Upcoming Gigs

We left the UK on the 9th January 2008, it was an incredibly painful and long journey but we made it to Toronto in one piece despite being four and a half hours delayed and the pilot threatening to take off with a part missing from the wing.

When we arrived we saw a big sign being held up by the lovely Yots at Jazz Services saying “British Jazz” we all followed accordingly and were placed in cars. The Dune Music gang were put in two cars and we were put in a car with Helen Mayhew and Chris Suckling at theJazz. The latter two names will be mentioned several times during this blog as they became our little gang while we were out there.

The first night theJazz AIR gang went to a lovely Italian reaturant and according to the the menu all members of staff who worked there were related to Mr Joe Badalis but when we asked our waiter where he was from we were told that his name wasn’t real on his name tag and that he was actually Australian. We finished our early first night at the hotel pub where we bumped into Ryan Quigley and some of his band mates.

10th January was an early start. We accompanied Denys Baptiste to his Jazz FM interview and then hot-footed it along to Esperanza Spaldings showcase at the Royal York. We first met and saw Esperanza at North Sea Jazz Festival 2007 and have been talking about her pretty much continuously since then! We brought TheJazz and Ryan with us and they joined the fast growing army of fans. She truly is the complete package and a really lovely person to boot. We can’t wait for the album!

After surreptitiously handing out some flyers for Denys’s showcase later that day we went to a panel on Jazz and tourism which was an interesting perspective on how a festival needs to work with it’s locality. One of the Panel members was our old friend Scott Southard.

Swiftly moving on we proceeded to Denys Baptiste’s showcase gig at the Ballroom. There was a great turn out and the band were fantastic. We met Derrick Lucas the Music Director of Jazz 90.1 in Rochester NY who was a big fan of all the Dune artists and arranged an interview with theJazz and CKLN 881.1FM Tien Providence show.

We were needing non jazz sustenance by now and headed down to the food court for some curry with Helen and Chris. With recharged batteries we walked back to the conference centre to catch the Jon Hendricks and Kurt Elling Panel on vocalese. Jon was hilarious and had many stories which had the very packed audience laughing- some of which probably shouldn’t have been heard by the general public!

After a long hard day we were treated to a couple of glasses of cocktails by our lovely friend Bill Mcfarlin (Director of IAJE). Bill introduced us to his friend John Shoup who is a film producer and has his fingers in many other pies including his own Dixieland band. Helen and Chris then joined us for cocktails as well as an interview with Bill. We can’t wait to listen to the show.

The evening ended in the Loose Moose with a large proportion of the British contingent and quite a few shots of tequila & sambuca...may we just add that this wasn't our fault..... we said one shot not ten! The culprits included John Cumming, Malcolm Creese, Gwylim Simcock, Kit Downes, Marc Connor, Ryan Quigley, JazzCotech guys, theJazz and us obviously. The non Brits who did join us also seem to have enjoyed themselves, thank you to Scott Southard and Sachal Vasandani for joining us for the evening…….bet you regretted that the next day!

On Friday we started the day with the Jazz Masters talk involving Quincy Jones, Candido Camero, Tom McIntosh, Gunther Schuller, Joe Wilder and A.B.Spellman. Compared to New York where we had so many external meetings so we didn’t get to go to many of the actual conference panels and showcases, it was great to see a talk with musicians like these. We walked up to the China Town area of Toronto which was near where the Rex was and got waylaid by lunch. We slightly over ordered and had enough to feed most of the british bands! Most of the rest of the day was spent at the Rex because British bands were playing there all day. Dave O’higgins band went down particularly well with the packed crowd ( who weren’t just all the British guys!) and when the Jazzotech dancers joined him they definitely made it one of the gigs of the evening. Gary Crosby's Nu Troop took the stage to finish off the day in great style, the Rex was so full by the time Gary’s Nu Troop were on stage that a few of the other musicians couldn’t get in.
We had dinner with the Dune guys, TheJazz and Jason from Festival Productions which was great. Meeting Jason was one of my highlights of the trip.

Friday evening’s drinks started in Le Pub and carried on in Jack Asters with TheJazz, Gwilym Simcock, Kit Downes, Andrew McCormack, Tara Davy (Dune) and Ryan Quigley ( who was meant to be flying home that evening but his flight was delayed til early sat morning. Ryan didn’t have much luck with flights on the trip as his outbound flight was delayed by 4 hours as well!) and various other musicians.

On Saturday we tried yet again to find pancakes for breakfast however by the time we found a place that served them, it was time to go to the Empirical Performance. Thanks to some beady eyes from Air, we had noticed the day before that the gig had been advertised as an hour later than it was meant to be. Thankfully the main conference schedule which most people were using had the right time and the room was totally packed. The band got awarded a special citation for outstanding musicianship by the IAJE and received a standing ovation by the audience. We rushed the guys off for a photoshoot with Coda magazine and then we went round the stands to talk to some of the other festivals/promoters there.

Over a few bottles of rose we had a meeting with Dune followed by Jill Rodger at the Glasgow Festival and went to enjoy the British panel. John Cummings, Janine Irons, Courtney Pine, Peter Schulze, Jon Newey did us proud by talking about the UK jazz scene and there was barely anytime left for questions at the end.

Never one to shirk a challenge we trawled Toronto’s shops for a cake and card for Jon Newey and even managed to find somewhere to get his name written on it. Thanks to the very helpful concierge at the Fairmont we had booked a table for 25 people for dinner at a great Steak restaurant. In the end about 40 people turned up which was fantastic. We also got a card signed for Joe Paice who had done a fantastic job organizing the trip. It was a really nice way to end the conference as so many people were there and it was a real celebration of what everyone had achieved.

A fair few of us sprinted across to the Snooker club where Empirical had arranged a gig and Jam session. We missed the gig but enjoyed the Jam and a few games of Snooker.

Sunday was our day of sightseeing and after retrieving Sheela’s hat which had been left behind at the cake shop the day before, TheJazz, Gwilym Simcock, Tim Garland, Christine Allen, Max and Air had arranged to go for lunch up the Tower. Although when we arrived there was no visibility, during our lunch the clouds cleared and we could see how terrifyingly high up we were. Everyone except for the terrified (yup that’s me) played on the glass floor and then a quick glance at our watches showed we were almost late for our bus to the airport. After leaving Marc who was going to LA, and theJazz who were on different flights we said goodbye and took the bus to the airport. After a surprisingly short flight we were back in the office by 8:20.