Monday September 6th @ The Rex Hotel 9:30PM

The Rex is Canada’s Premier Jazz Venue and this marks the first time we’re playing there. Look forward to some new original compositions and a fun energetic vibe.

Friday September 10th @ The Gladstone Hotel 10PM for UMA NOTA

Uma Nota

If you’re into good music/cool hangs in Toronto you probably all ready are an Uma Nota regular.

“One Note (Uma Nota) is a Toronto event series providing an equal stage for live percussion & song acts and the dancefloor DJs that share a similar musical aesthetic. Specifically, our foundation sounds lean towards West African, Afro-Brazilian, Latin American and Caribbean but also extend to include some of the exciting new cross-pollinations and fusions bubbling up around the city”

If you aren’t an Uma Nota regular this is the time to start. Featuring this cities finest DJ’s spinning dance friendly hip world music. It’s a big dance party full of good vibes.

This is a special one for the Heavyweights for many reasons. One we will be joined by one of the nicest human beings and amazing trumpet players on the planet, Alexander Brown. Alex was born into an extremely musical family in Camaguey  Cuba. His uncle Don Pancho Terry is the master of the chekeré and his two cousins Yosvanny and Yunior are two of the most important emerging musicians in the New York Jazz scene. Alex plays with equal parts intelligence and abandon with a huge spirit. We will also be having a guest percussionist still to be announced, that is unless Patricia Cano decides to hire everyone in the city for a gig in Sudbury that weekend, (it’s only love Patricia).

The Heavyweights have also started a monthly residency at the Painted Lady at Ossington and Dundas. I really like the vibe of this club. We’re playing the Thursday closest to the middle of the month from 9-1 so put September 16th and October 14th in your calender.

Things have been busy outside the Heavyweights. I played last Tuesday for D’bi Young’s CD release. D’bi is an amazing poet, spoken word artist, singer, musician, writer, theater, playwright etc. She has one of the most captivating aura’s of anyone I’ve ever met, and it was an honour to share the stage with her. Check out this video

Tonight August 27th 9Pm at Lula Lounge is Aline Morales CD fundraiser party. We’ll be playing some very well written bossa nova/tropicalia to raise funds to get her recordings mastered and manufactured. It’s going to be a beautiful disc so don’t miss this one.

Sept 4th and 5th I’ll be playing at Hispanic Fiesta with a singer coming up from Colombia, Gabriel Romero. It’s at Mel Lastman square both nights at 8 PM. We’ll be playing the finest in Cumbia and other traditional colombian music. Hispanic Fiesta is a big event, I played it last year with Luis Felipe Gonzalez, of note is this might be the only cultural event in Toronto to take place north of St. Clair so if you live in North York or further out this one might be for you.

After the Gabriel gig I’ll be rocketing back to the west end to play The Ruby Spirit’s CD release at the Great Hall September 4th at 10 The Ruby Spirit is an indie rock band formerly known as Sadie May Crash. They stand out from the deluge of Toronto Indie Rock Bands as they can all actually play their instruments (quite well I might add) their tunes are rooted with older rock and blues elements (like say playing in a groove), and they are captivating performers. Here’s the video for their first single. It includes myself, Jesse Markowitz and Anthony Rinaldi on horns.

So the last one I’m going to plug here is possibly the biggest one, Brazilian Independence Day Dundas Square Sept 6th. I’ll be playing with Maninho Costa’s Batucada Carioca on the main stage around 4, then we’ll be playing through the crowd at intervals through the rest of the day (I need to get my tamborim playing together). This is the second year for this festival, we played it last year and apparently there were 30,000+ people who attended throughout the day. This year promises to be bigger and badder. Ivete Sangalo is headlining and she is possibly the biggest artist in Brazil at the moment. This is a little piece of Toronto multicultural beauty that you should check out regardless of your background. I had to play Aquarela do Brasil solo for a green and yellow sea of screaming Brazilians as the opening number last year and I think it’s happening again this year, possibly the most nerve wracking performance of my life.

Bazilian Independance Day Dundas Square 30,000+ people

There’s some more exciting stuff happening later in the month with Hilario Duran, Archie Alleyne and Luis Mario that I’ll put up here later, but this post has stretched too long. Hope to see you all soon.

The most recent is a blog post by the Artistic Director for Toronto Downtown Jazz, Josh Grossman, on The Heavyweights Brass Band. You can check out the article here http://torontojazz.com/blog/just-fun-it Josh is the real deal, an accomplished musician, bandleader, and promoter of the music so his words carry a lot of weight for me.

