Recording: The Thing Is

Artist: The Thing Is

Song: Easy

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 3), February 25, 2017.

The Thing Is - Easy

Tova Kardonne's big band was back in effect, with seven players offering sophisticated and lushly-arranged jazz pop settings for her songs. The set included excursions back to her Lanka Suite and beyond, all bursting with vibrant energy.

Recording: Ryan Driver & Jim Sexton

Artist: Ryan Driver & Jim Sexton

Song: For Heaven's Sake [composers: Elise Bretton/Sherman Edwards/Donald Meyer]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), December 23, 2016.

Ryan Driver & Jim Sexton - For Heaven's Sake

A duo set of standards from Driver on piano and Sexton on double bass worked at the same pace Driver usually tackles standards with larger groups — that's to say at a relaxed drift with plenty of space for the song to unfold itself. This one's probably best known from Billie Holiday's recording.

[The Ryan Driver Sextet's monthly night at The Tranzac falls next on Friday, January 27th; Jim Sexton will be back at Southern Cross on January 28th as part of Chris Cawthray's Light Industry project, also featuring Glen Hall.]

Recording: The Thing Is + GREX

Artist: The Thing Is + GREX (feat. Jane Bunnett)

Song: Borders of One^*

Recorded at The Music Gallery, March 14, 2015.

The Thing Is + GREX - Borders of One

As the artist designation above implies, this performance was a collaborative affair, put together to present Tova Kardonne's "Lanka Suite", a set of compositions reflecting on her outsider's observations of a trip to Sri Lanka. The music has evolved for a while now (a streamlined version was workshopped a year ago), but this full-on presentation united two of Kardonne's projects, including The Thing is, her the large-format jazz ensemble as well as Alex Samaras' avant-vocal group GREX. The night also included some atmospheric, abstract visuals from Nilan Perera that evoked a sense of travel and elsewhereness. The net effect was to create a form of musical tourism that isn't reliant on mere appropriation — a reflection of Kardonne's experiences without a usurpation of Sri Lankan tropes.

^* Thanks to Ali for passing along the title to this one.

Recording: Rub Out The Word Ensemble

Artist: Rub Out The Word Ensemble

Song: Nova Express^* [words: William S. Burroughs / composition/conceptualization: Glen Hall]

Recorded at The Music Gallery, November 7, 2014.

Rub Out The Word Ensemble - Nova Express

Opening the 416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival (the other events would take place at The Tranzac) was this ambitious music suite celebrating William Burroughs' centenary. The event was conceived by Burroughs scholar Glen Hall, who played and conducted as the piece's several parts worked off each other. Not only was there an eight-piece band (Bruce Cassidy, Jim Sexton, Chris Cawthray, Rakesh Tewari, Tom Richards, Heather Segger, John Gzowski, David Story), a pair of laptop soundscapists (Ted Phillips, Matt Miller) and live-processed visuals (John Creson, Adam Rosen) at the edge of things (behind a typewriter) sat Ron Gaskin in a rumpled fedora, reading/narrating parts of the proceedings with Burroughs' own words. There was a nice ebb and flow to it such that there was never too much going on at once, even as it built to a fever dream of warped reality.

^* I'm not sure of the formal structure of this piece, so I have named this extract after the Burroughs text that is read/invoked during it.