As part of JazzEast's upcoming Out Like a Lion festival, Gottingen Street's The Nook will play host to the E.S.T. Tribute Band, a three-man effort dedicated to covering and re-interpreting the sounds of the late Swedish group the Esbjörn Svensson Trio.
"It's funny to be doing this tribute concert to E.S.T. because no one knows who they are," says Jeff Torbert, who first paid homage to E.S.T. two years ago with the help of musicians Tom Easley and Mark Adam. "Normally people cover a band because people know who they are and [audiences] will come to the show."
This year's event will see Easley replaced by bassist Nick D'Amato and the group, a guitar trio, will be playing the songs of E.S.T., a piano trio, so don't expect straight-up covers. The difference between piano-driven and guitar-driven efforts "already takes the music out of its original context," says Torbert. "In the jazz context, you're never really playing exactly what someone else was playing, you're rearranging it in a different way."
Torbert first discovered E.S.T. during a visit to New York City that occurred long enough ago that he was carrying a Sony Discman with him. Picking up E.S.T.'s 2002 album Strange Place for Snow at one of the city's used CD stores, Torbert sat down in a Greenwich Village bar and gave it a listen. "It was actually a specific enough moment that I won't forget it," he says. "It was pretty cool---the first time I heard the CD. It spoke to me on an emotional level. It's great music and combines a lot of really interesting elements."
D'Amato, Adam and Torbert live in Wolfville, a recent transition for Torbert, who teaches music at Acadia when not commuting to teach at Dalhousie. "It was amazing to move out here and find some of my favourite musicians ever," he says of his bandmates. "We have our own little musical world happening."
E.S.T. Tribute Band w/The Final Chapter of Our Lives
Friday, March 28 at 8pm, $12/$10
The Nook, 2216 Gottingen Street