The other article was published in the Winnipeg Free Press this Monday by Chris Smith . You can check it out here http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entertainment/music/former-winnipegger-gets-to-jam-with-mentors-98729144.html

Well not totally factual, (I told him I was playing some trio gigs with Archie Alleyne not in Kollage) I’m really glad Chris wrote the article. If you’re in Winnipeg it’s about a gig I’m playing for Mardi Jazz at the CCFM August 3, 8PM-11:30PM. It would be nice to see you and catch up as that’s the only engagement I’m playing back in Winnipeg and I’ll only be back for a few days (it’s been 11 months since I’ve been back).

I’ll be accompanied by one of the finest rhythm sections in the country:

Ron Paley on Piano- Ron played bass with Buddy Rich and Woody Herman, but he’s one of my favourite piano players on this planet. The most tasteful accompanist who also builds expertly constructed solos, there’s at least a couple solos he’s played live I have etched in my memory from YEARS ago.

Steve Kirby on Bass- Steve is one of my greatest influences in how seriously you need to take music. He’s played with some of the most important musicians in the music, (Elvin Jones, Wynton Marsalis etc.) he swings like no one else and has a huge bass sound just to say a little about his playing.

Curtis Nowosad on Drums- I grew up with Curt infact we had a weekly restaurant Jazz gig were I started to learn to play the music when I was 17. Curtis has matured into one of the finest young drummers, with taste and technique.

Come out on August 3rd, you won’t want to miss it.

Most of this morning was spent watching youtube videos, checking out blogs, Twitter and Facebook media. My heart is breaking as anarchists destroy storefronts up and down Yonge and light police cars on fire all while trying to intimidate reporters and hide their identity. The cops are similarly dressed in uniforms of brutality grabbing seemingly peaceful protestors, arresting people for declining to identify themselves or refusing to be searched without a warrant. The police are also strangely non-existent in the 30 minute pillaging of Yonge, it appears they let it happen, possibly to claim justification for the costs of the summit.

This whole thing is a mess. I had to see it for myself yesterday so between a salsa dance hang and a gig I went against the press advisory and ventured downtown. I tried to bike down University but got told to go home and “use some common sense” by a super trooper who didn’t want to let me into Queens park out of fear that one of the protesters would take the horn I had over my shoulder. I went around, there was a police barricade at College and University where there were a bunch of fashionistas doing a weird photo shoot, walking the catwalk in front of a line of riot officers. I tried to talk to a normal police officer at the end of the line about the best way to get home from there, the lady couldn’t help and seemed like all her humanity had been lost in this whole ordeal.

Fashionistas

I continued south on University just below College. The whole street was closed off and it was an eerie ride. I felt alone until coming up to the American embassy. The whole southbound lane was bounded off by little fences organized into a triangular barrier going all the way around the front into the northbound lane. Inside were likely a hundred men in Swat gear hanging out in the green space between the lanes.

I got down to queen and poked my head into the Rex, surprised but grateful the music was still happening. Mike Murley was standing by the bandstand after a solo, I looked back down Queen street to see black smoke billowing from the street a few hundred feet away. I was told this was one of the cop cars that had just gotten torched, apparently the fourth one that day. Multiple fire trucks accompanied with a cavalcade of 15 passenger vans full of riot gear police came bursting down queen. I went a street south to see a man getting arrested, and an ad hoc police station set up where officers were sitting on the ground and rehydrating.

Rest Stop

I have a whole bunch of mixed feelings on this whole thing. First off having this in downtown Toronto was a BAD decision. 1 Billion dollars? Are you serious Mr. Harper? That was just the foreseen security costs, once the cards have fallen, the lost tourism, the bruised image of this city, the cost will be exponentially larger. All while cutting funding to the arts, education, building fake lakes and throwing money at the sinking ship of the American auto industry?

This is all taking our focus away from the G20, a little boys club that as wikipedia states “comprise 85% of global gross national product, 80% of world trade”. There’s propaganda that they’re working to get us out of this economic crisis and towards global growth. First off throwing more fake money at a broken system is not fixing something it’s perpetuating the problem and that’s all that has been done. Second off continual world growth is impossible. This is finite planet with finite resources. We have a population explosion and a world catching up with a totally unsustainable western lifestyle. We should be talking about GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY  That means quit using so much stuff. Stop driving a car. Find a way, society, the auto industry, oil industry and the governments they have sway over don’t want you to stop pouring money into this bottomless pit that fuels this economy called an internal combustion engine, but trust me you can do it.

