Home : Plato's Words : January to June, 2005

January to June, 2005

There haven't been any Plato's Words for some time now and that is because my website was being redesigned and while that was happening the original one sat there without any updates since December. My new site was created by John McLachlan; a very creative man indeed. Thanks John!

I won't go into any great detail about the early months of 2005 other than to say time sped along as it seems to for all of us. Perhaps I will briefly summarize. In early spring I sang a few concerts as a guest artist with the group Mother of Pearl for their Shebop show. I really enjoyed that experience very much. I believe there will be further opportunities to sing with them again in the future. The ladies are warm and welcoming and they have a lovely way with an audience.

I went on a little Northern BC tour with my group in February and had such fun. That is my second time performing up in the Prince George/Quesnel area and I have to say the audiences are delightful and supportive of the music.

I was asked to sing as a special guest with bassist Michel Donato at RIME here in Vancouver in April and was joined by his pianist James Gelfand for the evening. I did enjoy the experience of meeting Michel and I loved singing at RIME. I believe this is going to be one of Vancouver's most popular performance venues. We are so lucky to have it right here in East Vancouver where I live. They have a wonderful feature at RIME which is to present an artist in residence each month. The residency takes place on Tuesday evenings. The resident artist chooses various musicians to perform with and each Tuesday may include 2 or 3 different grouping. Sometimes a very contrasted evening comes as the result of the musical combinations the artist puts together. The May artist in residence was violinist Jesse Zubot. On one evening he played a free jazz set with cellist Peggy Lee and bassist Torsten Muller and followed that up with a set of country music with another paring of musicians. Great fun I can tell you and very eclectic fun at that.

At the end of May I did have the good fortune of studying with New York based jazz vocalist Jay Clayton as she led a two-day workshop here in Vancouver. I can't say enough about what an impact Jay has made on me as a teacher and as a performer. Following the two-day workshop Jay performed a duo concert with Miles Black at The Cellar and had many of us in tears because of the shear beauty of the music. Jay gets to the guts of a tune and that in turn gets to your gut as well. She is such an incredible improviser and takes you on spiraling twisting turns and jumps that make you feel rather giddy with excitement. At least that's how I feel at times when Jay plays and creates. She is at such ease within the music and is able to respond to her fellow musicians (in this case Miles on piano) and is also able to lead the musical adventure. She's like the Lara Croft of jazz; fearless, powerful, truth seeking and mesmerizing. Jay has inspired me to explore the world of spoken word, the idea of using poetry in conjunction with the music. That was very powerful and I really hadn't thought of trying that before. I have always loved words but somehow for myself I thought of them in terms of singing them or perhaps writing them as I do for my own songs lyrics but speaking them is a new one to me. Those of you who know what a chatterbox I am will be laughing to yourself and saying, "come on Karin, you already speak too much!" but I am talking about speaking in the artistic sense and not in the stream of consciousness style that I typically rap away in. The sound of a poem being spoken and stylized in combination with music is very different from simply singing a lyric. Jay even speaks some of the verses to songs and I really like that effective as well.

I am gearing up for a trip to Toronto this June as I have been invited to sing as part of The National Jazz Awards Show concert on June 21st. I will be there for about a week hanging out with some Toronto friends. Needless to say I am very excited about going back to Toronto. The city has been very welcoming to me. I'll be one of several jazz artists performing and as far as I know I am the only West Coast artist that will be there. I hope to do a nice job singing with the all star band that will be featured and I look forward to sharing the stage with such luminaries as Oliver Jones, Ranee Lee, Coral Egan, Jeff Healey and many others.

Near the end of June I head back to Vancouver for our Jazz Festival. I am quite excited about this year's lineup of artists. I think it will be a wonderful festival again. As always I love pouring over the festival guide to plan out who I might be able to  see and I do try to see as much as I possibly can. By the end of the festival I am usually quite exhausted but it is worth it.

This year I do hope to see Dianne Reeves. I wasn't able to see her the last time she performed here. I already know that I will love her live because I enjoyed her
"In The Moment" CD and that in fact is a live concert recording. Dave Holland is on the bill again as is Bill Frisell and those are two artists who never disappoint. One of my favorite Canadian pianists, Nancy Walker will be here with her group. I absolutely love her playing and her writing as well. There are so many others and I will be trying to cram in as many concerts as I can.

I have been busily composing and arranging songs for one of my jazz festival dates. I will be singing at Performance Works on Granville Island on July 1^st and have put together a special band for this date which will feature Lou Mastroianni on piano, Rod Murray on trombone, Paul Rushka on bass and Nino DiPasquale on drums. I am going to include several originals this year and have been trying to write with the trombone in mind. Recording with trombone for my State Of Bliss CD is what really got me loving the sound of that horn. I somehow think it compliments the timbre of my voice. I still have quite a bit of work to do on some of the music for the festival but I believe that I have made some headway this past month and will finalize details soon.

So that's it for my January-June words.

Thanks for checking in…

Karin