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Volume 21 Issue 9 - Summer 2016

It's combined June/July/August summer issue time with, we hope, enough between the covers to keep you dipping into it all through the coming lazy, hazy days. From Jazz Vans racing round "The Island" delivering pop-up brass breakouts at the roadside, to Bach flute ambushes strolling "The Grove, " to dozens of reasons to stay in the city. May yours be a summer where you find undiscovered musical treasures, and, better still, when, unexpectedly, the music finds you.

It's combined June/July/August summer issue time with, we hope, enough between the covers to keep you dipping into it all through the coming lazy, hazy days. From Jazz Vans racing round "The Island" delivering pop-up brass breakouts at the roadside, to Bach flute ambushes strolling "The Grove, " to dozens of reasons to stay in the city. May yours be a summer where you find undiscovered musical treasures, and, better still, when, unexpectedly, the music finds you.

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Fanfare Ciocarlia<br />

In this crazy age of streaming music for fractions of pennies, my<br />

hope is that when Gwyneth Herbert performs her free June 30 concert<br />

(right before a Molly Johnson-Jane Bunnett double bill!), that all<br />

will sell out of CDs and merchandise. To support this music, all you<br />

have to do is show up! Look for ticket contests on the festival’s social<br />

media outlets.<br />

Sometimes these ticketed shows can be priceless. Jazz piano fans<br />

should not miss Oliver Jones (June 28 at Jane Mallett Theatre), now 81<br />

years old and still swinging his behind off. Beyond this, one concert<br />

Gwyneth Herbert's Toronto Honeymoon<br />

How did you end up on a label so quickly? When I was supposedly<br />

studying English Literature at university, I actually spent<br />

the majority of my time singing jazz with fellow student Will<br />

Rutter, a guitarist and kindred spirit with whom I’d roam the cobblestones<br />

of the North of England – along with Edinburgh, Paris and<br />

Amsterdam in our holidays – busking and hustling for gigs in pavement<br />

cafes. When we graduated we moved down to London together,<br />

a couple of wet-eared country kids with no concerts, no money and<br />

no contacts, and picked an area of the city a day…armed with an A-Z<br />

map, Will’s guitar and a fistful of demos recorded in a bedroom,<br />

we went into every pub, wine bar, cafe and restaurant and asked if<br />

they’d give us a gig.<br />

You kind of got used to asking the tattooed, muscle-necked landlord<br />

if he’d mind turning down the racing while you played Fly Me<br />

to the Moon to the corner clientele who’d just tried to sell you a<br />

VCR on the way in, and invariably if the bar-owner didn’t offer us<br />

a gig they’d give us a drink on the house. At the end of one of these<br />

long, street-peddling days, I’d sipped enough Dutch courage to go<br />

into the legendary Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho. The visionary<br />

