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“How come I never heard of these guys before?” is on balance a good thing to overhear from a departing concertgoer, if you’re the artistic director of a musical ensemble watching an audience file away after the final performance of your season. For one thing it means there was at least one new person in your audience that night. For another it means that, all things being equal, the individual in question is likely to be back.

When the performance in question is not just the final one of your season but the final one of your final season, though, it’s likely that the pleasure you take from the remark will be tinged with at least some regret.

Two upcoming performances this May both fit the “final finale” description, albeit in different ways. For Larry Beckwith’s Toronto Masque Theatre, “The Last Chaconne” on May 12 at the Jane Mallett Theatre will be the last performance before the company disbands. While for Toronto Consort, their May 25, 26 and 27 concert performances of Monteverdi’s signature opera Orfeo will signal the final appearances of David Fallis as their artistic director after almost
28 years in the role.

Lucky for us, Fallis’ and Beckwith’s respective decisions, to step aside and to disband, sparked opportunities for The WholeNote to sit with each of them for lengthy and wide-ranging conversations, which we will bring your way in more extended form once their May “last hurrahs” have been hurrayed.

TORONTO CONSORT | The Beat Goes On

David Fallis didn’t start out as Toronto Consort’s artistic director. As a matter of fact, in 1979 when he joined, they didn’t have one; Fallis, a self-described “novice, who didn’t know all that much about the music” came aboard as part of a collective that included Garry Crighton, David Klausner and Alison Mackay. “One of them would just shoot us programs, and they’d do all the research, run the rehearsals and it worked well for 12 or 13 years,” he recalls.

Things evolve and change, though, and when the need arose for a steady curatorial hand at the helm, the role fell to Fallis.

Fast forward 27 years to the beginning of this past season, and Fallis went to the group saying he’d like to make this his last year as director and what should they do? “Full circle,” was the agreed answer: nine people who have worked together “in consort” for at least ten years, and in many cases longer, don’t necessarily need an artistic director.

Paradoxically, it’s because Toronto Consort is what is technically known as a “broken consort” that not much needs to be done to fix it! Broken, in consort terminology, means made up of instruments from a range of different families and types, as distinct from a “whole” consort, such as a family of viols. Because of that, the members of Toronto Consort are already strong individuals with different ideas, used to bouncing musical ideas off each other, figuring things out and, as necessary, taking turns at being the lead.

The coming year reflects this spirit of artistic collectivity: of the five concerts announced for the 2018/19 season, one will feature a guest ensemble, two will be curated by members of the ensemble who have previously curated events (Katherine Hill and Alison Melville); one will be co-curated by Fallis and Hill, and the tried and true Consort favourite, Praetorius Christmas Vespers, will be Fallis’ to direct.

That being said he’s not trying to pretend that there isn’t a special feeling about the upcoming show. Partly because of the place it played in the history of his time as artistic director, partly because of some favourite people he gets to include as guests – tenors Charles Daniels, Kevin Skelton and Cory Knight, and with Jeanne Lamon playing violin.

“As the last act – me officially as artistic director – you couldn’t do any better than a piece about the power of music, a man who is such a beautiful singer and musician that he can charm even the powers of hell” Fallis says.

Hail and Farewell | Toronto Masque Theatre

As even his closest collaborators over the past 15 years (company manager Vivian Moens and artistic associate Derek Boyes) would agree, without Larry Beckwith Toronto Masque Theatre would not have come into existence in the first place, or survived this long. He’s always carried it on his shoulders. And it was hard for even his closest collaborators over the years to envision carrying on. It was one of those “What am I going to do with my life calendar things?” – turning 40 – that led him to start the company. At 55 it just feels like the right time to stop: “not walking away, not fading away, just another chapter.”

Once the decision was made, last summer, TMT decided on a course of full disclosure that this season would be the last. “Hopefully to make this last season celebratory rather than funereal,” as Beckwith put it in one of our chats. And a signature season it has been, reflecting the full range of presentational styles, from intimate salon to large-cast spectacle, and of musical eras from early to contemporary to commissioned works that have become TMT’s trademark.