Canada’s  claim for propping up the industry was the fear of losing jobs in the auto sector. Let it happen, maybe these people would have found something to do with their lives, like working on the technology or logistics of oil alternatives, or making something of beauty with all their time they have after being laid off by these sad car companies.

Sorry I may be ranting now. Back to the protesters. We need change and in one way they showed us that there are people who have the guts to go against this treadmill that society has placed us on. Most people keep running out of fear, go to school, get a job, get a mortgage, lease multiple cars, rack up a credit card debt and live their lives like a good little hamster as the banks and corporations reap the benefits of all their labour all because they were afraid of “amounting to nothing”, and what do they have in the end?

Even though they showed they’re willing to fight they didn’t accomplish anything and made the situation worse, spiraling downtown Toronto into a violent inferno, resembling a ridiculous video game. Compare what the violent protestors accomplished compared to someone like this who went to the Eaton Centre with a megaphone, to make consumers think about what they are doing, also influencing the thoughts of the 20,000 who’ve seen it on youtube in the last day.

Where are our Ghandi’s? Our Martin Luther Kings? People who changed the way we thought peacefully with their charisma, the strength of their ideas and how strongly they were committed to them. We can do this.

Richard Underhill had a nice little quote on his wall

“Music, art, dance and laughter are the only antidotes to repression.”

With that in mind go see a jazz festival show, make some food with some friends, go dancing, write a blog and quit your day job (just kidding, well mostly).

Through this I’m glad that art is still going on. Herbie Hancock played feet from the protests last night, I couldn’t be there but heard it was an amazing show. Friday night Maceo Parker knocked me out, with 2 hours of the funkiest music I’ve ever heard, all while spreading a message of love on the microphone. Here’s a video of the always funky and articulate, not to mention super nice human being, Dennis Rollins from the show.

First off here is link (link removed due to copyright infringement) to a recording of Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony. It was performed last night as a collaboration between the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the  Berlin Philharmonic.

The recording starts off with a question and answer with Wynton, Sir Simon Rattle and a female interviewee who is way out of her league talking to these two geniuses, regardless many interesting points are discussed. Then a long section of the Orchestra warming up, skip this if you’re in a rush but it’s really interesting to hear all the different personalities warming up together in the same room. The piece is absolutely beautiful, please find an hour or two of your time to sit down and listen to the whole thing.

Below is an interesting TED talk I found this morning. David Bryne talking about how the context (environment) of music shapes the given style. It’s not completely accurate, but still very interesting.

If you’re looking for something to do this Saturday night come out to Dundas square. Sean Bellaviti’s project “Viva Celia” will be a showcasing Toronto’s finest salsa musicians with their interpretations of Celia Cruz’ classic repertoire and after La India The Princess of Salsa will be headlining. Most of her band is coming up from the states but myself and Alexander Brown will be joining their horn section for the gig. It should be a great night. Dundas Square 7-11ish

The Music of J.J. Johnson

This coming sunday night my quartet will be playing the music of J.J. Johnson at the fine Roncesvalles Village Jazz establishment Gate 403

Christopher Butcher- Trombone
Todd Pentney- Piano
Justin Gray- Upright Bass
Fabio Ragnelli- Drums and Cymbals

J.J. has gone down in the history books as the creator and zenith of bebop trombone playing. He did for the trombone what Charlie Parker and Bud Powell did for their instruments. Well it’s true his clarity, genius and good feel on the trombone remain unmatched to this day his other accomplishments are frequently overlooked.

He is one of the few Jazz Musicians like Miles Davis who was involved with many different branches of the music. He recorded with Count Basie, Illinois Jacquet, and Coleman Hawkins at the cusp of the bebop and swing eras. He recorded with the Charlie Parker quintet on Dial. He was on Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool, as well as his later session’s like Walkin that pointed towards Hard-Bop. He was involved in the third-stream, writing orchestral pieces for Dizzy Gillespie’s Perceptions and his own Brass Orchestra. His small group sessions for Columbia and Impulse are watermarks of modern jazz, with great small group writing, and show the influence of Miles’ and John Coltrane’s great groups.

Many of the genre’s innovators like Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins and Elvin Jones made early appearances as sidemen on his recordings. This isn’t to mention his two trombone group with Kai Winding, his days as a composer for Hollywood movies and all his great later recordings.

As a composer and arranger J.J. was truly one of the finest. He has tunes like Lament, Kelo and Enigma that are in the Real Books but we will be playing many of his other lesser known tunes. Looking forward to sharing this music with you.

