The Twilight Tour: Chelsea McBride’s Socialist Night School comes to Moose Jaw
Toronto-based bandleader Chelsea McBride will take her diverse, intergenerational 19-piece contemporary jazz orchestra to 11 cities in 5 provinces for a rare summer tour. The band will be in Moose Jaw on Wednesday, June 20 at the Moose Jaw Cultural Center at 8:00pm for a night of ‘Back2Back Jazz’.
Chelsea McBride’s Socialist Night School is a prolific Toronto-based big band that is hitting the road for their first-ever cross-Canada tour, and bandleader Chelsea McBride could not be more thrilled to do this tour after six years of hard work.
“I’ve been watching my heroes do this for years now”, McBride says. “Whether it’s Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra a few years back, or Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society also around that time – big bands touring across Canada are a huge endeavour, but not impossible. What makes this project so unique is the fact that we aren’t just a band of old pros.”
This Vancouver-born multi-instrumentalist and composer relocated to Toronto in 2010 in order to make a name for herself. Since then, she has been named one of the country’s top jazz musicians under 35, won the inaugural Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Jazz Artist Award, and received 4 stars in Downbeat Magazine for The Twilight Fall, the album that will take her and the band from Toronto back to her childhood home and to a number of places in between.
The Socialist Night School brings together emerging musicians like McBride and her peers with established pros like Brownman Ali (also the owner of Browntasauras Records, to which the Socialist Night School is signed), Colleen Allen, and William Carn. There is, McBride confirms, almost a 40-year age gap between the youngest and oldest members of the band. “It’s magic, though”, she adds. “What we learn from being able to play with our mentors transcends a lot of what my peers and I have learned through school. It teaches us to listen in totally different ways.”
The Socialist Night School’s expansive palette of musical images takes you on a nostalgic journey through your childhood dreams, the growing pains of your early adulthood, and the peace of mind that comes with finding who you are. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, The Twilight Tour takes you for a ride...but always brings you home. You can listen to The Twilight Fall here: http://crymmusic.bandcamp.com/album/thetwilight-fall. Get tickets to the show in Moose Jaw at http://www.moosejawculture.ca/ or Moose Jaw Cultural Center’s box office at 217 Main St. N.