“The Last Chaconne” promises to be a fitting climax to it all, with a cast of collaborators that would be astonishing, if they were being roped in randomly for a special occasion, but in this case simply reflect TMT’s relationship-building musical history.

There will doubtless be a moist eye or two, a twinge of regret as they celebrate what they’ve achieved in the context of their collective passion for beautiful words, music and dance: excerpts from Acis and Galatea, The Fairy Queen, The Lesson of Da Ji, The Mummers’ Masque, Orpheus and Eurydice, a new commission from bassist Andrew Downing, and some beautiful dances featuring Marie Nathalie Lacoursière and Stéphanie Brochard … and more.

“The phrase ‘the means of grace’ has always stuck in my mind” Beckwith reflects. “In fact at one time it might have been the name for Toronto Masque Theatre, but someone, probably Vivian, thankfully, talked me out of it. In one sense of the word, grace is what Baroque dance is all about, but the phrase actually comes from a general prayer of thanksgiving in the Anglican book of common prayer.” He quotes from memory. “‘Being unfeignedly thankful for the blessings of this life, for the means of grace and the hope of glory, we show forth our praise not only with our lips but in our lives.’ Music has always been that for me.”

Simple questions sometimes lead to interesting answers:

“How did you know it was time? Do you even know how to relax? What will you miss and not miss?” And (of course) “So what will you be doing next?”

To the last of these, both Fallis and Beckwith respond with some variation of the response “All will be revealed in the fullness of time.” Clearly putting their feet up is not high on their respective lists of priorities.

Meanwhile, if you “haven’t heard of these guys before,” now’s your chance! Every finale is the start of something new.

FINAL FINALES:

Toronto Masque Theatre presents “The Last Chaconne: A Celebration” May 12, 8pm at the Jane Mallett Theatre. On the stage where it all began, a star-studded array of singers, actors, dancers and instrumentalists comes together for a farewell celebration at the end of their final season.

In David Fallis’ last concert as artistic director, Toronto Consort presents Monteverdi’s Orfeo, May 25 and 26 8pm, May 27 3:30pm in Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre. The world’s first great opera, and one of the most moving love stories of all time, starring English tenor Charles Daniels in the title role, many returning Toronto Consort favourites, and the Montreal-based early brass ensemble La Rose des Vents.

Rounding out the theatrical riches with which we were showered in April (see my regular Music Theatre column elsewhere in this issue), a difficult-to-label work called Betroffenheit returned to the Bluma Appel for the third time for a short run as part of an international tour. Based on the true story of playwright and performer Jonathan Young’s descent into addiction following the death of his daughter and her cousin in a cabin fire, the work is an extraordinary acclaimed (Canadian) physical production – a new marriage of play, dance and an unusual score directed and choreographed by Crystal Pite. I have never seen anything like it.

It overwhelms with its almost existential storytelling interspersed with exaggerated, almost too-frequently repeated literal moments of speech. The contrast between the circus-type atmosphere of the first act and the very bare essential quality of the second makes the piece work as a whole, along with the incredible talent of the performers.

Now, in stark and potentially illuminating contrast to Betroffenheit’s quality of powerful physical poetry, a new musical is coming into being in May, from One Little Goat Theatre. It’s a musical that puts theatrical primacy on the aural and poetic side of theatre, on sounds (words and music) and their reception rather than on the physical realization of the staging. I spoke with One Little Goat artistic director and show creator Adam Seelig to learn a bit more about the company, this concept and Music Music Life Death Music: An Absurdical, the new production.

WN: One Little Goat is described in your mission statement as the only North American theatre company dedicated to contemporary poetic theatre. Can you explain what you mean by poetic theatre and how that impacts the shows you create?

AS: I think of poetic theatre as “aural”; it’s about the words, the impact of the sounds. It is also not didactic, not showcasing one point of view or interpretation but is there for the audience to discover; like the plays of Beckett or Pinter, or earlier of Sophocles with Oedipus and Antigone.

