Home : Plato's Words : May 2006

May 2006

The Merry Month of May!

Well here it is again; winter has completely vanished and cherry trees and flowers of every imaginable variety are blooming here in Vancouver. The lilacs, the bleeding hearts, the tulips, the sweet woodruff and so much more; you name it; the eyes can feast away and the nose too since some of those visual beauties are also sweetly scented. Then there’s the woodpecker in the park that has been pounding his little hammer-head into a power pole on a daily basis and the chickadees are singing their lovely two note descending song. Chickadees are my favorite little bird. They are so cute and fat somehow and that is not how I usually would describe a bird. They are always cheerful and friendly. I like that.

I am longing to get out and work in my garden but that will have to wait for a little while longer as I am trying to spend some time getting tunes ready for my trombone based quintet. We have several gigs coming up this spring and early summer and I want to put together a nice program of tunes; some originals and some standards. While incorporating the trombone (which the talented Dennis Esson will be playing since Rod Murray wasn’t available this go round); I like to consider some particular lines that the trombone can play in unison or in harmony with the voice. That takes planning and creativity and certainly you just cannot force creativity I have found. So… I must plug away now at the piano and let my poor garden wait a little bit longer before I head out to the ever- creative world of Mother nature. That is not to say that I am holed up side all day long. I have definitely been enjoying my almost daily runs to Central Park in Burnaby. As I run I do think about music too and I do take in the visual beauty that all the new young leaves on the trees are offering up. This is the time of year when the leaves have a delicate chartreuse tone. It is so beautiful and I never tire of taking in everything that is within my visual range. At a different park near my home it is the young growth on the weeping willows that catches my eye. At Central park where I run in the forest it is a variety of new growth that I admire as I make my way through that peaceful place. So what does this all have to do with music? (which this blog is supposed to be about after all) Well, my particular trombone based quintet is also in its youthful stage. I have performed with the “bonehead quintet” just twice now (how I’d love to actually call it that: The Boneheads; but, certain others might not find it quite so amusing) The group performs more of my original arrangements than my other guitar oriented quintet which feature Bill Coon. The bonehead group also includes my husband Lou and that is another fun and interesting dynamic to explore since we really do not do too much music together what with our different interests and directions chosen. Also it means that I don’t have my favorite musician, Bill Coon in the group since this grouping is piano based and not guitar based. Oh well, I do get to make music with Bill in my other groups plus I think it is good for me to expand my musical horizons somewhat. I am hoping that with the upcoming performances that we have that we can start to work on getting a true group sound. Some of the gigs that we do have in the next few months: RIME, Jazz Vespers, THE CELLAR, The CBC during the Vancouver Jazz Festival plus we are performing at Texada Island’s Jazz Festival at the end of July. That should be a true adventure for us. I have never been there and I understand that Texada is a spectacular place to visit. I really do look forward to playing with this group again to see what may develop as we get a few opportunities to perform together.

I will keep this month’s entry relatively short and sweet. Next month I will write again on some of my musical adventures and perhaps I will include some gardening adventures too. Why not…in some ways I suppose playing jazz is like gardening. They both involve improvisation at times and they definitely both involve creativity and hopefully if things go accordingly, they both involve a type of beauty for the soul. Right now the horse tails and the wild morning glory may be beautiful to some but I don’t want them in my garden so therefore once my band charts are complete I will go and invite them out of my garden. They remind me of badly sung, out of tune notes or bad chord choices for a tune. I’ll have none of that in my musical garden thank you very much. On the other hand, sometimes note mistakes lead to a new musical idea. Hmmm, I will have to ponder on that one for awhile as I consider trombone and voice combinations.

Karin