Massey Hall and Me: A short travelogue

On my recent trip to Canada, I happened to run across the famous jazz (and other music) venue of Massey Hall, on the east side of downtown Toronto. It happened entirely by accident:

On the fourth day of our eight-day trip, my brother-in-law-in-law took ill and was basically laid up, leaving everyone else in our group to our own devices. With all the ladies, including the dear Mrs. S. going to an Il Divo concert that night, I was by myself. I decided to scare up some grub and set out in search of a bottle of good red wine and some schwarma, enough for me and my brother-ilil. (I can't get schwarma around where I live, and I figured it would be a slam dunk in a multi-ethnic big city like Toronto; plus I had seen some earlier in the day.) Due to some bad directions from the front desk personnel of our hotel, probably because they didn't know what schwarma was, I ended up at Eaton Center, which was okay, because I found a Liquor Control Board store and picked up a wonderful Niagara region baco noir. And if you've ever bought liquor in Canada, you'll understand this next part, where due to the store exit being completely different from the entrance (in this case, not even on the same floor), I got turned around inside Eaton Centre and when I finally got outside, I was lost. The good thing about Toronto though, is, you always know what direction to go in. (See? The CN Tower is good for something.) In a brief frenzy of adventurous spirit, I decided to take a different route back to the hotel.

In very quick order, I ended up in an obviously dodgy neighborhood. There was trash in the streets, and occasionally, people picking at it. A guy walking in front of me picked up what looked like a matchbook, told it a short story, then threw it down and jumped on it before walking off. I decided to turn left instead of walk behind that guy. I wanted to drink my wine, not use it as a weapon of self defense.

And, boom, there it was: Massey Hall. Plain as day. Dark, but the signs were lit. It looked small, like it couldn't be "the" Massey Hall, but it was. Well I'll be damned. Truthfully, I didn't even know it was in Toronto. I looked around for the ghosts of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, and at first I thought I had found them, laying under the upcoming events board, staring off into the distance, waiting for their next solo. Then I realized it was just two bums, hoping for someone to toss them a half-eaten sandwich or a loonie. With no sandwich to offer and wanting to keep my Canadian dollars in case I had to pay off a mugger, I headed around them and down the street that runs alongside the hall. There, I got accosted by a guy who was definitely not a ghost but looked quite spooky nonetheless. He was holding a disgusting brown-stained Styrofoam cup out at me. "Change?" he asked. "Don't change," I said, "I love you just the way you are," and I kept walking.

I made it back to the hotel without further incident, but I never found my schwarma. Got some Mamma's pizza ("Since 1957!") instead.

The picture above was taken the next day, before the bums and real jazz musicians had come out. (Thank you for your compliments on my hat.)

And later (after the photo session), Mrs. S. and I got a beef stuffed pita for lunch at the St. Lawrence Market, which isn't schwarma but was no less satisfying and enjoyable.

Long, quiet weekend

It is hard to get back in the swing of things, practicing, slogging through Hanon, trying to master a stride exercise or two, learning new tunes. It's Memorial Day weekend, a month removed from completion of school, two weeks removed from my vacation to Canada, and completely unmotivated to play the piano. I've been combating the lethargy with listening exercise on my critical listening project, and writing reviews on Amazon.com of some works that I've owned for a while but not reviewed. I'm trying to keep active, since I can only get myself to sit down and play for about an hour a day, but not practice or learn anything new. It's a poor substitute, poorer even than writing about it in my blog. (!)

If you go on Amazon and look at my reviews, PLEASE click on a "yes" or two for whatever you happen to read and enjoy. I would really appreciate the support as it improves my reviewer ranking when you do that. Thanks, readers.

MLK and Jazz

Back from Canada. Interesting place. I'll post a pic of me in front of Massey Hall one of these days.

In the meantime, here's something interesting:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/626.html

Have a jazzy day, everybody!

Finally: Yoity Tot updates

These have been long overdue, so let’s get right to them.

Although I’ve been listening to a lot of different stuff lately, mainly because of having bought a lot of new stuff, there really aren’t any recordings that have been getting steady, consistent play, but Cross Country Tour by Ahmad Jamal comes closest. I just love what he does with his trademark bright chord voicings. Songs like Poinciana and Surrey with the Fringe on Top stick in your mind for hours after hearing Jamal play them. His Billy Boy is reminiscent of Red Garland’s on Milestones, but again, brighter. He does things with Broadway and My Funny Valentine that are just amazing. A great work that is hard to get away from.

My greatest surprise after Jamal has been the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Complete Last Concert. Like many of my “discoveries”, I just can’t believe how long I went before I found them. The vibes with rhythm section had me seriously out looking to purchase a vibraphone. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (they call it “England’s Carol”) is simply phenomenal.

And finally, Mingus, Ah Um. When I don’t know what I want to listen to, this gets pulled down and put into the CD player more often than anything else I own. Just an amazing work and it runs for more than seventy minutes. Great stuff.

Moving off the Yoity Tot list and onto the B-list are Motion by Lee Konitz, Time for Tyner by McCoy Tyner, and The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan. Of course, it goes without saying, there is nothing wrong with any of those great works. They are all three, tremendous recordings. They just aren’t high on my play list right now. What would be the next three to move to the B-list, I have no idea. It was hard enough relegating these three. I’ll worry about that when I find my next Yoity Tot candidate.

