TEACHING JAZZ IMPROV
Sax player serves as a mentor
Ever wondered how you can teach something that’s supposed to happen out of thin air?
That’s the question often posed to those who sketch out the path to playing jazz music. In truth, no one can teach you how to be a great artist at anything, but mentors can light the way.
By the time you read this, the JazzWorks Non-Competitive Band Festival (Feb. 7-9) will already be in progress. For over a decade, the series of music clinics run with help from the Edmonton Jazz Festival Society has done its best to inspire school-age musicians in ensemble jazz.
Several experienced Edmonton player-mentors help lead the clinics this year: Robert Walsh and Jeremiah McDade are still based here, while Jeff Antoniuk and Dean McNeill are returning home to connect with the students, friends and family.
Saxophonist Antoniuk, here to play Saturday, recently offered some insights on the teaching experience.
“With jazz, the central component for most musicians is improvising. We make stuff up on the fly, and that’s such a scary thing for most people. It was for me after ... classical training. So the day someone says stand up and make up a solo, that can give you a heart attack. For those who love jazz, that’s the best part, because you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Antoniuk has been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, first for his education (including a master’s degree from North Texas State), more recently as a teacher and freelance musician. Based in Annapolis, Md., he also benefits from proximity to Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
As a kid, his father’s work took the family to Nigeria for two years, while he was in Grades 3 and 4. While Antoniuk can’t say exactly what he absorbed musically, the experience did prompt him to take ethnomusicology later.
Today, his presence on YouTube includes a popular video series called Digging Deeper, geared to adult amateur musicians. Antoniuk has also made several recordings and works in a couple of groups regularly.
The reedman’s approach to teaching draws first from that basic analogy about jazz improvising.
“I believe all human beings are wired to improvise just like you and I are improvising right now in this conversation, even though we haven’t talked in over a decade. We have to agree on the language, then we have to agree on the topic, or maybe a particular song. Then you get to work on this fantastic repertoire that has been left to us over the last 100 years. We’re built to improvise.”
Antoniuk co-leads a quartet Saturday with guitarist Jim Head, an old friend from his first day of the music program at MacEwan (then college, now university) well over 20 years ago. With a couple of recordings of his own, Head now happens to be section head for guitar at MacEwan.
Using that familiar language, they will be meeting up with bassist Josh McHan and drummer Jamie Cooper at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Yardbird Suite (86 Avenue at Gateway Boulevard). Tickets are $22 for members, $26 for guests.
SCHNEIDER, SNARKY PUPPY
Along with players Al Jacobson, Jeremiah McDade and bandleader Kent Sangster, Head was one of a dozen soloists to really shine when the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra met up with visiting guest composer Maria Schneider on Jan. 31. The marvellous concert, dedicated to the late Tommy Banks, was also in part a christening of MacEwan’s lovely new Triffo Theatre.
Sangster also doubles as director of the Edmonton International Jazz Festival and was happy to make an early announcement. The festival will host one of the most popular young large jazz bands, the Brooklyn-based Grammy-winning group Snarky Puppy.
The band brings rock and funk angles into the mix, usually running with a dozen or more players to their adventurous sound. The band is booked to perform at the Winspear Centre on June 25.
Tickets are available now for Snarky Puppy. Look for further lineup details soon on the 2018 jazz fest, set to run June 22 to July 1.
Speaking of New York, one of the star soloists in the Maria Schneider Orchestra is saxophonist Donny McCaslin, whose own band was a rocking highlight of last summer’s jazz festival here. McCaslin is back in Edmonton with his quartet Thursday, March 8, at the Yardbird Suite.
Other highlights of the upcoming season at the Yardbird include a rare date with trumpeter Charles Tolliver on Feb. 23, saxophonist Uri Gurvich and his quartet March 3, a new CD release from drummer Sandro Dominelli and his trio March 9, and a duo with guitarist Nels Cline (from the band Wilco) and drummer Scott Amendola on March 17. See yardbirdsuite.com for full details.
TOMMY BANKS MEMORIAL
On behalf of the Banks family, the Winspear Centre will open for a special memorial to celebrate the life and legacy of Tommy Banks on Feb. 14, at 7 p.m.