Recording: Within

Artist: Within

Song: Jacob

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), August 6, 2023.

Within - Jacob

This folky project from Judith Muster and Chris Trotter has been around for a few years now, with a couple different bassists filling out the trio. That chair is now occupied by Stefan Hegerat, showing off a different skill-set to those who have only seen him working behind the drumkit. The flow here is through rivers and trapdoors, the songs given space to meander and bloom rather than being plucked right away.

Recording: Icterus

Artist: Icterus

Song: Three Wars

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), September 11, 2022.

Icterus - Three Wars

This was, apparantly, the first show for this unit since 2019 — a possibly-tricky situation when involving some certainly-tricky music for nimble fingers. But given that the nimble fingers (and minds) involved here were those of Stefan Hegerat (drumkit), Rob Grieve (guitar), Patrick O'Reilly (guitar), and Mark Godfrey (bass) things were generally handled with aplomb. This long-ish piece — almost a suite — shows off several of the terrains they were capable of traversing.

Recording: Naomi McCarroll-Butler

Artist: Naomi McCarroll-Butler

Songs: Chrysalis [two sections]^*

Recorded at Toronto Jazz Festival, [corporate brand name] Main Stage – [corporate brand name] Grove, July 2, 2022.

Naomi McCarroll-Butler - Chrysalis [section 4]

Naomi McCarroll-Butler - Chrysalis [section 10]

The local jazz festival doesn't tend to get a tonne of favourable glances from this direction, but they should be praised when they do something cool and ambitious. Named as the inaugural "Jazz Festival Immersive Artist-in-Residence", Naomi McCarroll-Butler was given some resources to put together a programme of new work to present at the festival, which emerged as Chrysalis, "a project born out of my first years of transitioning: songs of hope for holding on, cries of joy and grief for the love of a suffering community, trance tapestries of woven sound accompanying the alignment of the physical body with the luminant body."

This live presentation (played in the pleasant Festival zone in the Victoria College quad) saw McCarroll-Butler backed by a dozen musicians, segueing from spiritual jazz blastoffs to modern compositional latticeworks — and including some sounds on DIY microtonal pipes along the way, as well as plenty individual spotlights for the members of the group. The band sounded lush and lively (despite playing with a fairly minimal soundcheck) and one can hope that this music gets a chance to live on beyond this performance.

The ensemble at this show was:

• Anh Phung: flutes
• Kae Murphy: trumpet, sousaphone
• Nebyu Yohannes: trombone
• Colin Fisher: tenor saxophone, drums
• Naomi McCarroll-Butler: alto saxophone, bass clarinet
• Aysel Taghi-Zada: violin
• Aline Homzy: violin
• Amahl Arulanandam: cello
• Adrian Russouw: double bass
• Roa Lee: gayageum
• Yang Chen: percussion, tubulum
• Racha Moukalled: piano
• Stefan Hegerat: drums, percussion

^* I'm not sure if the individual pieces within the suite have separate titles or noy; please leave a comment if you have info!

Recording: Bearrah Fawcett

Artist: Bearrah Fawcett

Songs: Improvisation [excerpt] + Intro to The Dog Walk + The Dog Walk

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Ornate Presents), June 11, 2019.

Bearrah Fawcett - Improvisation [excerpt]

Bearrah Fawcett - Intro to The Dog Walk

Bearrah Fawcett - The Dog Walk

One cool thing about living in this town is that there are more cool gigs to go to than you could ever have time for. The corresponding downside is that you're going to miss some stuff — and due to those Tuesday night conflicts, it had been a while since I had checked in with the Ornate Presents series at The Tranzac. This night featured a couple sets from the wryly-named Bearrah Fawcett, a casual sort of jazzish group consisting of (at least for this show) Alex Fournier (double bass), Stefan Hegerat (percussion), Rob Grieve (guit) plus Madeline Ertel and Kaelin Murphy up front on trumpets. There was a game plan here, with the group tackling a half-dozen compositions, but there was also room left for some off-script moments as well.

[The next edition of Ornate Presents (on Tuesday, August 13th) features Mike DeiCont offering some solo bass sounds.]