Here’s a video of The Heavyweights Brass Band playing a fairly epic arrangement (by Rob Teehan of course) of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.

Rob is great at writing meaty versions of these meager modern pop tunes. This video has been up for about a week and has already amassed 800 hits. I’d love for this video to go viral to get some press for the band. It seems like music journalism has almost collapsed (except for blogs about indie rock) in this rapid media evolution that is going on. So if you run a website or blog, or even if you just want to put this up on your facebook or Twitter, and want to share this please do.

We have a bunch of interesting stuff coming up, but I’ll just plug our next gig. We’ll be playing at the intimate little venue The Central steps from Honest Ed’s Tuesday the 15th of June at 9ish. Nick Teehan is putting on the show, and will be singing some tunes with us. Nick is one of the most accurate and interesting singer’s I’ve ever heard, and we should be doing some interesting stuff. Definitely not one to miss.

Hmm other stuff.

I’ve been playing with the singer Johnny Favourite. Johnny had some hits in the late 90’s as the Canadian sensation in the swing revival, he has a juno, and multiple East Coast music awards. It’s interesting to me mainly as he was one of the ways I got into jazz as a kid. I can still remember flicking aimlessly through channels and stumbling across his video for “Root Beer and Licorice” on Much Music. I don’t know if it was the horns or the swing rhythm but something hooked me, likely it was the mere fact that it was so drastically different from most of the music that mainstream media pushed on people in the late 90’s. He’s taken some time off but is back with a new cd Troubador that we launched on Monday with a live concert on JazzFM check it out if you get the chance.

I’ve also been busy transcribing a bunch of Ghanaian hip-life tunes. Hip-life is the meeting of Hip-hop with the traditional music of Ghana Highlife. It’s interesting how hip-hop has had a pervasive influence on almost all forms of music, but in particular the many African derived forms of music in the western world, influencing Reggaeton, Dancehall, Funk Carioca etc. It’s very interesting to me the similarities between these musics and hip-life (between musics from the African diaspora combined with hip-hop and African music itself combined with hip-hop).

I’m doing these transcriptions for Isaac Akrong, a Ghanaian dancer and percussionist who is writing his PhD thesis on this music. I’ve been a bit of a procrastinator on it, but it’s mostly done now, and I’ve certainly gotten better at transcription, and the music notation program Sibelius doing it, not to mention what I’ve learned from the music itself. I might post a transcription and youtube video of one of the tunes in my next blog. You can read Isaac’s bio  here , he say’s, ”My goal is to propagate the message of African culture, and explain everything possible about it. I am building on the knowledge that exists so that people will understand African music and dance more”, and I feel glad to be a part of that.

I’ll leave you with a little video that Wilson Acevedo did of a tune he collaborated on with Juan Carlos Cardenas (Juan-Caga Lindo). I played the trombones on it. There’s some food for thought in it, and Juan-Ca is one of the most soulful people I’ve ever met, so check it out.

I went up to Gate 403 to see my friend Keith Price, an excellent jazz guitarist, whom I used to co-host a Jazz radio show at the University of Manitoba (with frequent hilarious awkward live on air moments), who was spending some time in T. after a trip he took to Europe. It was a good little Winnipeg hang, and after Sean Bellaviti was playing the late slot. The horn player couldn’t make it last minute so I played the gig, that’s why my gig bag never leaves my left shoulder, always prepared. It was a fun one with Sean, Lee “Jorge” Hutchinson and Jeff Graville, with J.B. and Gillian sitting in.

There was a guy at the bar who was really into it at the end, requesting some Herbie Hancock tunes. When we finished, he told us about this shoe store he was in the process of owning across the street, and insisted that we were so moving that he demanded giving us all a pair of shoes of our choice, he also made a strong case for never playing a gig in running shoes. The shop was the European Shoe Boutique at 394 Roncesvalles Ave.

Christian's Shoe Emporium

This shop has been open since 1962, opened by a German immigrant, upon moving to Roncesvalles village, passed down to his son, and sort of passed to Christian, the enthusiastic patron at the Gate. This place has a basement full of European made shoes, most of them having not been opened since the 1960’s. We listened to a Thelonious Monk record, told stories about NYC as we looked through hundreds, of vintage shoes. Jeff left with one pair, I got three (the other two for a REALLY low price), and Lee left with 11 pairs. Since several of my friends have gone back and cleaned up. I wouldn’t recommend  stopping by if you’re a size 10-11, I think those are mostly gone, you can thank Lee.

