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Prince   Edward   County  Jazz   Festival

guido  basso:   reminiscences

10/8/2021

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Now 84 and still practising hard, the world-renowned artist-in-residence of the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival recalls his discovery of the flugelhorn, one of his first big road gigs with Louis Bellson and Pearl Bailey, and standing up to a cranky Benny Goodman. photo Oct. 2021  
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​Above - Guido Basso's first band

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uido Basso has been playing trumpet for nearly 75 years, since the age of 9.  

​“My brother played alto sax.  He had an all-amateur rehearsal band and I was impressed.  So one Christmas, my brother shows up with a trumpet for me. I said, ‘I don’t want to play trumpet, I want to play the accordion! ‘ 

But the trumpet stuck. At about the age of 13, he became a member of  Al Nichols’ dance band,  playing stock arrangements and Harry James trumpet solos. The musicians got paid cash until the club owner decided to compensate  them with food because they were getting too expensive.  But when they started eating too much, he reverted to cash because it was cheaper. 
 
Around the age of 16, he played in the house band at Montreal's El Morocco Club, backing major international stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Sarah Vaughan.  

Below - the legendary Billy Eckstine poses with young Guido Basso at the El Morocco

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Can I go on the road, Mom?

​One week, superstar drummer Louie Bellson was booked with his band and his wife, singer Pearl Bailey.  Their controversial interracial marriage propelled them to the  international spotlight, and Bellson had resigned from Duke Ellington's band to become his wife's music director. The booking at the El Morocco meant the house band in which Basso  played had  the week off.  He went to the club to watch the Bellson/Bailey show.

“So I sat at the back of the lounge, and I was really impressed with Louie’s band.  I had my horn with me, and after the show, as always,  there was a jam session with some of the musicians.  So I went up there and played.  The next day the phone rang.  It was Bellson’s manager.  He says, ‘Guido Basso?  Are you the guy who was playing at the jam session last night?  Louie wants you to come and join the band and go on the road. We’re going to St. Louis.’

“So I told him I actually had to go and ask my mother.  So he says, ‘you go ask your mother, and you’ve got two days to make up your mind.’ Mom and Dad said if that’s the only thing that’ll make me happy, then go and God bless you. I was ready to go.  It was wonderful.  I was in heaven.”
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"We went to Vegas.  Stayed there for two months at the Flamingo.  Some of America’s greatest musicians were in that band.  They loved it.  It paid well, and they loved the way they were treated.”   He has told  friends that Pearl Bailey took him under her wing, and called him her son when introducing him to others.
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That's not a trumpet!
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After three years on the road with Bellson and singer Vic Damone,  Basso relocated to Toronto to carve out a career in the studio, TV, and playing gigs.  Hearing Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" album was a turning point in his musical life.

​"Oh, yeah. I said, what is that?  That’s not a trumpet.  That’s when I decided to play the flugelhorn.  His  series of recordings at that time were masterpieces.  I loved them and played them every day. He was my role model."
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“So I dashed over to Long and McQuade, and I said, can you get me a flugelhorn? 

​“When I ordered my first flugel, it took forever for it to come into the store. My friend Freddie Stone was eyeing the same kind of instrument.  I told him that Long and McQuade’s had some on order.  I said, when they come in, let’s go down together to check them out.”

With a laugh, he recalls the trip to the store. "So when we get there, there’s only one flugelhorn.  Freddie says, ‘it’s mine.'   ‘No ____ing way it’s yours,’ I said.  So Jack Long orders another one, Freddie gets his horn, and it became the battle of the flugelhorns.” 

“I like the flugel better than the trumpet because it’s so mellow. If you listen to Miles, he doesn’t blast it, he plays it where it’s supposed to be.  So Freddie and I had a good time trying to figure out how to do it.  Just blow it.  Not too much air.  Not too much.”


Basso built a career in Toronto as an elite studio musician, a TV show music director  and host, and leader of his own dance orchestra.  He was criticized by other jazz musicians for being a "sellout" - playing profitable commercial music instead of jazz.

“Jazz in those days was too far out for a lot of people’s ears.  Too many of them (other musicians) were playing in that bag, where you just can’t make any sense of it, and it doesn’t make any sense emotionally for you, and it’s just a bunch of noise.  So that’s where I pulled away…and did it  ”My Way.” (chuckle)

“The commercial stuff is making a living. Sure….weddings, Jewish music, this and that….and then people would say, Oh man, how can you play all that shit?  And I’d say…it pays the rent.”  Besides, his "society dance band" was made up of some of Toronto's finest jazz players.