Recording: Ashley Urquhart and Friends

Artist: Ashley Urquhart and Friends

Song: [excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #51), June 4, 2019.

Ashley Urquhart and Friends - [excerpt from first piece]

Given the central role she played in bringing a piano down to Wenona's basement, allowing the opportunity to book a wider range of musicians, it felt important to have Ashley Urquhart come and play that piano at TCB. For the occasion, she assembled this trio with Brittany Craig on saxophone and Stefan Hegerat on percussion. Circling around some insistent drone/plunk continua, there were tasty little horn honks and hesitation beats accompanying Urquhart's piano moves.

[Ashley Urquhart's Colour and Noise plays The Rex on Sunday, August 11th — you can also catch her curatorial and performance skills in action at Furniture Music, which presents at Wenona on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Meanwhile, Track Could Bend returns to the cool, comfy basement at Wenona on Tuesday (August 6th) offering sets from Hiroki Tanaka, Del Stephen's Today Versions and Liz Lima.]

Recording: Queasy Weasel

Artist: Queasy Weasel

Songs: [excerpt from first piece, in two parts]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Furniture Music), May 28, 2019.

Queasy Weasel - [excerpt from first piece, part 1]

Queasy Weasel - [excerpt from first piece, part 2]

The results were perhaps a little weasely but not so queasy from this quartet composed of Bea Labikova (alto sax), Ashley Urquhart (piano), Caleb Klager (double bass) and Stefan Hegerat (percussion), mixing quiet interludes (including some tasty chime-y plucked piano wires) with clomping gallops.

[Furniture Music will be back in the basement at Wenona on Tuesday, August 27th.]

Recording: Money House

Artist: Money House

Song: Drone Bank [composer: Patrick O'Reilly]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), August 21, 2018.

Money House - Drone Bank

It's a somewhat-infrequent occasion to see Alex Fournier (bass, banter), Stefan Hegerat (percussion) and Patrick O'Reilly (guitar) reconvene this trio, so it was fun to see 'em not only dipping into the old book of tunes but also tackling some newer pieces, such as this one from O'Reilly. Despite the implications of its name, this one takes off like The Ex stuck on a cell midway through "In C" — a testament to the flexibility of O'Reilley's recent "postcard" pieces.

Recording: Money House

Artist: Money House

Song: Die Tochter Meiner Schwester

Recorded at Gerrard Art Space (Eclec~Tic~Toc Fest, Vol. 1 – Night 1), July 14, 2017.

Money House - Die Tochter Meiner Schwester

Ever since washing up on our shores, Neal D. Retke (who performs as {AN} Eel) has been spreading joy and preaching the benefits of D.I.Y. co-operation. A busy member of the international home-taping circuit known for his many collaborative projects, this festival arose from a desire to bring together some of the different musicians he's encountered here so far, mixing together songs and noises over two days in the G.A.S.'s cozy east-end space.

The nights often saw opposing sounds in adjacent sets, with songs and noise mixing as freely as the electronic sounds that predominated early in this day with this trio's jazzy compositions. With Alex Fournier (bass, banter) and Stefan Hegerat (percussion) joined by Patrick O'Reilly (guitar), this one's tune (contributed by Hegerat) has some nifty long-delay diversions from O'Reilly.

Recording: Money House

Artist: Money House

Song: Stefan Feeds the Tiger

Recorded at The Emmet Ray, January 5, 2015.

Money House - Stefan Feeds the Tiger

I first encountered guitarist Patrick O'Reilly via Audiopollination (more re: which still to follow) and was impressed enough with his styles to trek down to The Emmet Ray on a frigid Monday night to check out one of his own projects. Money House (named after an aspirational incense brand) is a trio that sees O'Reilly playing alongside Alex Fournier (bass, banter) and Stefan Hegerat (percussion) in a sort of unflashy jazz moderne style, playing mostly originals (though with a couple standards, including some Monk, thrown in). This was pleasing throughout, but there were some particularly interesting moments, including this cut which pays off big-time by cashing in subtle groove dynamics in exchange for a more atmospheric approach.