What: Chris Potter’s Underground
When: Tuesday, June 30th at 9PM (Today!) (Monday’s show reviewed below)
Where: The Pilot at 22 Cumberland between Bay and Yonge (Map)
Tickets: $28 at the door – arrive early as seating is limited and first come first serve. Doors open at 8PM. Dinner is available at the Pilot.

(See end of Review for more Chris Potter listings for this week on Tuesday and Friday)

Starting at 9PM and finishing up at around midnight, Chris Potter’s Underground wowed the audience from start to finish at the intimate Pilot setting this evening, with two great sets of serious head-bopping, jiving music, that held your attention throughout, accessible to the jazz neophyte and a real delight for the jazz fan. The band played both original music off Potter’s albums and interpretations of other musicians’ work.

Chris Potter is a musician’s musician – about half the audience was music students from York, Humber, and UofT – he takes any piece and turns it on its head in so many different ways that make you listen and watch in anticipation, constantly engaged. His albums are good, but his performance here was stellar. I spent the whole concert bopping my head, swinging my shoulders, tapping my foot, tapping my hands, and at the apex moments, finding myself doing all of the above at once without thinking about it. It was a heck of a lot of fun and a heck of a good show.

Chris Potter’s Underground – with Adam Rogers on guitar, Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes, Nate Smith on drums, and Potter on alto sax, soprano sax, and bass clarinet -played original tunes like the title song from “Underground” and Potter’s new album “Ultrahang”, new never-before played compositions like “Flight to Oslo”, old standards like Duke Ellington’s “Single Petal of a Rose”, and unexpected oldies with seriously imaginative turns like their melodic, swingy ballad of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe”.

What made the show great was not just the quality of the playing or the selection of the music, but the tightness of the band, the seamless transitions, and the incredible variations on the melody. While most jazz concerts follow the same old pattern of melody, sax solo, guitar solo, drum solo, keyboard solo, back to melody, and then new song and repeat, Underground has a new and exciting way of approaching performance, which is strong and engaging. However, it does get a little repetitive in nature by the nth song. (more…)

Join the Shuffle Demons and the TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival on Canada Day at Nathan Phillips Square and help set a new Guinness World Record for the largest saxophone ensemble.  All professional and amateur saxophonists are welcome. Let’s honk our way back into the record books!

On October 18, 2008 Taiwan attempted a world record with 918 saxophonists; the Shuffle Demons were the previous record holders five years ago at 900. Show that patriotic pride at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, July 1 as the Shuffle Demons try to better all previous attempts and bring the world record officially back to Canada.  Led by the Shuffle Demons, saxophonists will play a five minute rendition of O Canada.

To avoid disqualification, ONLY SAXOPHONES will be participating in this world record breaking attempt.  Regardless of skill level, experience and age, all saxophonists are welcome to participate.

Registration is free and available online at www.torontojazz.com; participants will also be able to register on the day of the event starting at 12 p.m. at Nathan Phillips Square.

Sheet music as well as music samples of the national anthem are available for download at www.torontojazz.com.

The Shuffle Demons celebrate their 25th anniversary this summer with a special reunion tour across Canada.  Capturing the imagination of a generation with their crazy, zany, enthusiastic spirit and number one hit, Spadina Bus, there is still nobody else like them. Do not miss the return of the Shuffle Demons!

The sounds of jazz will have feet tappin’ and fingers snappin’ as the 23rd edition of the TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival swings its way into summer, running from June 26 to July 5, 2009.  Be a part of the action as more than 1,500 musicians, performing in over 350 concerts, descend upon Toronto for the city’s largest music festival. Get jazzed this summer!