The critical listening project

The way I outlined the project was as follows:

"QUOTE"
Critical listening project

Goal: To listen to every CD in my jazz music collection once with minimal distractions and complete attention to the music
Time frame: One year from start date
Start date: May 11, 2009

Methodology: This is a critical listening project. That means I will listen to each CD while doing nothing else, other than making notations in a notebook for my own possible future reference. I'm not sure what my actual CD count is, but at three CD's per week, I should be able to finish within one calendar year. There is no specific order for listening to each CD, however, I will try to listen to sets together with one another. For those CD's that I have not written a review of yet, I will also listen critically with an eye toward writing a review for my Amazon.com profile page. I will also read the complete liner notes for each CD, if I haven't read them already. (For the majority of my collection, I have already read the liner notes.)
"UNQUOTE"

Already this has been altered, in that I don't just sit and listen. (Not to mention the start date; I've already started.) I found that my mind tends to wander too much if I'm just sitting and listening to the music (which is neither here nor there), but I also found I couldn't stand the sense of lost productivity. I have decided, however, that any activity I undertake while listening to music critically will be mundane enough that it doesn't detract from the music. So far, I've done things like clean out my e-mail inbox and organize my sheet music. I think that is fair enough and still in keeping with the spirit of the project. Plus I still keep the notebook handy and make notes as they come to me and as necessary.

This project came about primarily because I have purchased so much music in such a short period of time, that I'm not always completely sure what I have and have not listened to. (I do this at the end of each semester in anticipation of having more time to listen to music because I won't be practicing as much as I am during the semester.) That may be because the music is not that impressive, or it may be that I just haven't learned how to properly listen to jazz yet. Which is at least partly why I decided to undertake this project. That, and, I'm hoping to write a lot more reviews on Amazon.com and makes some additions and changes to the Yoity Tot list. It's a bigger undertaking than it looks on the surface.

That’s that

So, on my way to the concert Friday night, I’m stopped at a yield sign waiting for traffic to let up enough for me to merge. The guy behind me decides it’s let up enough to go ahead and merge. Unfortunately, he completely forgot there was a car in front of him. Mine.

I suppose there are worse things than a traffic accident to take one’s mind off of things and help one lose some of one’s nervousness and settle down before performing in a concert. I calmly got out of the car and honestly, at first I couldn’t see any damage. We looked underneath and around, and all I could see were some vague scrapes where the dirt had some off my car. Me and the perp didn’t even bother to exchange info, as I simply couldn’t see anything wrong and wanted to go back to thinking about the concert.

The concert was standing room only. Literally. The audience was siting on the staircases at the top. I had about ten or twelve supporters of my own there, only one from where I work, the rest colleagues and former colleagues of Mrs. S. Our band played first and we led off with Splanky. I had the first solo and it was really the only time anyone was going to hear me. The rhythm section and I nailed the behind-the-beat opening, played our 24 bars, then I soloed. I dropped in a Pop Goes the Weasel lick halfway through, but otherwise stuck to an unadventurous but nice sounding blues-scale-based line. It received the usual lukewarm opening solo applause. (Later, somebody told me they thought I would be soloing a lot longer, which was why they didn’t clap.)

From that point on, I was home free. The pressure was off. The rest of the concert went well, even if it ended up being a little long.

Fourth ever jazz concert is done and gone. Back to practicing from The Jazz Piano Book and working on technique, plus I’m going to start a new, critical listening project which I will outline in some detail soon. Updates to Yoity Tot are also long overdue.

A bit of a rant

I wrote recently about joining the Jazz Heritage Society in order to plug some holes in my music collection as cheaply as possible. I succeeded nicely in picking up some classics such as Dave Brubeck's Time Out and Miles Davis' Milestones, plus a number of others, generally for around $5 a pop, which I consider reasonable. I have been finding, however, that these pre-internet organizations, especially the ones that have not kept up with the technology and have not established a worthwhile internet presence, really are hard to do business with. Some of them, like the BMG music club, have even had to go out of business. I think the JHS may be close to having to do the same very shortly. Here's why I think that.

First of all, the "printed" materials that came with my introductory shipment were right out of the stone age. You could almost smell the mimeograph solution on the letters. I hadn't seen anything as quaint since seventh grade. The "catalog" they sent was printed on rough, cheap newsprint. It was in color, after a fashion, but looks not unlike those "colorized" black and white movies.

Now, let's be clear: I joined the JHS just to get music cheap. And, I have succeeded in that, so far. But the other shortcomings I'm about to outline are, I think, inexcusable for an organization calling itself a "Heritage Society". First, going back to the internet discussion, I'm inundated, almost daily but easily twice weekly, with "Featured Selections" that I am required to respond to. Some selections that I have declined (in fact, I've declined every one so far), have even returned as featured selections again. Like my mom used to tell us kids when we were growing up, "No means no". I don't understand why the JHS doesn't get something as simple as that and can't make their website operate properly.

Next is the music. Take last week's shipment for example: Miles Davis' Complete In a Silent Way Sessions, and a 10-CD set of Chet Baker. The Miles set was just like the regularly available commercial set, chock full of pictures, information, liner notes, etc. The Chet Baker set, on the other hand, contained NO information about the recordings. None. Zilch. Zippo. Okay, sure, I got ten hours of music for about three bucks a CD, and these were also my first Chet Baker (and Gerry Mulligan) recordings, but, come on! Is it really asking too much to at least have a listing of the musicians playing on each recording? Maybe a blurb about when some of the bigger hits were recorded. I mean, really, isn't this a Jazz Heritage Society recording? What about the "heritage" part. That includes understanding the heritage of the recording, right? Just buying and listening to the music doesn't promote the heritage of jazz, or anything else for that matter.

It is going to be really, really hard to learn anything about the 200+ songs on that 10-CD set. I'm going to have to try, anyway.

My advice to readers is, go ahead and join the JHS for the cheap music, just be prepared to send lots of e-mails and fill in the blanks in your jazz education yourself.