Guelph Jazz Festival - 2013

This year's Guelph Jazz Festival took place September 4 - 8. Its theme was percussion and it featured percussionists from India, South Korea, USA, and Ontario, Canada. The festival and its Artistic Director, Ajay Heble celebrated its 20th year - a remarkable achievement. My friend, Jim Murphy and I have attended the last five out of six festivals - we skipped the World Saxophone Quartet year at the festival.
   By way of a preamble, I must say that I would attend the Guelph Jazz Festival no matter what the musical lineup consisted in. Guelph, Ontario is a charming university town. Its people are charming, friendly, courteous, and culturally aware. Its excellent secondhand book store, Maconco Books, is still in business. The town's coffees and ales are very good. The restaurants are fine too. There were no Starbucks to be seen.
   The colloquia and workshops featuring the festival's participants are packed with interesting discussion and demonstrations over the course of three days. In addition there were ever so many free concerts. Its estimated that the festival brings in a couple of million dollars to Guelph.
   From remarks that I overheard, it seems that Guelph's citizens are not only disgusted with the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey club, but also with its federal government. This last anti-government bit is the only similarity that I could discern between these Canadians and Americans that I know. But if one has good beer, coffee, and food; limited television programming; and especially - great music; one can put up with foolish and greedy governance - for a while at least. I was surprised that the Canadian government was willing to join President Obama in his stupid Syrian plans. But then I realized that this cozy alliance was about oil, refineries, and the Canadian oil pipeline - big and bigger business. I mentioned this to Guelph's secondhand bookseller, and these pieces seemed to fit in his mind.
   Music Highlights - 2013: 
Nicole Mitchell, flute and her Indigo Trio with Harrison Blankhead, bass and Hamid Drake, percussion. Chicago's finest musicians doing what they do so expertly - inventing music.
  Jane Bunnett, soprano saxophone and flute and her Cuban Rumba Meets Jazz group with dancers. This was a free outdoor concert and dance-jam. I would love to hear Jane Bunnet with Nicole Mitchell's Indigo Trio. Rhythm meets rhythm. Or let's hear Nicole Mitchell with Jane Bunnett's group.
  Marianne Trudel, piano; William Parker, bass; and Hamid Drake, percussion. Tight! Tight! Tight! It's amazing how creative musicians who don't regularly perform together can invent wonderful music together. It's not just that Parker and Drake were accompanists to Trudel's piano, each member of the trio knew what to say, how to say it, and said it - the solos of each musician were embroidered into a clear musical context.
  Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet, Ten Freedom Summers, with Smith, trumpet; Anthony Davis, piano; John Lindberg, bass; and Anthony Brown, percussion. Leo Smith's meditative musical composition touching on the African-American civil rights struggle. Again we had four musicians who knew what to do; and did it. There was no jivin' here (something we get to below).
  Some Other Stuff - 2013:
Matt Brubeck, solo 'cello was all over the musical space. The music was described in advance by the improvising/composer as "ephemera". Right.
  Dawn of Midi. Three Brooklyn-based musicians - Aakaash Israni, bass; Amino Belyamani, piano; Qasim Naqvi, percussion. It was a huge mistake to program this group ahead of Marianne Trudel and company, on the same bill. It was very difficult for me at least to wake up after such a dreadful performance of such utterly boring 'music' - an hour (or so it seemed) of a-rhythmic and tonal tediousness. At the conclusion of this terrible non-event, the MC informed the audience that this nonsense was not improvised but was entirely composed - a five-note somnolent fetish.
  Pharoah and The Underground: São Paulo Underground and Chicago Underground with Pharoah Sanders. Wow! Not really. The electronic sampling garbage got in the way of the music. One heard
the tedious electronically produced a-rhythmic patterns instead of Pharoah. Realizing that this was to be a long unmusical evening, we split. We got to a pool hall just in time to see the second half of the Michigan-Notre Dame football game - so all was not lost. By the way neither Michigan nor Notre Dame are as good as reported.
Highlights of Guelph Jazz Festivals Past:
  2007. Charlie Haden, Liberation Music Orchestra featuring Carla Bley (and her remarkable hair-style). Anthony Braxton.William Parker Ensemble, The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield (with vocalist Leena Conquest and poet Amiri Baraka).

Carla Bley

  2010. Henry Grimes, Jane Bunnett, and Andrew Cyrill. Marilyn Crispell.
  2011. Joel Futterman and Kidd Jordan.
  2012. Rova's eLectric ascention: Coltrane Reimagined. Peter Brötzmann.
Other (Mostly Tedious) Stuff of Guelph Jazz Festivals Past:
  Charles Lloyd. Abdullah Ibrahim. Guitar players.
  My high school basketball coach, Ed McMullen (R.I.P.), who was also the track and field coach, once remarked that running consisted of recovering from a series of falls. In Guelph, Ont. a week ago, I learned that, for someone my age, walking can consist of not recovering from one slight fall, a slip off of a curb (or is it "kerb" in Canada?). I experienced such a fall which resulted in two black eyes, bloody nose, scraped elbows and knees, and messed up back.
  What happy times never the less - in spite a few bruises to my musical sensibilities and old body.
  Best wishes to the wonderful Guelph Jazz Festival and Ajay Heble - a rare music miracle.