Recording: Marcel Aucoin

Artist: Marcel Aucoin

Song: Waldeinsamkeit

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party), April 26, 2017.

Marcel Aucoin - Waldeinsamkeit

Marcel Aucoin brought a page of notes but no sheet music to this piano party set. He focused mainly on a series of new and unrecorded works-in-progress inspired by words that have no English equivalent. This tune evokes the feeling of Waldeinsamkeit, a German concept that translates literally into the sense of being alone in the woods, but which suggests the wondrous and mystical feelings that evokes rather than any sort of fear or dread.

Recording: Bob Wiseman

Artist: Bob Wiseman

Song: Piano Party [first section]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party), April 26, 2017.

Bob Wiseman - Piano Party [first section]

Jonathan Adjemian's Piano party series saw a pair of contrasting players on this night, with Bob Wiseman offering a stream-of-consciousness journey. Even in its jauntier moments, this was high-wire act/heavy concentration stuff, with Wiseman willing himself through note-flurries that would occasionally drop into meditative études before leaping back into the boogie-woogie hurly-burly. It's still a thrill to hear The Legend in action, and one must still Beware of Bob. [You can hear another recording of the full set here.]

Recording: Charlie Murray

Artist: Charlie Murray

Song: [excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party 8), January 25, 2017.

Charlie Murray - [excerpt from first piece]

A last-minute cancellation left a gap to be filled in the Piano Party lineup, but Randy Gagne was able to bring out a fellow Still Boy to keep things rolling. Murray turned out to be a dab hand at tickling the ivories, pulling up his hood and settling into the spontaneous minimalist groove heard here. That was followed by some other blueberry-related content (all the pieces, as it turned out, were directly connected to blueberries in some obscure manner) mixing up improvised Glenn Gould riffing with some funky excursions accompanying some of the drum machine's more absurd settings — even pulling on some brightly-coloured rubber gloves while playing couldn't derail the skilled musicality here. A rather delightful surprise, all things considered.

Recording: Randy Gagne

Artist: Randy Gagne

Songs: Poor Side of Town [Johnny Rivers cover] + unknown^*

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party 8), January 25, 2017.

Randy Gagne - Poor Side of Town

Randy Gagne - unknown

Anyone who's seen his endlessly-inventive stage performances will attest that Randy Gagne (a.k.a. Man Made Hill) has no shortage of bravery, but it's something else entirely to take the stage for the first time as a pianist. He still had some beats (and his hands-free microphone) but otherwise, this was a rather-intimate and vulnerable affair. We've seen some signs before of Gagne's affinity for classic rock tunes, but this set pushed further in that direction with this tender Johnny Rivers classic as well as a wade through the Sea of Love suggestive of an absurdist Epic Soundtracks. (It also provided some additional contextualization of MMH's recent Jeff Healey Band cover.) The new age-y closer, meanwhile, sounded like it was written at dawn on a canoe ride during one of Zone Support's many world tours.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Mike Smith

Artist: Mike Smith

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party), November 30, 2016.

Mike Smith - unknown

Playing without sheet music, Mike Smith presented a half-hour of meditatively-flowing musique d'ameublement in the manner that he employs while warming up/zoning in at home. With melodic drift-kernels and exploratory riffs, these sounded like the seeds of songs yet-to-be.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Jonathan Adjemian

Artist: Jonathan Adjemian

Song: Song For Manasi

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party), November 30, 2016.

Jonathan Adjemian - Song For Manasi

When Jonathan Adjemian needed a last-minute fill-in for a set at one of his regular Piano party nights, he tapped himself, playing some Debussy (a recurring piano party fave) as well as some of his own "Adequacies", which are currently being recorded for an album.

Recording: Doug Tielli

Artist: Doug Tielli

Songs: La plus que lente + La flûte de Pan (with Tania Gill) [composer: Claude Debussy]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party), September 28, 2016.