Was creating a musical for you a logical extension of this focus on poetic theatre, particularly as you are both writer and composer?

Yes. For me creating theatre goes back to my love of music, the art form I loved first. I am always interested in the sounds. The creation of this play began with a love song for the middle-aged couple, the sandwich generation. The play grew from there.

Can you tell us more about the play itself?

This is a play (a comedy) with a lot of music involving three generations of family, their loves, their joys and their frustrations with each other. A family now, not really tied otherwise to a specific time or place or heritage.

The concept of poetic theatre would seem to perhaps indicate a specific style of movement as well. Is that the case with your production?

The aural quality is more important. The movement is something the cast will bring themselves. Once we come into the rehearsal hall the play will completely belong to them and they will be the ones to guide it and to show what kinds of qualities emerge based on who they are. We have a wonderful cast: Richard Harte (Boys in the Photograph) whom I have worked with for a decade; also Theresa Tova (Tough Jews, The Jazz Singer), Jennifer Villaverde (Soulpepper’s Animal Farm, Hana’s Suitcase) and Sierra Holder, who is graduating from Sheridan College the week before we start rehearsals.

Can you tell us more about the style of music and the band?

I would say the style is for the most part within the genre of rock and R&B. We are working with a handful of songs that are hard-driving and also a handful that are anywhere from medium tempo to ballad. The band will be led by music director Tyler Emonde who is also playing bass; then there is Lynette Gillis (of the band Overnight) on drums, Joshua Skye Engel (of the Allman Brothers tribute band Eat a Peach) on guitar and myself on a vintage Fender Rhodes electric piano.

Are you doing the arranging/orchestrating yourself?

That will be up to Tyler, but as we are a small band we will also have a few sections that are open to solos as well and a little room for improvisation. One of the things I love about going to hear a band is when it goes “off script” so we want to eke out a little bit of space for the band to breathe a little bit as well as playing for the songs.

Music Music Life Death Music plays from May 25 to June 10 at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto.

Toronto-based “lifelong theatre person” Jennifer (Jenny) Parr works as a director, fight director, stage manager and coach, and is equally crazy about movies and musicals.

Teretulemast (welcome) to the releases of three Estonian acts performing at Estonian Music Week here in Toronto this month. My disclaimer – I am a Canadian musician born to Estonian parents performing at the event. I am looking forward to meeting/hearing them all!

In their 2012 release Filia Sion (ECM New Series ECM 2244 ecmrecords.com), Estonian choir Vox Clamantis, under the artistic direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve, performs 15 selections based on the Daughter of Zion from a cross-section of medieval Gregorian chants and works by Perotinus, de Grudencz, von Bingen and a Jewish chant from Cochin. The plainsongs never become monotonous as the different vocal groupings, from solo to tight ensemble, feature clear diction, amazing phrasing and subtle variety of colour. Gregorian antiphon Ecce venit/Psalm 94 opens with attention-grabbing clear solo singing, followed by hypnotic clean phrases, intonation and the addition of low tone pitches at the chant’s climax. A subtle joyous ensemble feel shines in the Gregorian chant Gloria. Nice musical contrast in von Bingen’s O ignis spiritus as the expressive higher voices contrast the held lower notes, with a few overtones sneaking in. Bravo for these breathtaking performances.

Here are my additions to the earlier Vanessa Wells WholeNote review of the Vox Clamantis release, Arvo Pärt – The Deer’s Cry (ECM 2466 ecmrecords.com). The choir’s plainsong strengths and close work with Pärt himself are reflected in their respectful performances. A rhythmic alleluia vocal backdrop drives the short minimalist Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fatima. Veni Creator features a lulling rolling organ that matches the mixed choir in phrasing and nuance. Sei gelobt, du Baum is a more atonal work with sound conversations between male choir, violin, lute and double bass leading to a climactic high-pitched violin. This release incorporates everything I love about both Pärt’s compositions and Estonian choral music.