JG and JK came back to pick some up

Just spreading the word as there’s few things I like better then a great deal. I grew up in Winnipeg and my father was a first child in a post  great depression family starting a farm in rural Manitoba so it’s in my blood. If you’re interested you can check out Christian Aldo the shoe mogul’s website at http://christianaldoart.com/ he has some pretty interesting and eclectic art up.

The Heavyweights at Grossman's

First off that title is a joke, merely a play on words with a reference to one of Rob’s many blogs. Now that that’s cleared up, Rob is an amazing human being. He’s a local tuba player and composer that I met a few years back in the Dark Park Brass band. He was walking bass lines on a little F tuba. Classically trained and new to playing improvised music, from the start Rob really stuck out as someone who wanted to play this music correctly.

I’m writing this as Rob has been nominated for a Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year for his “Dreams of Flying” . In fact the winner is being selected tonight in St. Johns, so if you get the chance, send good vibes Rob’s way. You should also check out Rob’s awesome website here http://www.robteehan.com/ He’s living the life and blogging frequently about it and his informed writing is a treat.

Just being nominated for this award, especially given Rob’s age is a huge accomplishment.  There are very few people who have a command of Jazz/American Popular music and European Classical forms. I can think of a few brass players and upright players who have a passable command of both languages with someone like Wynton Marsalis being a rare exception. The thing is, these types of music come out of an extremely different cultural frying pan. European music comes out of an imperialistic system, and that’s reflected in a music where the composer and conductor are by FAR the most important people, leaving an orchestra of skilled craftsmen to produce the music that other’s have created. Jazz and good American popular music come out of a freer more democratic system where, everyone is bringing something to the table, and has to have the good taste to know how to fill in their own role most appropriately.

That’s why someone who composes European music and plays American music is an anomaly. It’s strange given the fact that Jazz is spontaneous composition, and the more tools you have in your toolbox, the more interesting your improvised music is going to be, that there aren’t more people like Rob Teehan. I’ve been trying to think of people who’ve written European classical music and can play Jazz, Andre Previn? Wynton Marsalis (but his orchestral works are really Americana, an extended canvas for Jazz)? Can you think of anyone?

Anyways I’ve talked too much. Come out and check The Heavyweights at Grossman’s Tavern May 17th were Rob will be laying down funky bass lines, conversing over popular song forms, and climbing on tables while playing sousaphone. Also you can check out the start of our myspace page at www.myspace.com/theheavyweightsbb but check back again, because we’re gonna have all the cool stuff soon.

I purchased a tamborim today. I have been attempting to play the deceptively difficult little drum, the melodic voice in Samba, for the last little while at Batucada Carioca rehearsals. I had a friend who spent the last 3 months in Brazil and was kind enough to pick one up for me down there. Other then playing an endless number of melodic calls, the tamborim fills in a 16th note pattern called the Virado, that is truly difficult to execute. Here’s a master.

Other then the technique and endurance involved in keeping a train of 16th notes flowing, I’ve needed to focus on the time feel of the notes as they aren’t even. Brazilians call this swing “ginga”. Trying to find some information on this time feel I ran across this very informative article by Jovino Santos Neto, a wonderful Brazilian piano player, and someone who’s spent a lot of time dealing with the music.

Mainly for musicians but it contains some interesting historical references too, Ginga: a Brazilian way to groove by Jovino Santos Neto

I was familiar with Alex’s music through it’s frequent and deserved airplay on CBC radio, but the shooting of this video was the first time I met him. Alex is the real deal, born in Artemesia Cuba (also the hometown of Arturo Sandoval). He grew up playing the bass, but has transitioned into a happening singer accompanying himself on guitar when he front’s the Alex Cuba band. He also stands out as a very talented songwriter/composer having co written a large portion of the tunes on Nelly Furtado’s hugely successful Mi Plan album.

Alex’s own music is startling in the success he has weaving together the often disparate strands of rock, pop and world music into a seamless single product. It’s informed by the legacy of cuban music but not shackled to it, and to me there’s something inherently Canadian to his eclectic approach. This is his first english language single and he has really established himself as a fine purveyor of GOOD North American popular music. The lyrics speak to the most basic human need, that of loving and being loved in return, without getting sappy. It’s catchy and has some funky horn lines, what else could you ask for?

There’s a good money shot of me about 3:13 through the video. It’s Kervin Barreto on trumpet and fellow Winnipegger Paul Metcalfe on tenor saxophone. It was a fun but early morning hanging with Max Senitt and the guys and watching how a music video gets shot. The horns were recorded in Havana with Alexander Abreu , and Amaury Perez, THE studio horn players in Cuba.

Hasta Pronto