Departures is a new Japanese film about a man, Daigo, whose dream to be a concert cellist fails because he lacks the necessary talent, and so is forced to make other plans. He moves from Tokyo back home to a small town, where news seems to travel surprisingly slowly. Untrained in any profession other than music, he answers a classified ad in the newspaper for a job in “departures”, thinking he is applying to work at a travel agency, only to discover it was a misprint and a job about “the departed”. The job interview lasts 2 minutes; the interviewer asks Daigo if he will work hard, Daigo responds “yes, sir!”, the interviewer tells him he’s hired and hands him a pile of cash. When Daigo discovers the job deals with dead people, he is hesitant, having never seen a corpse before or had to deal with death. Nevertheless, upon discovering how well it pays, Daigo decides to accept the job.

And so Daigo enters a world of ritual for the dead, performed for the living. His job consists of carefully cleaning the bodies of the dead discretely in front of the family, safeguarding family members from the sight of skin, in order to prepare the body for the coffin.

The beginning of Daigo’s dalliances with “the Departed” is filled with a lot of good humour. On the first day of his job, Daigo participates in a promotional video; he has to wear a diaper, have a powdered white face, and must play a corpse. His first encounter with a dead person involves finding a woman in an apartment filled with bugs and the strong stench of her decaying body. Sad, disgusting, and for Daigo, incredibly shocking events are happening, but they are shot with such light humour that we can’t help but laugh at Daigo’s confusion and initiation. When he is no longer a neophyte, he still encounters new and bumpy ground, including discovering, in the middle of the ceremony, that the person he was preparing, who looked like a woman, happens to have a penis. These scenes are genuinely funny and a whole lot of fun; they are also dealt with in a delicate, caring fashion so that we are not laughing cruelly or poking fun at this ritual. We experience the same amusement as the other characters in the film. (more…)

What: The Toronto Jazz Festival
Where: Mainstage at Nathan Phillips Square, other concerts at the   Four Seasons Centre, the Rex, the Old Mill, Supermarket, The Pilot, and more
When: June 26-July 5th
More Info: http://www.tojazz.com/

Here you can find BlogUT’s picks for the must-see shows at this year’s festival. Check back for updates with reviews and festival coverage as the festival progresses.

Friday, June 26th @ 8PM (reserved seating) : Sonny Rollins at the Four Seasons Centre
The epitome of cool, even at age 79, the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins graces the stage at the beautiful Four Seasons Centre concert hall, for what should be an amazing show. He’s been making it out to Toronto every two years or so, with reasonable consistency, and I haven’t missed a show yet. His albums are amazing, but nothing rivals the sheer energy he brings to his live shows, which make you want to tap your foot, swing your shoulders, and maybe even get up to dance.

Monday, June 29th & Tuesday, June 30th @ 9PM: Chris Potter’s Underground at the Pilot
Tickets: $28 from Ticketmaster (buy online to be safe!), general admission seating

Saxophonist Chris Potter has been taking the jazz world by storm, with his great performances and innovative playing. His recordings are good, seen live he’s much better. A must see at the Festival.

Wednesday, July 1st @ 8PM : Dave Brubeck Quartet and Brandi Disterheft at Nathan Phillips Square
Tickets: $55 from Ticketmaster, general admission seating outdoors

Up-and-coming bassist and composer Brandi Disterheft and her group open for one of the great jazzmasters, Dave Brubeck. He’s not walking or talking too much, but boy can he ever play. Brubeck brought us such great hits as “Take Five” and “Crepuscule for Nellie”, always playing with uncommon and tough time signatures and timing in his music. Brubeck was at the festival last year, too. See BlogUT’s coverage of his performance.

Friday, July 3rd @ 8PM: Branford Marsalis and Dave Holland at Nathan Phillips Square
Tickets: $40 from Ticketmaster, general admission seating outdoors

Two great musicians in one night. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis (one of the best ones out there) and prog jazz bassist Dave Holland each perform with their respective groups, for what looks to be one of the greatest highlights of the festival. I believe this is Marsalis’s first appearance in Toronto in years, the last time being a small club concert at Top of the Senator, back when it was still around, when he gave a stellar performance. I saw Dave Holland (with Chris Potter, actually) play the prog jazz fest in Toronto several years back and it was fabulous.