Maarja Nuut (maarjanuut.com) performs her in-the-moment folksy vocals, violin and fiddle music based on Estonian folk music genres with modern day minimalism, techno sound effects and looping in her 2016 release, Une Meeles – In the Hold of a Dream. The atmospheric, mesmerizing all-Estonian tracks developed from her self-described exploration of the boundary between reality and dreaming. Love the opening Kargus with its energetic charging repeated violin patterns later supporting her clear vocals, like two sides to a personality. The violin sliding-pitches-opening leads to a horse galloping riff and virtuosic rapid traditional vocals reminiscent of regilaul chant in Hobusemäng (The Horse Game). Kiik tahab kindaid (Swing Wants Gloves) features recorded electro-squeaking swing rocking effects with a repetitive eerie short vocal melody. There’s a pop flavoured Valss (Waltz), and a toe-tapping upbeat Esto fiddle polka, Kuradipolka (Devil’s Polka).The closing Vaga linnuken (A Silent Little Bird) features Nuut’s trademark repetitive chant vocals, as string plucking and violin fade to silence.

Kadri Voorand’s 2016 Armupurjus (Love Intoxication) (Avarus Records AR0004 kadrivoorand.com) has the Kadri Voorand Quartet in great playing and improvising form. Her jazz-infused piano/vocal/composition stylings (with kalimba, wot and electronics) are supported by Taavo Remmel (double bass), Virgo Sillamaa (guitars/composition) and Ahto Abner (drums/percussion). Voorand sings in English and Estonian. The title track Armupurjus has a stadium hard-rock feel with wailing vocals and wall-of-sound instruments. The jazzy Papagoid (Parrots) has lyrical yet rhythmical band instruments supporting Voorand’s personal unique scat-singing style. Love how she makes held-note swells out of the Estonian vowels in words. She sings “mul ei meeldi papagoid” (I don’t like parrots) but it sure seems like she does in her subsequent closing vocalizations. Short contrasting Improludes are fun outtakes from end-of-studio-day improvisations. The closing traditional Estonian Ää mine uhkele mehela (Don’t Marry the Lofty) arrangement features sound washes and willful vocals.

Aitäh (thanks) for all this world-class Estonian music.

Concert notes: Reviewer (and accordionist) Tiina Kiik will perform with singer Roosi Lindau at Estonian Music Week’s opening reception on Thursday May 24, at Sassafraz restaurant and bar at 5pm. On Saturday, May 26 at 8pm at Koerner Hall, Vox Clamantis, the Grammy Award-winning choral ensemble led by Jaan-Eik Tulve, is co-presented with The Royal Conservatory as part of the 21C Music Festival. The choir shares the evening with singer violinist Maarja Nuut, who reinvents ancient traditional melodies from the Estonian countryside as hypnotic songs with electroacoustic loops. On Sunday, May 27 at 7pm at Hugh’s Room, singer Kadri Voorand, 2017 winner of Best Female Artist and Best Jazz Album at the Estonian Music Awards, will be accompanied by her renowned quartet. On Monday, May 28 at 12:30pm at Tartu College, a jazz-singing workshop with Kadri Voorand focuses on creating original ideas, the voice as a physical movement, and lyrics used as a tool to work with original sound (by registration only).

By the time saxophonist-composer Paul Cram passed away on March 20, he had redrawn the possibilities of jazz across this country.

In 2001, Mark Miller described Cram’s unique reach on the national jazz map: “[He] has been that rare musician around whom ‘scenes’ seem to coalesce – first in Vancouver, then in Toronto and latterly in Halifax” (The Miller Companion to Jazz in Canada, Mercury Press). It was a remarkable achievement: he contributed to the creation of enduring production organizations while building bands large and small and making some of the most durable recordings in the history of Canadian jazz.