manager there at the time, Peter Wallis, was famed for championing<br />

new talent – he gave Norah Jones and Diana Krall their first breaks<br />

in the UK. Fired up by my day’s refreshment, I asked to speak to the<br />

manager, and when asked if I had an appointment, I ordered a large<br />

brandy (which I’d never drunk before, but it seemed like it sounded<br />

sophisticated) and said, “Just tell him it’s Gwyneth Herbert.” When<br />

Peter arrived, I came clean and said that of course he had no reason<br />

to know who I was, but that I loved music more than anything and<br />

that I wasn’t looking for a gig, but any advice would be so gratefully<br />

received, and with shaky fingers thrust our little demo into his hand.<br />

He gently but firmly explained that he received over 300 such<br />

demos a week, but, admitting that no one had quite approached<br />

him like that before, said he’d try to give it a listen. Within two<br />

weeks, Will and I were signed to his indie label Dean Street records,<br />

had the amazing vocalist Ian Shaw as a mentor and producer, and<br />

were recording our debut album First Songs and touring with Jamie<br />

Cullum and Amy Winehouse soon after. Jamie Cullum sang a duet<br />

on that record, it started getting some airplay and - riding high on<br />

their recent success with Jamie – it wasn’t long before Universal<br />

came sniffing and snaffled me up.<br />

that I would guarantee a good time or your money back<br />

will take place at the Opera House on Wednesday, June 29.<br />

Romanian super band Fanfare Ciocarlia opens for local band of<br />

heroes Lemon Bucket Orkestra. Do YouTube searches of both<br />

brilliant bands! Instant fanhood is guaranteed.<br />

Finally, an exciting development at the Toronto Jazz Festival<br />

this year is the returning commitment to a nightly late night<br />

jam session at the Rex Hotel Jazz & Blues Bar, hosted by local<br />

saxophone great Chris Gale nightly at 1am. Seen frequently<br />

around town as a sideman who sensitively adds just the thing<br />

to any musical situation, Gale has been hosting the weekly<br />

Tuesday night jam beautifully and inclusively. Please come out<br />

and support the jam session!<br />

Botos and Barlow at PEC Jazz fest: Speaking of jazz jams<br />

that are worth the drive to Picton, reading up on various festivals<br />

that will take place in July and August, I stumbled upon<br />

the programming of the 16th Annual Prince Edward County<br />

Jazz Festival, which features a jazz jam hosted by the Robi Botos<br />

Trio, no less. I contacted PEC creative director, drummer/bandleader<br />

Brian Barlow to discuss PEC Jazz, starting with the success of these<br />

jam sessions.<br />

“The After Hours Jam Sessions have been very popular” he told<br />

me. “One of the things that make our festival unique is that we<br />

encourage musicians to spend time in the county by providing them<br />

with multiple gigs over a number of days. It’s not unusual for a musician<br />

to have six or seven gigs in the five or six days they spend with us.<br />

This not only works out well for them financially, it also give them the<br />

But you left the label to pursue life as an indie artist. Why? Having<br />

a major deal gave me lots of great things. The ability to work with<br />

exceptional musicians, a press profile, a new haircut…I’m so pleased<br />

that I had that opportunity as for so many artists it – even in the<br />

current climate – remains the holy grail. But it just didn’t work for<br />

me. I got signed so young and I soon found that it was my own stories<br />

that I wanted to tell, that didn’t fit in with the label’s marketing strategies<br />

and formulas. Much of the discussions had nothing to do with<br />

creativity and everything to do with finance – naturally, because a big<br />

label’s purpose is to make money. I’m also really grateful because it<br />

gave me something to kick against – I got signed so young before I had<br />

a clear idea of what I wanted to say and make, and it made me find<br />

answers through the questioning.<br />

As an artist who frequently records your own compositions, what<br />

degree you fit within the term “jazz.” I grew up listening to jazz and<br />

blues. I’d sit and learn all of Billie Holiday’s phrasing and mimic Big<br />

Maybelle’s tone and try to feel Anita O’Day’s timing deep in my bones.<br />

As a tiny teen in an ever-so-English village in a totally different era, I’d<br />

hear and hold the heartbreak and the joy and feel it as if it was all my<br />

own. I still love those old songs – they speak of huge human experience<br />

in simple poetic language and they’re true and vast. And I love<br />

diving back into them now, from time to time, to see what they help<br />

me discover.<br />

But now I live the miraculous life of a discoverer, a story hunter –<br />

finding and animating hidden stories, finding new ways to give them<br />

breath. There are melodies and rhythms everywhere, and the flavour<br />

of my work’s always informed by the music and language of the<br />

particular world it inhabits...There are seagull cries and pub chatter,<br />

there’s the rattle of a ship mast and the hum of an escalator. There<br />

are shanties and funerals and newspaper headlines. I do work with<br />

amazing jazz musicians in my band, and one of the wondrous things<br />

about playing with people with that sensibility is the improvisatory<br />

language they bring – there’s a push and a pull and then we navigate<br />

the journey together. It’s fresh and it’s a different kind of magic,<br />

every time.<br />

And the British music scene in London and beyond? After 13 years<br />

in London, I’ve run away to the sea – I live on the beautiful south coast<br />

in Hastings. There’s a real buzz about this little town, people making<br />

things everywhere, skiffle and poetry and metal in the pubs, parades<br />

through the streets. I love coming back to London – my favourite club<br />

EMILE HOLBA<br />

16 | June 1, <strong>2016</strong> - September 7, <strong>2016</strong> thewholenote.com

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