Later, Rob McConnell & the Boss Brass  would be THE outlet for Basso’s flugelhorn jazz.

“Rob would write me something. He’d phone and say ‘What do you think of this?  It was ​ Portrait of Jenny.  I’d say, “Oh, that’s a lovely song, would you write it for me?  He said yeah, I’m working on it right now.”  Portrait of Jenny was a signature Basso ballad with the Grammy-winning  band that was considered the best in the world.

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Above - early days for Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass at Toronto's Savarin  Club
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"With all due respect, Mr. Goodman..."

In the 60s and 70s, Basso organized and led bands at the CNE and on CBC TV featuring all of the prominent big band leaders still active at that time -  including, but not limited to,  Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman.  

Many musicians over the years found  Goodman, for all his fame, talent, and popularity extremely difficult to work with - among them, Guido Basso.  

“He (Goodman) comes into the rehearsal, and distributes his music. We start to play. Then he says, stop, stop.”

“What’s the matter, Mr. Goodman?”

“The drummer’s no good.”

“He’s a top player, a top studio guy I got for you.”

“Nah.  Get another one.”  So, Basso did. Drummer number two shows up.

“I don’t like this one, either.”

“Oh yeah? OK, I’ll get you another one.”

Drummer number three was Terry Clarke, later the Boss Brass’ drummer, and one of Canada’s best-ever.
“So Terry comes in, and Benny says to me, ‘that’s good, that’s really good. But then he stops the band again.  And again.  He’s really raining on the drummer.  This is the best drummer in the city, and he’s saying this?  And I get pissed off.”
  
“Mr. Goodman,” I said, “with all due respect, go f___ yourself.”

“He was much easier to deal with after that. As a matter of fact, he’s looking at me and really getting into the groove as we run “Opus One.”  He knew there’d be no show if he did it again.
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​On playing today

“If I’m getting ready for a major performance, I’ll have that horn on my face all day long practising."  

"I get really nervous before I play. I try to control it as much as possible, but jazz makes me nervous.  It’s something that you never know what’s going to come out.  Playing a written part, you know it’s gonna be that way every time you play it. Sometimes I start panicking a little bit, get a little shaky.  I just tell myself to get rid of that and just get going. It doesn’t last long.  Everything’s OK soon.”

He’ll keep playing publicly. 

“I think so, if they want me.  If not, I’ll just keep practising.”


 
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big   band   broadcasts

9/19/2021

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Swing  Jump  &  jive -  live   from   club   commodore

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Andy Sparling presents the "best big bands in the business" in this imaginary trip back in time to remote broadcasts from Club Commodore, "high atop the West Hill by the beautiful Bay of Quinte in l'il ol' Belleville."

Saturday mornings at 10 on 91.3FM CJLX, Belleville  
​Mondays 8:30pm EST at swingstreetradio.org
Listen on demand: https://soundcloud.com/user-163878073/sets/swing-jump-n-jive
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update - brad   eaton

9/19/2021

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Trumpeter Brad Eaton was the 2015 winner of the Rising Young Star Award.

"Getting through the pandemic has been tough.  I was expecting 2020 to be my busiest year yet but it ended up, like most other musicians, with almost everything cancelled.  I decided to make the most of the time off and put a lot of effort into some new solo projects.  I have always been interested in combining electronic and acoustic sounds, and found that the pandemic was the perfect time to start a new electronic-based solo project.  I released my first single last year, and started a YouTube channel that for several months saw new music every week.  It helped keep me sane, but playing music on your own isn't the same as playing with other people, or playing for an audience.  Thankfully, since mid-summer this year I have been much busier gigging with other musicians."
 
"The pandemic has definitely made me think about what kind of career in music I'd like to have long-term.  Being able to more or less choose my own schedule for a year was a very welcome change, and now that I am back on the nights-and-weekends grind, the difficult aspects of the musician's lifestyle stand out to me even more.  Since I've had the chance to engage with the online side of the music business, I'm very excited to see how I can continue to move forward in that space.  I think it has the potential to offer a lot of freedom to independent musicians."
 