For the Toronto-based singer Tena Palmer, who performed as a featured soloist in Cram’s orchestra and worked in the free improvisational Aperture Trio with Cram and guitarist Arthur Bull, “Paul was like an exponential version of a Johnny Appleseed of the arts. Alliances, collaborations, friendships and new combinations of ideas and approaches sprung up around him and in his wake, enlivening creative work and enriching lives far beyond his own awareness.” Trombonist Tom Walsh, an associate for 30 years who’s now based in Montreal, remarks, “Paul had a genius knack for blending talents of widely differing perspectives into a cohesive statement.”

Born in Victoria in 1952, Cram began his musical adventure with clarinet lessons, switching to tenor saxophone under the influence of John Coltrane. By the 1970s he was immersed in the music of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman, developing allegiances to precision, open structures and spontaneity that would mark his music throughout his career. While studying composition at the University of British Columbia in the mid-70s, he also entered the ferment of Vancouver free jazz, bonding quickly with the distinguished drummer (and painter) Gregg Simpson. Together they launched the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW), a band that saw itself in the tradition of Mingus’ Jazz Workshop, a forum to work on compositions, most notably Cram’s own.

Cram’s first LP under his own name, Blue Tales in Time (1981), was a breakthrough recording for BC free jazz, introducing bassist Lisle Ellis and pianist Paul Plimley as well as Cram’s substantial skills as composer and saxophonist. When he settled in Toronto in 1982, he left behind the structure of NOW, since then a significant part of creative musical life that has spawned orchestral projects with both international and national figures, among them George Lewis, Marilyn Crispell, Barry Guy and René Lussier.

Cram was soon a key figure in Toronto, bridging styles and scenes, composing, playing and always building. In 1987, the nine-piece Paul Cram Orchestra recorded Beyond Benghazi, with Cram matching his own saxophone with guest soloist Julius Hemphill. Cram also helped launch, and served briefly as co-director of, Hemispheres – an orchestra that specialized in both improvised and composed music.

Cram’s longest sojourn was in Halifax, where he was able to expand on all fronts. In 1990 he co-founded the Upstream Music Association, an organization that includes the Upstream Orchestra and which has regularly mounted the Open Waters Festival and a host of other events. Beginning as a co-director in 1990, he eventually became sole artistic director in 2000, remaining in the position until 2015 when he left to take care of his health. Composer and clarinetist Jeff Reilly remarks: “I think you could say he was the organization for many years.” Cram also became actively involved in writing music for film and theatre, including the award-winning soundtrack for the film One Heart Broken into Song.

While Paul Cram the saxophonist generated free jazz passion, Paul Cram the composer practised the post-modern eclectic. The Paul Cram Orchestra was almost an autobiography, containing musicians he had first connected with in his Toronto years, like Tom Walsh and guitarist John Gzowski who had appeared on Beyond Benghazi, as well as Nova Scotia associates like saxophonist Don Palmer and Jeff Reilly. Their 2000 concert at the Victoriaville festival (FIMAV) became the CD Campin Out. In 2004, they provided the finale for probably the greatest international showcase ever afforded to adventurous Canadian jazz – a week of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s Jazz em Agosto festival in Lisbon. The concert has been released as Live in Lisbon.

For a sense of what the music felt like at the time, here’s something I wrote for the Campin Out liner notes: “The two streams in Cram’s music, the improvised and the composed, come together in a very special way. The composition is less about giving the improvisation structure than the improvisation is about giving the orchestration fluidity and vice versa. Part of Cram’s ambition is to have the composed portions move with the energy and spontaneity of collective improvisation, and it’s something he achieves frequently here. The music is rooted in modern jazz. Mingus and Gil Evans come handily to mind, and more particularly the writing of Carla Bley, both for the wit and the exchange of melody and texture; but Cram takes that principle of restless movement further afield. This is a tour that takes in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and dances the tango and the waltz, all the time expanding the image pool with in-flight films of other locales and times, some of them pointed out by a guide plucked from a 50s TV detective series.”

