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August 2006

I just returned from performing the “Jazz On The Rocks” jazz festival on Texada Island. What a beautiful place and what wonderful people! It is a long haul to get there from Vancouver what with 3 ferries and highway driving in addition to that but once you get there it is absolutely worth it. It is so beautiful there! I performed at the festival with my trombone based band which this time included a few guys who are not normally in the band since my regular guys weren’t all available. This was a great combination because musically we gelled and personality-wise everyone clicked as well. It made for a wonderful weekend. The band included my husband Lou Mastroianni on piano, Dennis Esson on trombone, Doug Stephenson on bass and Elliot Polsky on drums. I loved singing with these guys! Now that I have done a number of gigs with this band, Dennis and I seem to have found a comfortable groove together as well. It takes time to figure out somebody’s sound and somebody’s approach to pieces and I think we have it now. That came more naturally when I sang with Rod Murray last year but I believe everyone is simply different and if you keep open ears and an open mind as well, chances are you will find that common ground where the music can really start happening. That’s what I think occurred with Dennis and myself this past weekend. Dennis played great and he seemed to really pick up on what I was going for in some of the arrangements. So…now I have two fantastic trombonists to work with when the “trombone fever” hits me and I decide to book this configuration.

In July following our Vancouver jazz festival I started doing research on the lives and music of six influential vocalists from the swing era for a new concert program that I am presenting for the first time this coming fall. The six vocalists include Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Anita O’Day and Peggy Lee. It’s been fascinating listening to all the audio recordings that I have of these artists plus watching as much concert footage as I can find on DVD’s and videos. I’ve also been reading several books written about each of the singers’ lives and that has been very interesting as well. I’ve always enjoyed reading about jazz musicians lives but this time I am doing the research with a greater purpose in mind. I believe that the more I understand about the lives these artists have led (or are leading as in the case of Anita O’Day who is still alive and well), the better I will be able to sing a program of some of the music they recorded and performed. Perhaps I simply owe it to the memory of these great vocalists to develop a better and deeper understanding about their lives and their music. One of the amazing things I have come to realize with these vocalists is that each recorded a truly vast array of music. The discography lists for each are enormous!! That was the pop music of their day and they were constantly being recorded or appearing on television shows or acting in films. Their bodies of work are truly remarkable and isn’t that a great thing? Their music lives on and they continue to inspire and motivate vocalists of today. I’m at the stage where I have now accumulated some deeper knowledge of each of the artists and now will come the difficult task of deciding which tunes I will include in “With A Song In My Heart”; the name of my tribute concert. For one program to include some of the music from each of these six vocalists probably means I will only get to do about two or at the most three tunes in tribute to each of the singers otherwise the audience will be there all night long. So that is my next task this month; to finish reading about these fascinating lives and to determine what the final tribute program will be.

There are some nice gigs coming up this month including a festival appearance with Phil Dwyer at Qualicum Beach in the middle of the month. The festival is called FESTIVAL IN THE GARDEN and is presented by Milner Gardens on Vancouver Island. For me that will be something special to take part in as I will be singing with an all-star big band led by the starman himself, Phil Dwyer. I adore Phil and his remarkable musicianship skills. He is a triple threat actually; he’s a brilliant pianist, saxophonist and composer/arranger. Perhaps that makes him a quadruple threat since composing and arranging are two separate entities. I hope to do a good job singing with band. This will be the 3rd or 4th year that the festival has taken place. I believe that Phil started the first one the year that he moved back here from Toronto. I do have some work to do in preparing for this performance. The pieces that I will be singing have specific arrangements and in several cases are different than the way I usually sing the songs. Some of them I have sung last fall but that seems so long ago now and I have forgotten many things that will occur in the arrangements. So perhaps it is time that I stop doing research on the singers I will be singing a tribute to in the fall and begin to do my homework on the songs that this singer; MOI will be doing later this month.

“Time marches on." I mentioned to my Dad the other day as we spoke on the phone that I couldn’t believe that August is here and that was his response to me. I was reminded how I like that little saying. It is true all too often that time really does march on but as I have stated in my previous postings I don’t want to see time as my enemy. I simply want to use time as efficiently as I can and sometimes that simply means enjoying my time and not working.

So far this summer I have been about half and half; lots of work and some play. Now that my shoulder is healing I have been back on my bike and running again as well so I am very happy about that. So far summer 2006 is great…I suppose I could gripe about all the mosquito bites I got on Texada Island but that would ruin my image of a perfectly wonderful summer and why do that? I love summer, mosquitoes or not!

Karin