François Bourassa—now with ten albums of original music under his belt—has become an ambassador for Canada’s thriving jazz community at an international level. A paragon of consistency and evolution, he continues to open new horizons for himself, his colleagues, and his growing community of listeners. Bourassa’s talent was initially recognized by the Festival international de jazz de Montréal in 1985. Performing and recording with his quartet since the mid‑1990s, Bourassa has been a staple of Montreal’s artistic landscape and has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. In addition to his work with his quartet, Bourassa’s artistic projects include the award‑winning albums Autour de Bill Evans and En Trois Couleurs, as well musical works composed for vibraphone, marimba, and symphony orchestra for Marie‑Josée Simard. He has also guested with Rémi Bolduc, Yannick Rieu, Tim Brady, and Montreal’s Orchestre National de Jazz. The pith of music is in the silences. People tend to overlook the importance of silence but, when used wisely, it can be moving and poetic. Silence has a powerful impact on listeners. Oscillating between raucous and introspective, François Bourassa's latest collection of piano pieces is a musical adventure that combines jazz, improvisation, lyricism, and abstraction with integrity and emotion as the central themes.
There is nuance in the everyday; in its layers of love, joy, and hurt, and in its emotional currents ever present. Erin Propp and Larry Roy reach into the everyday and blur the edges, creating works that are at once deeply personal and achingly relatable. These are songs that take it all in, that read between the lines, that hear the subtext, that feel it, that say it out loud. Their music rings true with nuance and power, with rare clarity and precision. Their musical abilities are tools of exacting expression, expertly honed. They reach in to resonate; calling the listener inside, sounding the overtones of our shared experience. Erin and Larry’s debut album Courage, My Love (2012), was met with praise and acclaim. The recording won Best Jazz Album of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards (2013), and a JUNO nomination in the category of Vocal Jazz Album of the Year (2014). Erin and Larry can do it all, from charming intimate jazz club sets, to moving concert hall performances, and key arts organizations have taken note. Erin and Larry have performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, and have opened for Gretchen Parlato at the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival.
CODE Quartet is a collective based out of Montreal. Formed four years ago by Christine Jensen on saxophones, Lex French on trumpet, Adrian Vedady on acoustic bass, and Jim Doxas on drums, the group came together with the equal goals of composing and improvising in a chordless-quartet setting. The primary motivation for the formation of the group has been to build on the freedom of expression pioneered by Ornette Coleman’s seminal group of the 1950s, with two horns interacting with acoustic bass and drums. They prioritize the idea that each voice within the collective is given equal weight, blurring the boundaries between lead and supporting voices, between frontline instruments and the rhythm section. The group have spent the past three years sculpting their original compositions as a team, leading them to some exciting performance opportunities. Over the past four years, they have performed residencies at jazz clubs in Montreal as well as The Wellington Jazz festival in New Zealand in June 2019. The group’s principal focus is to present original compositions, orchestrated exclusively for this particular ensemble, weighing heavily on their improvisatory reactions to the written material. The result is their album Genealogy.
Speaking Hands is the sophomore release by the globe-trotting percussionist/composer Curtis Andrews. Released more than 10 years since his award-winning eponymous debut, Speaking Hands features his Vancouver-based ensemble The Offering of Curtis Andrews, and guests from across Canada (via South India), down to California, over to urban South Africa, and up to rural Ghana. Andrews once claimed he didn’t see the point of recording music anymore, but the inspiration for new compositions became too strong to ignore, and the results were too interesting not to share. The resultant album is rich in rhythmic exploration, modal and raga-based melodies, and some truly virtuosic performances. Though recorded on the cusp of and during the 2020 pandemic, this is far from a “COVID record”. The seeds were sown over the past 11 years of travel, study, collaboration, and exploration, both abroad and at home, within and without. The compositions are reflective of the various sounds, aesthetics, and influences that Andrews gravitates towards with an open heart and mind: the intertwined rhythms and polyphonies of vodu-derived traditional music West Africa, the micro and macrocosmic play of time and pitch found in Carnatic traditions of South India, the open field of improvisation, and the intersection of all of these as one cohesive and original sound. It a place where korvais intermingle with the timeline of the gakogui. Andrews has been dwelling in these musical (and physical worlds) for the past 20 years, through deep engagement and study with communities and master musicians. As such, his music is a natural extension of these experiences.Of special note is the presence of world-renowned South Indian master drummer Dr. Trichy Sankaran. Andrews is honored and humbled to have his guru of more than 20 years join the ensemble on 4 pieces, including one piece that Sankaran composed especially for the group. While COVID restrictions may have closed some doors, it allowed for unplanned collaborations, leading Andrews to recruit some friends from distant locales including: bassist Sandile Jwaii (Cape Town) ; bansuri and alto sax from Neelamjit Dhillon (Los Angeles via Coquitlam); South Indian violinist Kaushik Sivaramakrishan (Edmonton via Chennai), and vibraphonist Mark Duggan (Halifax via Toronto). Making a cameo appearance are drummers from the village of Dzogadze (Ghana), a community Andrews has been visiting since 1999. The album’s title is drawn from the tune “The Speaking Hand”, itself inspired by Andrews’ own practice and play of the mridangam, the major percussion instrument of Carnatic music. The repertoire of the mridangam is taught and conceived of in a special rhythmic language known as solkattu. It is the voice that gives rise to rhythm before the instrument does. Thus, the hands “speak” what the voice (mind) creates. In the course of practice and play, ideas also arise from the hands themselves, opening up new vistas for creation.
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