ALBERTA’S MUSIC MAN
Tommy Banks’s remarkable career touched many
As a red hot jazz pianist EDMONTON and internationally acclaimed conductor, Tommy Banks could have lived anywhere. But he loved Edmonton, and here he stayed.
A member of Canada’s Senate for 11 years, Banks, 81, died Thursday in the palliative unit of the Grey Nuns hospital. In a statement, his family said a public service of celebration will be held at a later date.
Since his death, tributes to his life have been coursing through social media and along traditional channels. World famous Los Angeles musician and producer David Foster tweeted, “The world has lost one of the true musical greats tonite, my mentor and dear friend, Senator Tommy Banks. A gentleman and a gentle man.”
Edmonton Singing Christmas Tree producer, band leader and musician David Cameron echoed the sentiment, noting that Banks was “one of the most amazing piano player and musicians that I ever met.”
“He had impeccable ears,” said musician Kent Sangster, the executive and artistic director of the TD Edmonton International Jazz Festival. “He could mimic and play styles extremely well because of that.
“In my capacity as an instructor at MacEwan, I brought him in to do a clinic, a composing class, and he said, ‘I’m not really a composer.’ He brilliantly arranged the music of others and was an idiomatic writer. He could write in the style and was able to provide the proper music at the proper time, whatever the function may be.”
The ability to know exactly what was required musically, and to make it happen, was part of Banks’ success as a musician, and a business person, say colleagues. He created a successful television series out of Edmonton featuring performances by the ultra-famous, including Tom Jones and Tina Turner, decades before Edmonton was known as a cultural hub. In fact, numerous local folks interviewed for this story credit Banks for being a founder of the city’s arts scene. Period.
“One of the things that Tommy is so admired for is his ability to create something where there was nothing before,” said University of Saskatchewan music professor and trumpet player Dean McNeill, who was a student at Grant MacEwan college when Banks was head of the music program there.
“He put the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra on the map as one of the country’s premier pop orchestras of the 1970s. It helped people to know about Alberta in a way they would not otherwise have known.”
McNeill and others spoke of Banks’ contributions to making Edmonton and Alberta a magnet for investment, and for business growth. Banks and his wife, Ida, also invested their own money in the community, owning a booking agency, plus a white-tablecloth restaurant and night club, The Embers, as well as a bookstore for a time. Banks believed that wonderful things could happen in Edmonton, and he made it so.
Trumpet player Harry Pinchin, for 60 years one of Banks’ closest friends, bandmates and musical collaborators, said Banks was often given opportunities to move elsewhere, and to do something amazing there. Here’s what Banks said to those offers, “We’re going to do that, but we’re going to do it here.”
“We were the first people to perform on the air at ITV and launched the concert series that ran in over 100 countries of the world, and that was all Tommy. He was the guy,” said Pinchin. “And I think of that when I think of the early development of the Winspear Centre. He was the guy. Like Gretzky, someday, someone will break those records but at the moment I don’t see another Tommy Banks in this country.”
A precocious musician as a child, Banks began his professional career at 14 in the band of jazz saxophonist Don Thompson. By the age of 18, he was music director of the Orion Musical Theatre in Edmonton, and co-ordinator of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. At age 32, Banks was host, pianist, conductor and arranger for the Gemini Award-winning Tommy Banks Show, which ran until 1974, and again from 1980 to 1983.
In a 2016 interview with Postmedia, Banks credited his parents ( his mother was Edmonton television personality Laura Lindsay) with trusting him enough to let him begin his touring career at a tender age. He remained grateful for the opportunity to entertain audiences locally and around the world for more than 65 years.
“Early on, I had to make the choice of whether to be an artist or a craftsman. I wanted to play music for a living. And every once in a while, craftspeople get to practise ... art.”
He passed his craft, his art, on to his family, too. His granddaughter, Mallory Chipman, 23, is a jazz singer and instructor at MacEwan University. She says that while her grandfather was a huge supporter, he never pushed her until she had made up her own mind to pursue a career in music.
“It was special, because we had this family relationship, but also a professional and musical relationship,” says Chipman. “And as somebody who was obviously a very busy person and travelled the world doing what he loved so passionately, he also made so much time for family, always coming to my brother’s hockey games, to dinners at our go-to restaurants, the Bistro Praha and the Lingnan.”
Chipman sat beside her grandfather on the piano bench for the family’s yearly carolling tradition. He was her accompanist when she sang at the Kiwanis Festival as a little girl.
“People in the audience would be saying, ‘Is that Tommy Banks?’ But I never even thought about that. He was my grandpa.”
Born in Calgary, Banks was a passionate Edmontonian, volunteering large amounts of time to local musical projects, such as the Edmonton Concert Hall Foundation, which raised funds for the Winspear Centre, acting as its chair from 1989 to 1991. In gratitude, the city named a street after him, Tommy Banks Way, located near the Yardbird Suite jazz club, which he founded in 1957, and where he performed countless times.
As a founding member of the Alberta Foundation for the Performing Arts, Banks toiled to ensure promising local musicians received exposure across the country. He is remembered as a band leader who paid his people well, and on time, and made sure they had comfortable accommodation on the road.
Several people interviewed spoke of the way Banks “held himself.” In this, they meant he had a presence, and integrity.
“He would walk in a room and take it over in a good way,” recalls McNeill. “He’d say, ‘This is the way we are going to do things,’ but the way in which it would be done would be of benefit to everyone.”
McNeill recalls being a young musician who began adjudicating music festivals alongside Banks, and this made him very nervous. He recalls being given a small per diem for meals, and finding himself at breakfast one morning with Banks and other musical leaders.
“Tommy said, ‘Dean, you pick up the bill for breakfast.’ But then when supper came around, he’d say ‘I’ll get the bill.’ So I’d pick up the $30 breakfast, and he’d get the $300 dinner. It was emblematic of the way he would do things.”
One of Banks’ fans was Humberto Capriz, 55, an Italian immigrant who heard Banks play about 10 years ago at the Sutton Place Hotel. Not knowing he was famous, Capriz approached Banks afterward to express his gratitude for the music, and then saw him regularly in clubs thereafter. He says Banks (who later was honorary judge at Capriz’s citizenship ceremony) never talked about his accomplishments, but rather went out of his way to make Capriz feel that he had a place in Canada, and would do wonderful things here.
“I have lived in many cities but this is a great city with great people, and Tommy Banks always made me feel welcome and like there was opportunity for you here.”
A member of the Edmonton Hall of Fame, Banks won numerous, major musical and cultural awards in Canada, including a Juno and a Gemini, and worked with international celebrities from Aretha Franklin to Tony Bennett.
Banks was involved in many aspects of the cultural sector. He provided musical direction for the 1978 Commonwealth Games, Expo 86, the World University Games and the 1988 Olympic Winter Games. He produced and conducted command performances for numerous prestigious guests, including U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Queen Elizabeth II. A member of the Canada Council from 1989 to 1995, Banks was an officer of the Order of Canada.
Diagnosed with leukemia in September, Banks was still on the road and playing professional gigs well into the fall. He is survived by his wife, Ida, described by granddaughter Mallory Chipman as “the light of his life.” The Banks had three children, Jill (who is married to Kevin Chipman), Tom Junior, and Toby, who died in 2001, and four grandchildren, Mallory, Matthew, Thomas and Jenna.
I have lived in many cities ... Tommy Banks always made me feel welcome and like there was opportunity for you here.