Blog Posts

big band broadcasts

9/19/2021

Swing Jump & jive - live from club commodore

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

0 Comments

update - brad eaton

9/19/2021

0 Comments

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/

0 Comments

update - jacob chung

9/9/2021

0 Comments

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.

0 Comments

big smoke brass: not your average winery band

8/9/2021

0 Comments

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."

0 Comments

Hannah Barstow releases new album

8/3/2021

0 Comments

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

0 Comments

Pandemic notes: survivors' guides

8/2/2021

0 Comments

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.

Ian Wright

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

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?

“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

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.”

0 Comments

Forward>>

big band broadcasts

Swing Jump & jive - live from club commodore

update - brad eaton

update - jacob chung

big smoke brass: not your average winery band

Hannah Barstow releases new album

Pandemic notes: survivors' guides

​