In 2012 Cram led a 21-member Upstream Orchestra at FIMAV. Jeff Reilly describes his magical way with an orchestra: “That orchestra was a natural extension of Paul’s ‘Ellingtonian approach’ (as he called it) or getting as many people as he could onstage to delve into the deep experience of releasing the subconscious (what he called ‘the bottom 90 percent’) through improvised sound. He loved the collective roar of an orchestra in full cry, and I was always delighted when he asked me to conduct. Paul’s ability to coalesce a group of musicians into a collective sound was the result of the sheer force of his creative imagination – he loved and lived this stuff and it just seemed to happen around him wherever he went. I learned a great deal from Paul, about music, about sound, about people and about love. Music is a bigger, better thing because of him, and we all benefited from what he brought to us.”

Tom Walsh, present from Beyond Benghazi to that 2012 concert, and one of Canada’s finest improvisers, had a special empathy with Cram, sharing a view of band-building with him that can seem like mad science and private language: “We had many, many conversations and shared many inside jokes about the ‘tricks of this trade.’ Maybe a certain player’s real talents are covered up. How do you ‘game’ it out of him or her? How do you expand a jazz player’s linearity into ‘cosmolody’? How do you ‘gift’ permission to a classical player to hear and feel outside his or her role?”

It was that kind of thinking that brought a special vitality, a sense of risk and promise, to Paul Cram’s large ensembles – rare qualities in any music.

Archival Note: Gregg Simpson has recently uploaded recordings and much more archival material, downloadable at https://conditionwestrecordings.bandcamp.com/music. There’s an intense set of early music, Live at l’Opale, Montreal, 1983, by the Paul Cram Trio with Simpson and bassist Lisle Ellis; and the orchestra set, Live in Lisbon.

Stuart Broomer writes frequently on music (mostly improvised) and is the author of Time and Anthony Braxton. His column “Ezz-thetics” appears regularly at pointofdeparture.org.

It is a Sunday morning, March 18, 2018, and jazz pianist Thompson Egbo-Egbo and I have made time for a fairly leisurely chat in The WholeNote offices at 720 Bathurst Street. Sunday is a lot quieter in the office than the rest of the week these days, as assorted heavy machinery takes a sabbatical from the nearly completed sacred task, right under our windows, of levelling all the buildings on the city block that was Honest Ed’s empire.

Egbo-Egbo will be at Koerner Hall twice this coming April (once onstage and once backstage). The onstage Koerner appearance is April 11 at 7:30pm, the 14th Annual Jazz Lives gala/fundraiser for Jazz.FM91. Billed as a celebration of Nat ‘King’ Cole’s centenary, Egbo-Egbo will be keeping company with Jackie Richardson, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Robi Botos, Tom Wilson, Heavyweights Brass Band, Lori Cullen, Bill McBirnie, Danny B, Drew Jurecka and the JAZZ.FM91 Youth Big Band. “I’d better start practising,” he says.

Ten days later, April 21, is the eagerly anticipated Koerner appearance of Cape Town titan, jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim with Freddie Hendrix on trumpet and Ibrahim’s band Ekaya, in an evening featuring new arrangements of late 50s Jazz Epistles original compositions woven in with Ibrahim’s classic catalogue.

“I am looking forward to that show,” Egbo-Egbo says. “If you can get a ticket,” I reply. (It has been sold out for months.) “Secret is, I will be watching from backstage,” he says. “They will be doing a little VIP reception after, they always do a little VIP thing, and my trio will be playing that reception. I had a choice of which to play and that was the one I chose. I have never seen him live and it will be great for the guys to get the chance to just watch and enjoy. I remember back in the day when IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education) was in town, I got to watch Ed Thigpen play with Russ Malone and Benny Green, with Oscar Peterson onstage and I was volunteering, opening the doors for those guys. So it’s going to be exciting.”

Meanwhile, the Thompson Egbo-Egbo Trio (Jeff Halischuk on drums and Randall Hall on bass are the other two) will have put in a fair bit of practice – four March Tuesdays at The Rex, in the 6:30pm-8:30pm slot. Repertoire for the gigs revolves around their trio’s first album – A New Standard, it’s called. It was recorded as an indie project a year or so ago and is now being re-released by Entertainment One Music – a first step of another leg of Egbo-Egbo’s musical journey.