Doug Tielli - La plus que lente

Doug Tielli and Tania Gill - La flûte de Pan

As a breeze through the front window set the curtain gently dancing, Doug Tielli started and finished his set with some pieces by Debussy, joined by Tania Gill to play piano as he sang the Chansons de Bilitis. Along the way, he offered some reinterpretations — of tunes originally composed for Drumheller as well as of a song played by an ice cream truck. For a musician known to work with such a range of material and instruments, it was no surprise that everything in this set was handled with such nimble grace.

Recording: Tania Gill

Artist: Tania Gill

Songs: Ah Ti Tah + Good to See You [Neil Young cover]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Piano Party), September 28, 2016.

Tania Gill - Ah Ti Tah

Tania Gill - Good to See You

Another edition of Jonathan Adjemian's Piano Party series, this time pairing Tania Gill with Doug Tielli. Gill can be seen playing in all sorts of ensembles, from the jazzy chamber prog of See Through 5 to large-ensemble Steve Reich throwdowns, and her solo piano explorations were equally wide-ranging, veering from Bud Powell gambols to Neil Young reveries to a couple revisitations of material from her Bolger Station album, all warmly rendered.

Recording: Anastasia Tchernikova

Artist: Anastasia Tchernikova

Song: Trois Gnossiennes [composer: Erik Satie]

Recorded at Ratio (Piano Party 4), January 21, 2016.

Anastasia Tchernikova - Trois Gnossiennes

Jonathan Adjemian's occasional Piano Party series, which presents pairs of players in contrasting styles in a casual environment, found a new home at Ratio, and the environment was just right for a relaxed salon-like environment. Anastasia Tchernikova, who stays busy as artistic director of Musica Reflecta as well as running the collaborative compositional workshop Opus:Testing, has become unaccustomed to solo piano performance. So, in "learning how to be comfortable with nothing" she presented a set of Erik Satie's proto-ambient "furniture music" (along with a couple contemporary responses).

Recording: Jesse Levine

Artist: Jesse Levine

Song: [excerpt from third piece, in two parts]

Recorded at Ratio (Piano Party 4), January 21, 2016.

Jesse Levine - [third piece] [excerpt, part 1]

Jesse Levine - [third piece] [excerpt, part 2]

Jonathan Adjemian's occasional Piano Party series, which presents pairs of players in contrasting styles in a casual environment, found a new home at Ratio, and the environment was just right for a relaxed salon-like environment. It also offered a too-rare chance to catch keyboard wizard Jesse Levine in action, improvising a set of collaged pop fragments — sort of a Brill Building mashup as filtered through Levine's Donuts-informed sensibility, where hints of, say, "I Cover The Waterfront" and "It's Too Late" might bump up against a fragment of a sonata before side-stepping into a disco riff.

Recording: Isla Craig

Artist: Isla Craig

Song: Follow Your Heart

Recorded at The Tranzac – Southern Cross Lounge ("Piano Party 2"), March 18, 2015.

Isla Craig - Follow Your Heart

This "piano party", put together by Jonathan Adjemian, saw two musicians with very different approaches take to the Southern Cross' upright. Isla Craig — who's lately been unveiling some new songs written on guitar — treated her piano set as a casual exercise, similar to the way that friends might have gathered 'round in a parlour a century ago to belt out familiar old chestnuts. After a couple more studied takes through songs from her "vocal" phase, things became increasingly relaxed, Craig tackling tunes as they popped into her mind, including some older songs of her own (both from her Continential Drift days, as well as her "Flute Song") plus a series of covers that included Chantal Kreviazuk, PJ Harvey, and a rousingly-heartfelt/gleefully-fragmented set-closing Tori Amos medley.

Recording: Ali Berkok

Artist: Ali Berkok

Song: Improvisation on Ligeti's "Cordes à vide"

Recorded at The Tranzac – Southern Cross Lounge ("Piano Party 2"), March 18, 2015.

Ali Berkok - Improvisation on Ligeti's "Cordes à vide"

This "piano party", put together by Jonathan Adjemian, saw two musicians with very different approaches take to the Southern Cross' upright. Ali Berkok (also of Aurochs and many other projects) led off, showing off his versatility with a series of improvisations and prepared pieces that ranged from Cole Porter riffs to this Satie-esque meditation.