Home : Plato's Words : January 2008

January 2008

Happy New Year everyone! I had a fantastic New Year’s Eve and for once I wasn’t performing at all. I spent the evening with my two good vocalist friends; Kate and Jennifer. We sang, we dined, we listened to music and we chatted for hours and before we knew it, 2008 was ushered in. What a lovely way to spend an evening indeed! The three of us performed several gigs together in December including two sold out nights at The Jazz Cellar. For me the high light was performing our special Christmas Eve Jazz Vespers to well over 600 people at St. Andrew’s Wesley Church. What fun we had and how splendid that we received over $3000.00 in donations that went to ATIRA; a women’s organization based in Vancouver. We had so many people coming up to us saying that they enjoyed the performance and that we helped put them into the Christmas spirit. It really was a special night for us all. We have a few different group names now it seems with respect to our Christmas gigs: “We Three Queens” or “Three French Hens”. I kind of like them both but had to chuckle when the Three French Hens title got tossed about. I don’t suppose we will use that title in February when we perform a Valentine’s Day concert although we will be singing a song in French!

The evening of December 23rd I also enjoyed my own ensemble’s annual Christmas Vespers with the group playing in outstanding fashion as usual. I really love the energy of this particular group and hope to do some recording in the future. The group consists of Lou Mastroianni on piano, Bill Coon on guitar, Doug Stephenson on bass and Elliot Polsky on drums. These musicians are absolutely intuitive listeners and are sensitive to the dynamics of the room and to each other’s choices as well. There is an open approach to the band and often someone may venture “elsewhere” and everyone is willing to go to that place on a whim. I love this approach to making music together. It’s what I thrive on in fact in these past few years. It means that one can freely enter a new groove or mood within a tune if that seems to be called for by someone in the band. It can make for some very surprising and exciting moments.

So now it is January and I still have a few more days off before teaching and gigging begins again so I have been madly charting new tunes for the coming year. I haven’t felt inspired to write my own music lately but I am having wonderful fun deciding on new standards to learn. Similar to my last month’s comments I am still resigned to learning the standards (that could keep me busy for life!) instead of exploring some of the more current material that exists in the pop world. I will at some point attempt to add some tunes written in more recent times but I find many of the songs that were written in the 1930’s and 1940’s absolutely irresistible. Maybe I really am old fashioned (like the song says) but I get so excited singing through some of these new (new to me at least) songs that I am choosing to chart out for my upcoming gigs this year.

One performance I look forward to being a part of is the Winterruption Festival on Granville Island in February. Isn’t that a fantastic name? Winterruption! I wish I had thought of that. I did think, however, of doing this with two of my favorite musicians: Bill Coon and Doug Stephenson. There is a special connection between the two men that makes singing with them a unique and invigorating experience. The Winterruption Festival is put on by Coastal Jazz and Blues Society here in Vancouver. Hard to believe but already they will be hard at work programming the 2008 edition of the Vancouver Jazz Festival.

Perhaps I’ll have just a short entry for this month to start things off in the right fashion. Less talk and more action, musically speaking. Back to the new songs I go!

Karin