Saturday, July 4th @ 8PM: Eliane Elias at Nathan Phillips Square
Tickets: $35 from Ticketmaster, general admission seating outdoors

She sings, she plays the piano, she composes, and she’s darn good at it, too. This show might be slightly more under-the-radar, but it’s definitely worth checking out. I saw her perform in NYC a few years back and it was a great performance.

There is something insurmountably flawed about a cinema verité documentary shot by a female director about and taking place primarily in an all-boys school. Any woman would stick out like a sore thumb, especially one with a video camera and a big boom. How can we possibly trust that what we see unfold on screen is anything but fake or staged, when there is no possible way for the film to be shot unobtrusively in order to ensure that the scenes are purely authentic. At times, When We Were Boys seems horribly stiff and forced; it would be nearly impossible for director Sarah Goodman to maintain the necessary status of fly-on-the-wall in such a situation. If you can’t just take my word for it, take it from my own personal experience. I spent my formative junior high and high schools years at an all-girls institution. And believe me, if a foreign male entered the school grounds, even a 300-pound pock-faced man, everyone would know.

When We Were Boys follows boys at Toronto’s Royal St. George’s College as they progress from grade 8 to grade 10. In particular, we follow Noah, an extremely handsome young St. George’s student, who hails from one of the richest families in the school. His classmates bully him because of his wealth, not physically but with words, calling him “mastercard” or by borrowing money from him which they never intend to repay. Yes, we get it, poor little rich boy.

If you look for the clichéd in a story, it’s almost always possible to find it, especially in a high school documentary. Last year’s documentary hit about high school kids, American Teen, also fell to the same fate: searching for the clichéd, finding it, and lacking any form of insight that one might have hoped for from a documentary about high school kids instead of a fantasy film à la John Hughes (Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, etc). Goodman looks for the clichéd and she finds it. In grade 8, Noah sings soprano in the school choir; by grade 10 he’s become an alto. Shocker: his voice dropped after puberty. The boys read Lord of the Flies in English class and are treated to lectures by their teachers about how the cruelty towards Piggie isn’t so far off from reality; Goodman tries to parallel this with events in the boys’ lives. (more…)

 

Ascension is a very peculiar, occasionally fascinating, but ultimately not very illuminating, 49-minute montage of archival footage from the Soviet Space Program. The documentary is inexplicably mixed with footage from China during Mao’s reign and various television/film sequences from around the era, compiled in such a fashion to reduce it to a VHS-quality print.

At times the footage shows unexpected insights, as we watch, for example, dogs and chimpanzees get strapped into the vomit comet and spin around in circles, hooked up to an EEG while scientists also monitor the vitals of the animals. Of course, it should not be a huge surprise that such tests took place; after all, we’ve seen the same ones carried out on humans in Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, yet the footage of Laika and some chimpanzees undergoing these very same tests still comes as a bit of a shock, but an interesting, if not somewhat torturous (the poor animals!) sight to behold. There is one shocking scene in which a rocket is launched just metres away from a group of people, which, unsurprisingly to us, now, did not end well.
(more…)

When: April 15th, 2009, 9:00-19:00
Where: Bahen Centre, 40 St. George St., University of Toronto
What: Check out the Engineering Science student projects on how to improve the TTC: making the “better way” better.
Contact: For questions about the event: 416-978-8634

From the Event website:

The Division of Engineering Science in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering would like to invite you to the 2009 Praxis II Design Showcase.  The Praxis courses in Engineering Science provide our students with the opportunity to apply their engineering and design skills to challenges ranging in scope from the personal to the global.  Praxis II targets local challenges, and the 2009 version of the course focuses on the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) system.

Last year’s showcase produced fascinating designs for solving issues with the accessibility of automated entrances, the safety of passengers boarding and disembarking streetcars, and subway surface access points, among others.  The showcase was well attended by other University of Toronto students and faculty, representatives from Metrolinx, CBC Radio, as well as Councillor Adam Giambrone, pictured at right.  A Praxis student was also interviewed on CBC Radio’s Here and Now.  More pictures of posters, prototypes and the event from last year are available here. (more…)