On April 1, 2012, Capital Youth Jazz Orchestra (CYJO) played
Monday, 4 February 2013
Florquestra Brasil received an enthusiastic full house at Cabaret La Basoche in Aylmer on January 30. The event: the launch of their first album, Flortografia. The hour-long concert produced an immediate standing ovation at the end, and another after the encore.
The music was a mixture – Georges Brassens, Leonard Cohen, Brazilian jazz standards, and originals – sung in mostly French, but with some Portuguese and English too. It was all served with a cabaret sensibility and with strong Brazilian rhythms underneath, for a unified and highly infectious whole.
Léonard Constant (guitar, vocals), Regina Teixeira (percussion, vocals), Silvio Módolo (accordion, guitar, cavaquinho, keyboards, and more), and Angel Araos (drums, percussion) were joined by further musical friends. most of whom had also played on the album: Fernando Acosta (percussion), Jasmin Lalande (saxes), Paul Doyle (trumpet and flugelhorn), Ken Kanwisher (bass), and Gabriel Estrela Pinto (percussion). In particular it was their skillful use of Brazilian instruments: the berimbau, agogô, cavaquinho, tamborim, caxixi, surdo, pandeiro, viola caipira, zabumba, and more, which really added the extra flair to their music.
Read more: Florquestra Brasil launches their first album, Flortografia, with all-around enthusiasm
Vancouver guitarist Bill Coon dropped into Ottawa this weekend, teaming up with Ottawa guitarist Tim Bedner for an end-of-the-year jazz brunch at ZenKitchen. A record crowd – Zen tweeted they served more than 75 people – came to listen to the duo play and extend jazz standards, while enjoying the vegan taste sensations.
While Oswald and Thomson have a regular duo, this was the first time all three had played together. But, as musicians long accustomed to improvisation, they easily fell into sync, playing two sets of free improv in which each of the instruments provided both the rhythm and the melody, and nothing was predictable. When Thomson played sweeping bass notes on his trombone, Oswald countered with punctuated high notes. Thompson produced a range of sounds from the light and breathy to conjuring up a full winter snowstorm. Stewart used his sticks in unexpected ways: dropping them together onto an upside down tom or the floor, and banging their ends into drums. Both Thomson and Stewart dismantled their instruments in various ways in order to produce new sounds. Stewart's percussive playing of his upside-down floor tom's legs against the floor led to the first time we've felt an IMOO performance through our feet. All three played a full dynamic range in their music, taking advantage of the near-silent venue and snow-muffled street outside to play to the possibly softest level heard in an IMOO concert. It was a concert which explored musical edges yet was still approachable.