Check out Brad's "Covid" projects at his YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1lMWHXHvwVpAC03ql-aN5g/
 


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update - jacob chung

9/9/2021

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Jacob won the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival’s Rising Young Star Award in 2019.  And he’s still winning stuff.  He recently collected a cool $10,000 for the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s Oscar Peterson prize.  He’s in his fourth year in the jazz program at the University of Toronto, and is set to graduate in May 2022.
 
At first, he found the pandemic hard on his music.  But the motivation soon came to use all that “alone” time to hit the practise room. A lot.  Covid has only intensified his desire to go as far as music will take him.
 
“I’m making lots of musical headway these days. I’m also lucky that I have school to keep me occupied in a routine during these times, and I'm glad gigs are sort of back.” 
 
“In five years, I would like to be cutting my teeth in New York City, learning about the music and myself. I want to be meeting the legends of this music and rubbing shoulders with the most killing young cats on the scene. I want to have started building a body of recorded work, and it would awesome to snag a teaching job somewhere.”
 
Jacob is planning to record his debut album in November 2021 with his quintet.
 

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big smoke brass:   not your average winery band

8/9/2021

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Blowin' Smoke at
Huff Estates
 
Friday Aug. 20
7:00pm
How did the band's sound develop/come together, how do we describe it?
Q & A with BSB's Zach Smith

 How did this band and sound develop?

"The umbrella term is brass band. The elevator pitch I typically give is that we're a "rock" band, but made up of horns. We were heavily influenced by brass bands and buskers from New York City including Lucky Chops (whom we've now had the privilege to open for three times) and Too Many Zooz. Other modern brass bands like Youngblood Brass Band and No BS! Brass Band were big early influences too. Those are bands that all take the traditional NOLA brass band concept and infuse it with a lot of modern sounds from rock, pop, funk, disco, Motown, R&B, hip-hop and more.  At the same time we have a lot of reverence for the bands and artists from New Orleans and beyond who laid all the groundwork and continue to champion this style of music - none of this would exist without it. Rebirth Brass Band, Hot 8 Brass Band and Preservation Hall Jazz Band are some of those influences. We're also huge fans of marching/drum corps culture in the US, particularly the HBCU marching bands of the South. Few people in Canada even know about these bands and the absolute jaw-dropping level of sound they can produce - we definitely take after some of that with our little 6-piece band."

"We all came from a jazz school background and that's where we learned to arrange music and play in a dynamic ensemble setting. We took that background along with our own inspirations and influences and hit the streets. When we started writing original music we were exploring these sounds further while injecting our own personality into the music as well. At the core of it all has always been really high-energy live performance and a tight group dynamic - we're always trying to give 110% (or more)."


You say you were born in the "streets of Toronto," and here you will be playing at a classy country winery.  The music is happy stuff that would fit in just about anywhere.   Is that the approach?

"Our aim is to bring people together and create positive experiences for our audiences. Our music is certainly high-energy, but we think it's that energy and the passion we put behind it that brings people in and gets them hooked. A brass band is a surprisingly versatile ensemble when it comes to the different kinds of material that can be covered and the different settings in which it can be performed. We've played hundreds of weddings and other events over the years, and we are just as at home there as we are lighting things up at a late-night club show. The energy and ear-catching dynamic of the band is there no matter what, and it certainly seems to have a special way of bringing people onboard."

What about the future?  Where do you think you can be five years down the road?

"It goes without saying that it's been a very difficult past year, but we're (hopefully) full steam ahead at this point. When planning to originally release our album last year, the goal was to take that momentum and use it to propel us toward festivals and tours in Canada, the US, Europe and beyond.  We've seen our early influences like Lucky Chops and Too Many Zooz go from the subways of NYC to touring the world, making music and videos and growing the culture and community around them. We definitely want to follow a similar path, with an emphasis on growing the brass/younger music scene in Toronto and creating opportunities for the musicians and artists in our community. In 5 years we hope to have more music and videos released, be doing larger-scale tours, and to still have a strong local chapter of the BSB and brass community in Toronto that does busking, local shows, weddings, events, school clinics and more."
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Hannah  Barstow  releases  new album

8/3/2021

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Hannah's new album is entitled "Beneath," set for release August 13 on all streaming and downloading platforms.  She describes it as "haunting performances of her original songs and arrangements."  Brother Keith is on drums, Mike Murley on sax, and the bassist is Reknee Irene Harnett. 