One of the great things about the residency at The Rex, he says, is settling in. “Settling into the music, settling in with the same players. Similar to the time we’ve spent at Poetry Jazz Cafe in Kensington Market, it’s like paid rehearsal time. You get to work through the music. For me there’s a freedom in knowing that in this setting I’m allowed to make a few mistakes in order to find stuff. And that will make what we do next, next record, next evolution or whatever, that much better. Ideally we are trying to shed our skin of stuff to find whatever the next butterfly is.”

“Why A New Standard?” I ask about the album name.

“Partly it’s about picking repertoire,” he says. “You know, you go to Humber, or whatever music institution, and they give you the standards and you’ve got to learn these tunes; and then you get out in the real world and realize there’s all these other tunes. I mean, you sit at the piano in a piano bar and you’d better be able to at least fake Piano Man so that after the first 30 seconds, when they usually stop listening, it still sounds like the same song. So part of it was that. Realizing that there are new ‘standards’ being set all the time that you have to know. The old guard has to meet the new guard, and out of that you have to create your own standards, so to speak.”

He carries on: “Another part of it is to do with the realities of life for a gigging musician, when you’re finding yourself in a different space musically all the time – a little bit of jazz and little bit of pop depending on where you are from moment to moment. It’s easy to buy in to a kind of disdain for music that’s three minutes, or 2:40, that sort of stuff. But I found myself thinking about the old jazz records – if you listen to some of the old records, that’s all they were. Size of the cylinder, one head, one solo head out. Which is not far from where the pop space is for music.”

“So is there a danger of finding yourself betwixt and between?” I ask. His response is a shrug.“Some people will call it jazz, some people won’t; most of the jazz people won’t call it jazz, and the people who aren’t jazz will call it jazz. Whatever … The way I see it, if someone turns the radio on for the music that’s there, can we be there? It may not be a pop tune but can I present it in a way where it’s not a 12-minute song? Can I get it compact to match the way it’s being absorbed? Six minutes or so, that was my thought process. Let’s just try and present the music a little differently, you know? We all listen to all kinds of music which does that.”

Egbo-Egbo, Halischuk and Hall all went through the Humber jazz program, at the college’s Lakeshore campus in the city’s west end. But the story of their working together has more twists and turns than that. Halischuk and Egbo-Egbo were exact contemporaries but did not intersect musically at the time. “Jeff was in the A Band,” Egbo-Egbo explains. “Which band you were in was quite competitive for some people. I have to say it wasn’t for me, not because it couldn’t have been, but just because it wasn’t on my radar at the time. I just thought, ‘Oh, some people got picked to play in that band.’”

His drummer at Humber was Sly Juhas but “he met the door lady at some venue we were playing and they hit it off, ended up moving to Germany.” After that he played with many drummers, then one day needed someone to sub on a particular gig. “Saw Jeff on Facebook and went ‘Hmm, I wonder if he would play with me.’ Reached out, he said ‘Yeah sure, I’d love to.’”

Something clicked, he says. “For me, Jeff really played the way I heard the music, the way I envisioned drums being played on everything I do, so at that point it became ‘How often can I get him to play with me?’ And I was fortunate because it stuck. He really elevated what we were doing. I think it’s interesting that ten years before we hadn’t really played together. But there’s always relationships along the way in music that never happened before; that’s the way things go sometimes.”

Bassist Randall Hall had been at Humber a full decade before Egbo-Egbo. “Randall was one of those guys who had done Humber and never finished it. Music was great at the time, there was a lot of playing to be had. Then, as luck has it, he came back to finish his studies right at the end of my time. We ended up playing together and sticking around. He’s been there since very early on playing with me and it’s worked out really well.”

