Inside the Jazz at the Anvil series with Tom Keenlyside
The next event in Tom's series at New Westminster's Anvil Theatre is Tuesday, March 21
Saxophonist and flautist Tom Keenlyside has been presenting monthly events at the Anvil Theatre with his friend Kurt Wipp, owner of Piva Modern Italian Restaurant in New Westminster.
Under the banner of Piva Presents: Jazz at the Anvil, their next event in my (and Tom's) city is this Tuesday, March 21 featuring Doc Fingers in a New Orleans-themed show:
Joining Doc are Tim Hearsey on guitar, Rene Worst on bass, Chris Nordquist on drums, and Tom on flute and/or saxophone.
In an interview with me, Tom gave an inside look at the making of the event series. It's a fundraising initiative for the New Westminster Secondary School music program, which I happen to be a product of. "We've already given $5,000 to the New West high school music program," Tom said, "and we'll probably end up giving them something like another $5,000 by the end of the series. It's fun."
First, he had to express his excitement with riding the wave of activity in the broader jazz scene:
"I play with the Hard Rubber Orchestra. Korsrud gets all sorts of really interesting stuff, man. I'm really happy to be doing that, and I'm playing in Dan Hersog's band. That's fantastic. Michael Kim's got one too. I'm playing in three or four big bands now, which is crazy! They don't play all the time, but it's cool."
Tom continued by speaking to the strength of some long relationships:
I've played with him for 45 years. I love the guy. He does Professor Longhair, all that other stuff, and he does it really well. The band is a smoking band, and I've played with all these guys forever. Rene Worst, I met him when he was 18 years old. This is not complicated music, it's just a lot of fun."
As well, there was a special moment at an earlier concert in the series featuring the music of Dave Brubeck:
"At the Dave Brubeck concert, the very first one, a little old guy came up to me. He said, 'I gotta tell you, this is one of the best things I've ever seen,' and it was Ernie Colledge, my high school music teacher in 1964. And then I reconnected with Ernie, I hadn't seen him since that time, I think I saw him once. I'm 72 now, so my connections go back a very long way. They're pretty mind-blowing in a lifetime continuum. They really have an impact."
Where did the themes come from? Tom says he gave Kurt the opportunity to set the course:
"Kurt's a jazz fan. He's not a musician. [Piva] is a great restaurant. He just wanted to do something different, and so he conscripted me to book some stuff. He came up with the ideas of Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, a night in Havana. All those themes, he came up with, and I just helped him realize it."
Tom and Kurt had to work hard – and put money down – to get a piano into the Anvil Theatre for the series. Tom elaborated on their piano acquisition journey:
"[The theatre] had a Yamaha in there, and then for some reason it went elsewhere. And then another guy donated a Kawai which had been refurbished; the guy had it fixed up, and then it played a lot better, and so he said, 'You can't have this piano, I'm taking it back home,' so that's the end of that.
"I told Kurt, 'Here's the deal. They have no piano, so we can't really do it. If push comes to shove, I'll put my piano in there for six months. I didn't want to do it, but I would have done it. That would have been fine. I have a great piano.' He said 'We'll look around for a piano.'
The big thing is, a lot of the classical community wanted to do concerts there too, and they couldn't. Kurt and I decided to bite the bullet, and I did some inquiries. I got a great deal from Tom Lee, so we bought a Yamaha C5. It's magnificent, it's fantastic. I went and picked it up myself, and the city kicked in some money too. It was a three-way split."
And this anecdote about bringing in Miles Black to play the aforementioned piano:
"I love Miles, he's like my brother. First of all, Kurt says, 'Okay, let's do Dave Brubeck. Let's do the Time Out album.' I said, 'Okay, there's only one or two people in town who can actually do that. It's really hard music at the piano. 'Blue Rondo A La Turk'? It's ridiculous. Michael Creber could do it, there's a couple who could do it, but Miles is the guy, because he had been playing with Dan Brubeck. I got him into it, so then Kurt throws out Oscar Peterson. And again, there's not too many who can do that, except for Miles Black."
"Then he got caught in that snowstorm [back in the winter], and he was around the 22nd Street SkyTrain station, completely snowed-in. His car wouldn't go.
"He phoned me up and said, 'I'll get there! I'll walk if I have to.' I said, 'How are you gonna be Oscar Peterson when you get here?' He took the SkyTrain in, there was no rehearsal, and they just completely roasted. They were fantastic. Doing these series is sometimes fraught with peril, but it worked out."
Other themes that the series has covered include Christmas, with Karin Plato on vocals ("We did some tunes that Karin picked out. They were special, they were different); Brazil (Tom has an album called Musica Brasileira); and Havana ("That was totally packed, sold-out, big standing ovation.")
Of the Doc Fingers show, Tom said, "It's the last one this year. We're just brewing some stuff for next year. I can't guarantee it, but it just depends what Kurt says. We're probably going to go for it. It's been really fun."
We'll see where Jazz at the Anvil takes Tom next as a presenter.