"Beneath" clip
Hannah's website
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Pandemic notes:  survivors' guides

8/2/2021

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Young musicians trying to make a living in jazz face enough challenges without a pandemic added to the mix.  But for three Toronto-based music-makers originally from the Quinte area,  passion, persistence and proactivity are paying the bills.

Ian Wright, Bram Gielen, and Hannah Barstow have all won the Rising Young Star Award at the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival, and were participants  at the Festival's Jazz Education program at different times during the last fifteen years.
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Ian Wright
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Talk about an up-and-down year.  
Ian Wright of Belleville was earning a living as a full-time drummer when Covid hit. 
​Launching a career as a Toronto-based “sideman” in jazz and other groups in 2014, he’d won the prestigious Oscar Peterson Prize as a student at Humber College. For six years, he recorded, toured, and performed live. He had steady work as a dance school accompanist.  And now you can now call him that “JUNO-winning drummer” for his work  on Sammy Jackson’s best vocal jazz recording for 2021.

The pandemic changed everything.

“Summer tours were immediately out of the picture; no more gigs with local artists and no more corporate work.  I’d never done anything other than music, so I wasn’t sure what to do.”           

A life in and around jazz is not easy. You can never plan how much money you’re going to make, nor when you’re going to make it.  That is, IF you make it. And the cost-of-living in Toronto makes it much harder. Ian had thought about doing something else occasionally; the pandemic made it a necessity.  He’s now an apprentice arborist (the business of caring for trees).

“I am very thankful for the CERB, which helped me make the switch,” he says.  He also got help from the Toronto Arts Council’s TOArtist COVID-19 Response Fund.  The music isn’t all gone; he’s had a few satisfying Covid-era gigs.

​“Music will always be a part of my life. I will likely have to turn things down with a second job in the picture, but in a perfect world, I will be able to keep my music career going while having the secure income of a day job.  In a sense it is a relief to not have to rely on such a precious art form for an unstable living, and I think the music can only benefit as a result.”

Bram Gielen
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Bram Gielen of Belleville has been at music as a livelihood a little longer than Ian – he graduated from the University of Toronto in 2008.

He, too, is based in Toronto - and music freelancing is his only source of income.

A multi-skilled musician, he does recording session work on bass or keyboards, composing for commercials, podcasts, theatre, TV and film, touring (prior to Covid), and “a bit” of teaching.  He also writes and records his own music, which he’s hoping to expand upon over the next year. “It's always very much been about keeping several balls in the air,” he says.”

He got hit hard.

“I was supposed to tour Europe, the UK, and Australia in August 2020.  Recording projects put on hold.  Live performance and session work are pretty much gone.”

“But I'm also lucky to have things I do entirely from my home studio, like all my for-hire composition for commercials, etc. There's also recording myself here at home for someone else's project and emailing/Dropboxing the files, which I've done a bit of, but absolutely no one prefers it that way. So I've managed to keep fairly busy overall.”
“But boy, am I looking forward to getting back into bigger studios and in front of audiences.”

The pandemic has only strengthened Bram’s commitment to a lifelong career in music. Why?
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“Probably the fact that things were going pretty well until everything shut down, and I feel like I'm in the very lucky position of just having to sit tight until things more or less "resume,” whatever that will look like. Which I guess makes me optimistic, or maybe delusional, who knows!”


​Hannah Barstow
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​From Napanee, Hannah Barstow graduated from U. of T. with a master’s degree in music in 2020.  She’s a pianist, a vocalist, a composer and arranger, and a teacher.  Her main focus is jazz, but she also dabbles in R & B, pop, country and classical.  Her career consists of live gigs, writing and arranging for her own band and others, recording, and teaching piano and theory.  Teaching, she says, has allowed her to make music her sole source of income, while she builds the other aspects of her career.  
“It’s common practice for the modern musician,” she says. “Lots of different things.  I like it.  Something new to learn every day.”
Yes, the live, in-person gigs are gone.  She’s played some “fun” and “creative” livestream shows in the last year, and while there’s nothing like connecting with people in person, it has forced her to create other things like recordings and videos for online use.
“I am still completely committed to this career, maybe even more so than I was before. People need the joy that the arts bring, and the pandemic has brought that home to me.  I feel totally optimistic, because I know I will continue to make music no matter what. And I know other musicians will do the same. It’s possible the industry will be changed by the pandemic, but the industry is always changing anyway. It’s nothing to be afraid of because we always make it work.”




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