Volume 23 Issue 5 - February 2018

insethealgorithm at The Rex (from left): Larnell Lewis (drums),
Luis Deniz (alto sax), Robi Botos (piano) and Rich Brown (electric bass)
crowd when he started singing the standard I Can’t Give You Anything
But Love, which featured a bluesy, muted cornet solo from MacLeod,
and an athletic guitar solo from Quinlan. I Like The Sunrise – another
Abene arrangement, with lyrics by Elling – paired Elling with Brian
O’Kane, in a winning turn on flugelhorn. The set ended with Tutti
for Cootie, a swinging, medium-tempo piece that switched between
minor and major, and served as a showcase for the talents of bassist
Kieran Overs and drummer Larnell Lewis.
Elling – Grammy-winning, DownBeat Critics’ Poll-topping, Obama
Administration White House-performing – is a star, and maintains
a far-reaching international tour schedule. It is a testament to the
calibre of the Humber Faculty Big Band, and to Elling himself, that his
appearance in the first set felt like a real collaboration, and never, as
can sometimes be the case in such situations, like a hired gun going
through the motions. As mentioned above, Elling has a history with
the program, and both he and the band exemplified a dedication to
excellence, a generosity of spirit, and an engaging sense of fun that set
the tone for the rest of the evening.
After a brief intermission, the second half of the concert
commenced with Rik Emmett (of Triumph and later solo fame) and
Dave Dunlop performing their instrumental piece Red Hot. Emmett
and Dunlop have been frequent collaborators, and the two have
performed as the duo Strung-Out Troubadours since their eponymous
debut album was released in 2006. Emmett introduced the next song
– Triumph’s popular 1981 hit Magic Power – by opining, to ample
cheers, that the Humber faculty has always stood for the “magic power
of the music.” Following Emmett and Dunlop, singer-pianist Laila
Biali took the stage to perform her funky, odd-metre original Upside
Down, with the help of Lewis, bassist Rich Brown and the horn
section of Colleen Allen, Shirantha Beddage, Brian O’Kane and Kelsley
Grant. Elling and Pat LaBarbera returned to the stage to join Biali for
Randy Bachman’s Undun, on which LaBarbera took, perhaps, his
most compelling solo of the evening.
Rich Brown’s rinsethealgorithm were up next, taking the stage to
perform Brown’s melancholy Promessa, on which the bandleaderbassist
took a beautiful, compelling solo. Brown is a masterful player,
with a rare combination of great tone, time, melodic sense, and tastefully
deployed chops, and it is fitting that rinsethealgorithm – a band
lovingly emulated by Toronto jazz students in practise rooms for well
over ten years now – had a place of prominence on the bill. Forward
Motion, their second song, showcased the remarkable talents of
saxophonist Luis Deniz and pianist Jeremy Ledbetter, in addition
to a thrilling drum solo by Larnell Lewis. Lewis – a recent Grammy
winner with the American band Snarky Puppy, Humber alumnus, and
current faculty member – is a joy to listen to, and, it should be noted,
was on stage for 12 of the evening’s 14 songs, sounding just as comfortable
playing big band swing as he did playing rinsethealgorithm’s
fusion-forward repertoire.
It should be noted that Humber has four distinct music programs: a
BMus in Jazz and Commercial Music, a Certificate in Jazz Performance,
a Graduate Certificate in Music Business and a Graduate Certificate
in Music Composition. Enrolled in these four programs are approximately
400 students, whose training, provided by “a faculty of 17
full-time and 80 part-time teachers,” includes “performance, production,
songwriting and composition in jazz, pop, R&B, Latin and world
music.” It is imperative for a good music program to foster both individual
talents and to create a productive, healthy community in which
these talents can thrive; the success of the former cannot, generally,
exist without the health of the latter. In this regard, Humber seems
to be performing admirably: as 2016 JUNO Award-winning alumna
Allison Au puts it, Humber succeeded in providing her with “an
incredible network of musical mentors and peers,” and gave her “the
tools and confidence to find [her] own voice in both composition and
performance.”
In addition to its postsecondary music program, Humber’s School of
Creative and Performing Arts operates the Community Music School,
founded in 1980, and “originally established to offer children and
youth an alternative form of music education to traditional classical
lessons.” The Community Music School is a rarity in the Canadian
educational landscape; while analogous programs exist within the
classical world, such as the RCM’s Phil and Eli Taylor Performance
Academy for Young Artists, pre-college mentorship opportunities for
students interested in jazz and commercial music – beyond, of course,
private lessons – are somewhat limited. These opportunities are
typically found in high school band programs, or in ensembles associated
with music festivals, such as the National Youth Jazz Combo and
the Conn-Selmer Centerstage Jazz Band (MusicFest Canada), or the TD
Jazz Youth Summit at the Ottawa Jazz Festival. (The JAZZFM.91 Youth
Big Band, a free weekly program for qualifying students, is also an
important group.) But the Community Music School, which, for senior
students, has weekly private lessons, faculty-guided small ensembles
and instruction on improvisation, provides the kind of scaled-down
college environment that prepares students for success in postsecondary
music-program studies.
Programming an event like Humber at 50 is challenging, as administrators
must balance artistic concerns with the necessity to showcase
a representative cross-section of institutional talent. While the
Humber Faculty Big Band played the full first set, the second-set acts
– Rik Emmett, Laila Biali, and rinsethealgorithm – played two songs
each before passing the baton, detracting (probably inevitably) from
the concert’s momentum. And yet, as the concert progressed, the
importance of the programmatic variety became clear.
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold was billed as the “Grand Finale” – a
kind of built-in encore, as Bailey reminded the audience during the
standing ovation that followed – and with Biali, Elling, Brown, Lewis,
Emmett and the horn section of LaBarbera, Allen and Beddage, it
served as an intergenerational, genre-fusing representation of the
music program as a whole. While the description may seem like a
cliché, the Humber music program really does give every indication
that its strength lies in its diversity: by giving students both a solid
grounding in tradition and the encouragement to create new works,
the school has created a strong community of musicians who are
doing great things.
As the concert drew to a close, it became clear that there was
another important benefit of hosting the celebration at Koerner
Hall: the central location, amongst older institutions such as the
Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Toronto, and the Royal
Conservatory itself, served as an apt reminder that Humber College –
at a comparatively young 50 years – has achieved remarkable success
in a relatively short amount of time.
Colin Story is a jazz guitarist, writer and teacher based in Toronto.
He can be reached at colinstory.com, on Instagram and on Twitter.
12 | February 2018 thewholenote.com