All that jazz
Heartfelt Afternoon Jazz enjoyed at the Grace Jollymore Joyce Arts Centre
Musicians put audience in a relaxed mood.
If jazz is the voice of freedom then a relaxed audience was treated to a moving concert of pure musical freedom by guitarists Mike Rud and Amy Brandon .
The event was held recently at the Grace Jollymore Joyce Arts Centre in Tatamagouche.
As fan Emily Frith and self-described music doodler put it, “It is easy to see that they both know that music expresses emotion; it is the language of emotion and they get that.”
Mike Rud, who currently lives in Montreal, was 11 years old when he first picked up a guitar and by the time he was 18 he was playing jazz.
In 1995 he studied in New York City under legendary jazz guitarist Jim Hall and since then has performed all over Canada including at the Vancouver Jazz Festival and the Festival de Jazz de Montreal.
Rud performed selections from his Juno award winning CD Notes on Montreal, which is influenced by the characters he came across in cafes and in literature
set in Montreal.
“I was inspired by writers such as Mordecai Richler and Michel Tremblay who created tableau of life in the city,” he said.
In the second part of his set,
Rud played cool jazz standards from his CD Miniatures. The audience was treated to such classics as Nature Boy, September Song and Laura.
Rud said of Amy Brandon, she “created a whole language of her own as a composer” and that by listening to her, “you are getting in on the ground floor of something great.”
Drawing on jazz, classical and experimental music Brandon creates landscapes of sound with her guitar.
“My music is based on images and I am trying to translate these images through sound,” she said.
The Syrian refugee crisis and the people who are playing games with the lives of others inspired her composition War Games.
“I try to elicit emotion,” she said, adding, “the purpose of music is to make you feel something.”
Local guitarist Noah Barrett said of the concert: “You can tell the years and time these musicians put into learning this.”
He’s right about that. Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in a few weeks but it can remind us of where we fit on the timeline of human achievement and that may be its ultimate value.
Upcoming events at the Grace Jollymore Joyce Arts Centre may be found on their website: artscreamerysquare.ca.