ECLECTIC ENERGY
McDade mixes it up
Where: Yardbird Suite YEG Showcase (86 Avenue at Gateway Boulevard) When: 8 p.m., Thursday, Jan.25 Tickets: $11 EJS members,
$15 for guests Lots of fine musicians find what they do best and stick with that. Then there’s Jeremiah McDade, who seems to swing so easily between different instruments, styles and genres of music, you might start wondering if the guy has split-personality syndrome.
“Sometimes I’m able to cross over and mix things up,” he explains, “maybe more with The McDades. But often the style is very specific. It depends on what the particular project involves.”
An upcoming concert with the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra will be “a very set thing,” but he just finished backing up champion fiddler Daniel Gervais on guitar, which meant “playing old-time fiddle music in a very specific style.”
The music man still uses a 514 area code phone number thanks to past associations with the city of Montreal, and he still splits his time a bit between here and there, but as Edmonton has become increasingly fruitful for his solo career, he has made it his home base again for the past three years.
What’s he playing? At the next YEG Thursday Showcase, McDade will be leading a jazz quintet of stellar contemporaries on his tenor sax, but he plays soprano sax, too.
As part of the Celtic-roots mix in the Juno award-winning band The McDades, he’s more likely to handle various whistles or flutes, fiddle or guitar, or add to their vocal harmonies in English or French. Along the way, he was drawn to explore the Armenian double-reed instrument duduk, and more recently an Indian bamboo flute known as the bansuri.
Where will curiosity take him next?
Improvisation of some sort may be the only common elements in the tools McDade plays, and the fluid finesse he brings to the art is frequently remarkable.
“They all involve improvising off them in the style I’m playing, but you certainly can’t call it jazz improvisation,” he says. “It’s about being specific to that instrument or that style.”
He’s used to explaining the breadth of his career to both listeners and players who aren’t familiar with all these activities, and he admits that “musical worlds can be very separate.”
Given the man’s fluid sense for playing in varied contexts, it’s not surprising to learn McDade plans to participate in several separate recordings this year following recent contributions to his bassist-brother Solon McDade’s new album, and another record by urban soul singer Nuela Charles.
On stage, you might have seen him in the Yardbird Allstars’ November tribute to Thelonious Monk, or in the McDade family’s popular annual Christmas concert series. He’s also playing in the much-anticipated Edmonton Jazz Orchestra date with New York composer Maria Schneider on Jan. 31 at MacEwan University’s new Triffo Theatre.
“I guess I haven’t put a lot of emphasis promoting myself as a jazz artist, even though I do have a lot of jazz shows, usually with other people, different big bands and recording projects — and playing jazz is something I really love to do. I’m just starting to focus on the jazz angle a bit more to record a jazz album this year, but there are still other projects on the go for my own personal music.”
To that end, he’s doing more composing in past months. When he has time, McDade’s listening taste is also very diverse, delving into different eras of jazz, Celtic and global traditions including Arabic artists. Beyond specific playing situations, he has “the most fun” with the tenor sax.
“It’s a very flexible instrument. Some other instruments are fun to play, but they’re more limited in what you can do with them, like an Irish whistle. I don’t know that there is one type of music that I like playing the most. Maybe it’s even the diversity of doing a big band gig one night and a traditional Celtic show the next — that’s what keeps it enjoyable.”
His YEG Showcase will feature a set of new original compositions, some hard-bop jazz classics that highlight the possibilities of multiple horns and probably a few numbers by one or two of his colleagues on the date: trombonist Audrey Ochoa, pianist Chris Andrew, bassist Rubim DeToledo and drummer Jamie Cooper.
Many fans will already be familiar with the lineage that fostered McDade’s talents, starting with his father, Terry McDade, a selfdescribed “guitarist gone bad” and fixture of Edmonton’s roots music scene who has now taken the harp into jazzy territory. It’s from the family’s enduring performance history and the formation of The McDades (co-led by his brother Solon McDade and sister Shannon Johnson), that audiences have witnessed these players fronting the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, smaller ensembles and further collaborations.
Experiencing such a musical milieu probably guaranteed that this youngest McDade was destined to make music simply by osmosis, absorbing what was going on around him as a kid.
“Growing up, there was a lot of music in the house and a good variety of music, too. Not a lot of jazz going on — I got that more at college — but there were a lot of instruments just sitting around, so instead of watching TV, I would pick up a new instrument and try to learn how to play it.”
Over the years, touring festivals have had an important impact on his awareness of global music traditions. So did living in Montreal for much of a decade.
“Playing a lot of folk festivals, I met musicians from all over the world and saw Indian classical music or Arabic music for the first time,” he says. “Some other interests took off in Montreal because it has such a diversity. If you’re checking things out, there are endless possibilities of people to play with from all over the world.”
He also enjoyed a formal musical education with individual teachers on certain instruments plus two college stints: his diploma from MacEwan in 1998, and graduating from the jazz performance program at Montreal’s McGill University with distinction in 2004.
Still in his 30s, McDade may just be hitting his stride. “I feel like it’s not enough, but I’ll keep trying.”
For 2018, another recording and more touring with The McDades is in the offing, but on top of that he’s working on two solo projects — his jazz debut and a separate globalfolk recording.