“Did you also gig all the way through Humber?” I ask. “Yes,” he says. “It’s interesting, the different philosophies people bring to it. I didn’t have the same supports some people had – that’s neither good nor bad, just a fact. It meant I didn’t interact as much with other students as I could have, or should have, maybe. All those gigs, four, five, sometimes six nights a week ... Also, to be honest, I mean I grew up downtown and didn’t want to be out at campus when I didn’t need to be. So I was jetting a lot. On the one hand I had a tough go financially figuring it out. On the other hand, I was very fortunate that I had private scholarships to pay for my time at Humber.”

When Egbo-Egbo talks about growing up downtown, he’s talking specifically about Regent Park, on Toronto’s inner-city east side, the child of parents who immigrated here from Nigeria when he was four years old. The inner city east side is still his home base. He sits on the board of Dixon Hall Music School, where he got his own musical start – that’s how he met entertainment lawyer Chris Taylor, who now heads up Entertainment One Music. It’s also how he met Mitchell Cohen of Daniels Corporation, who has followed Egbo-Egbo’s progress for years and helped finance the production of the new album.

“Somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where,” I say, “you’re quoted as saying something like ‘Before you can talk about making best choices, you have to have choices to make.”

“There’s an easy version of that,” he says. “You grow up, you see bad things happening around you. You choose to join in or you choose something else, if there’s something else to choose. But I don’t go with painting me as some kind of a hero. I’d love to say I was smart enough to recognize the opportunities afforded to me. People look at you and say ‘Wow, look at you, you did so well.’ But truthfully, why shouldn’t I have? Lots of people from Regent Park did well. You just mostly hear about the ones who don’t. I was surrounded by a lot of opportunities, so much opportunity. I was not a rich kid but from an early age, because of music, I grew up like a rich kid. Looking back, it seems almost impossible that I would miss the road I took. Take the time to unpack it, there was a whole community of people who invested in me like a thoroughbred.

“I have always had support and help for what I am doing; even now I remind myself that I have always had a community. If you don’t have one, you’d better figure it out, for music or anything else.”

For Egbo-Egbo, “anything else” now includes a recent decision to add a career in commercial real estate to his toolkit. “It was an interesting choice” he says. “I had no background or knowledge in real estate. But I asked myself ‘Do I go back and do an MBA or go into law?’ I’d done eight years of school, didn’t want to remove myself from the workforce. I’d met people in that sector through my music so at the minimum I would have people who care about what I do to answer questions for me.”

“What’s ironic and beautiful over the last year and a half since I started out,” he tells me, “is that the music has been subsidizing my real estate career. The income I used to look down on has actually helped me survive the transition. My first deals have come directly from my music network. I tell myself I am going into real estate to help me take care of music and monetarily it’s been the other way around. It’s so interesting how it all connects. No matter what I have done so far, music always takes care of me. Financially, emotionally, mentally. One way or another.”

“So how do you think you can find a balance?” I ask.

“Not so much a question of balance as alternating binges,” he says. “When I first started I was so busy I was not really practising. So I worried about making sure the music was continuing. I look at it this way. If you’re doing things musically that you don’t want to be doing, in order to do the things that you do want to be doing musically, then do something else with the time you spent on the musical part you don’t like. I am a performer, not into teaching, and it’s getting to where I don’t have to worry only about taking care of myself. My parents are getting older; as immigrants they don’t have the work history, pensions, and whatnot; at some point you have the responsibility to help out. They made the sacrifices for you. Roles switch as life changes.

“It’s like starting a new conversation with myself,” he says. “I still want to do music, still want to write, never have done anything other than music. Maybe real estate will help inform the musical choices I get to make in ways I can’t imagine. Maybe it will give me the resources to make music a ‘best choice’ for other people the way it has been for me.”

We look out the window at the heavy machinery sitting silent on the Honest Ed’s site, a small oasis of possibility in an impossibly overheated downtown real estate market.

“Life in the inner city can be isolating, but it’s not actually isolated,” he says, as if in conversation with himself. “Downtown there is always somewhere close by you can go. Where you can be with people. We have to find ways to build that closeness in parts of our city where isolation is the fact.”

David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com.