Home : Plato's Words : May 2008

May 2008

It seems that most of the music that I have listened to as of late has been the listening that I have done while preparing music for students to learn. For my younger singing students who really don’t know anything about jazz it’s fun to direct them to the masters in the world of vocal jazz and have them discover Ella, Sarah and Anita for the first time. It’s also good to show them how completely different each of the singers might sound on the very same tune. Then to play a version from a more modern jazz vocalist such as Cassandra Wilson or Tierney Sutton opens their ears even further to the possibilities. I always try to remember that they may not actually like everything that they are hearing. That is perhaps not the point. For them merely to discover certain artists for the first time may be enough as their knowledge of the art form and of the artists existing within it grows.

I have been rehearsing with my friend Lorraine Foster for some duets performances that we have coming up this month. Two of the performances take place on Mother’s Day. In the afternoon we will perform jazz vespers at St. Andrews Wesley Church and later that evening we will appear at Rossini’s restaurant. I really think we have a nice collection of tunes put together and we have been working on the specifics of singing these songs as duets. Lorraine and I have performed together several times over the years but not for quite some time now so we really look forward to sharing our music with an audience again. It’s always a lark for us and isn’t that what music making should be about in some ways? I think so and yet I get quite serious sometimes about what it means to be singing jazz. I shouldn’t be quite so “precious” about it all I suppose and Lorraine just doesn’t let me get that way. She is lovely and straightforward and sings from the heart in an unpretentious and delightful way.

I am much closer to having my new CD “Downward Dancing” ready for release. I just sent off the CD master and the layout art to the manufacturers so in a matter of weeks I should have the finished product in my hands. I don’t know if I will have an “official” release performance in Vancouver since I recorded this project with a Toronto group. Then again I might do something like that in the fall when I do some touring to promote the new CD. At least I know I will have it in time for this year’s jazz festival. As I have mentioned before, this CD has been a long time coming. Here it is coming in a matter of weeks and I am already looking ahead to future recording because I have new material that I am hoping to use.

I have been continuing to study French and what a slow learner I am! Of course I don’t seem to have the amount of time you really need to devote to the learning of a new language. Still when I can, I try to do my “homework” and I do make slow progress. I love the sound of French and I think it will be a beautiful language to use in songs. There are some Michel Legrand songs that I will tackle and I’d like to explore some other French folk tunes that I might arrange for myself. Firstly I must work on being able to create proper sounding words, even if I don’t have complete comprehension so far. I believe that will come eventually. Now when I hear myself reciting some of the passages in French I sound like a child who is just learning to sound out words for the first time and with great difficulty.

Have a wonderful May everyone! I hope that where you live you have the beauty of spring blooming flowers and trees. Here in Vancouver it’s an unbelievable feast for the senses. Rain or shine the colors are vivid and the scents fill your nostrils with sweet surprise. Chickadees with their two note descending song are inspiring me to compose some gentle plaintive tune with a falling motif related to their song. Funny how gorgeous just two notes can be! Some of the chickadees appear to be Ella Fitzgeralds with pure perfect tone. Others seem to have a more masculine quality of a Chet Baker perhaps. I know it is their mating call but it sounds like a lonely heartbroken song every time I hear it. Is that it perhaps? The perfect love song is a two-note sad melody motif. In May in Vancouver, that seems to be the case it seems.

Karin