It was a life-changing event when sax player and educator Jeff Goodspeed went over to the Cuban side. Since then, for years, he has tirelessly engineered musical interchanges between Nova Scotia and the Caribbean Island famous for some of the hottest music this side of planet Mercury. High school-aged Nova Scotia honour jazz students and their Cuban counterparts banded together Friday afternoon in the tent as the Los Primos Big Band. Gray and mossy weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of the guys and girls in the band as they, with astonishing assurance and “how-old-are-you-really” professionalism, spanked the air with high big band energy and smoothly played ballads. Vocal jazz got its moments to shine with winning song performances from three Canadian junior miss-sized vocalists each of whom showed great promise, confidence and enthusiasm and none of that “kinda pitchy” thing Amurican I-dull is notorious for. The Cubans provided the fourth singer, a tall, willowy Latino chanteuse eponymously named, Luna. With no annoying ornamentation, she caressed a sophisticated version of My Funny Valentine. As the skies darkened, with a mounting wind adding to the bad weather rising vibe in the air, bandleader Goodspeed handed conducting duties over to his Cuban counterpart, Luis Queralta, a shaved-head muscular man with a round face split by a constant (it seemed to me) 6000 watt grin. Island heat poured out of him as he snapped the downbeat into The Chicken On The Grill. The band erupted into a hot-hot-hot did I mention hot? Cuban rave-up. The clave locked-in, the percussion section on percolate, the trumpets on incendiary, the overflow crowd packed in under the tent swayed, bobbed and beat time on their thighs and rose to their feet bellowing throaty cheers and putting their hands together in fervid applause when the cooked chicken was taken off the grill. The upbeat number, El Silencio, written in Quebec Goodspeed announced, featured all four singers and the band closing out the Los Primos Big Band time slot with something less caliente but no less stylishly crowd-pleasing. It called for an encore. Which the band happily granted.
TFC (Jeff Torbert on guitar, Adam Fine on electric bass and Doug Cameron on drums) followed Los Primos with a set oforganic “exploratory” music that could have been an energy letdown after the Los Primos Big Band brand of brassy heat. It proved not to be the case. Electronic loops, repeats and echoes enhanced much of Torbert’s guitar work and Fine’s bass interplay. Whatever fears ran cold up the spines of the audience, which remained almost to capacity, when the engaging guitarist implied that difficult music might be ahead (“enjoy the trip”), fell away when extended pieces explored rhythmic variables, time and mood shifts, often using accessible and familiar blues, twinges of funk territory and pastiches of Pat Metheny-tinted melody lines to make the journey an audience winner. The last piece of their set, Before You Do, drew to its finish quietly as the weather made up for the volume downturn. The skies suddenly opened and rain pelted down. Vendors dashed about, dragging plastic sheeting over their exposed storefronts. Others ran for cover beneath the big tent. Roadies began setting up for the next act, Men With Gloves with the painter Holly Carr.
A cold white flash of lightning and a loud stomach rumble of nearby thunder forced the Jazzfest organizers to shut down the tent’s power feed until the lightning threat had passed.Organizers consulted Environment Canada and a half-hour delay was imposed. Time passed. Alternatively the sky brightened. Hopes rose.Then blackened, elliciting groans. And more rain. Holly Carr, a tall, trim powerful woman with mid-brown shoulder length hair drawn back in a low pony-tail, dressed in a sleeveless black jersey top and black pants, looked both anxious and stoked to get going at the expanse of white silk stretched on a verticle 8- feet square frame. Finally in concert with a hastily assembled group of musicians, a melange of Men With Gloves and Shan Arsenault’s group, Carr managed to create her painting – a Chagall-like depiction of birds (no ducks) and musicians at play. The tent show capper came when Shan Arsenault mused this sentiment to the audience, “I was into philosophy. But the trouble with philosophy is it’s all questions. No answers. I have a question for ya. Why can’t every week be jazz festival week?” Rain or shine.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2007.