click above for my own top 10 of 2024, which includes 3 of those mutual picks with Todd. They also got Fiona Black to do it, her picks here.
5
Zaccai Curtis just won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album, Cubop Lives. I dig it. Here are some other people who just won Grammys for jazz, in case you are part of the silent majority who doesn't tune in whatsoever: the late Chick Corea with Béla Fleck, Samara Joy for a Christmas album, Meshell Ndegeocello who won a category introduced last year for the second time and thus remains its only winner, and someone named Dan Pugach. Fun fact: Curtis, for his part, was slated to be Lakecia Benjamin's pianist at our jazzfest last year but was replaced by Oscar Perez when I was there at Performance Works.
6
It's wild that Zakir Hussain wasn't mentioned in the Grammys segment about musicians whom we've lost recently. Thanks, though, to Tim Reinert for playing him this week in the Infidels Jazz Show in-memoriam episode.
7
I had to laugh when "Jazz Crimes" by Joshua Redman showed up on the Saturday Night Jazz with Laila Biali playlist last weekend. I used to replay and replay this video in my high school band room with my friends Kaz and Rowan, trying to nail the timing. Also, it's awesome to turn up videos on YouTube that say they were uploaded 18 years ago. YouTube turns 20 this year as a platform.
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Janet Smith
The Stir Alex Varty piece on Jazz at the Bolt is nice and fulsome. I don't regret skipping coverage of the festival because I'm happy to be working on it directly, so go read that one! Next Friday, I'll still tell you which shows are on my personal list so we can say hi.
9
Sarah Hanahan and Joe Farnsworth return to Frankie's all weekend starting tonight; back in the last week of January 2024, I heard them at the club as well as at Hero's Welcome for an Infidels show. At least at the time I'm typing this, Sunday still has seats. Brandi Disterheft is in the lineup on bass alongside Brad Turner on piano. I've never met Disterheft nor heard her live; wonder when I can swing it during this weekend.
Hanahan hadn't dropped her album Among Giants yet when I heard her last year, but I did hear her on a podcast (I was going to write a big feature and then bailed at the time due to workload) talking about and listened to Jackie McLean playing "A House Is Not a Home", the tune she plays in the above video. "SING IT!" I remember she exclaimed on the podcast right as McLean finished a particularly choice phrase. I'm sure she'll bring as much of that heat this weekend as I got to enjoy last year.
10
On Tuesday night, I'm going to hear the banjoist-singer-songwriter from Montreal, Kaia Kater, at the York Theatre. Joining her are my friend Madeleine Elkins on guitar and a bass player to be named later. Looks like a relatively quiet weeknight tour stop for Kater sales-wise, but I'm no less looking forward to it.
