Results tagged “jazz”

Classical and jazz music are often viewed with suspicion, largely due to the elitism that's associated with their listeners. Lang Lang and Herbie Hancock are perhaps the biggest superstars in these genres, respectively, and reactions to their current tour only reinforce the sense that classical and jazz aficionados can be too uptight for their own good. A quick Google News scan for mentions of the tour, which came to Toronto's Massey Hall Wednesday night, reveals review after review peppered with judgements like "excruciating," "banal," and "nose-dive"—words that inadvertently reveal their authors as holding on for dear life to staid expectations of what the music should sound like.

Oscar Peterson passes at 82. The great jazz musician was a Canadian hero and he did many amazing things, including spending the twilight of his career essentially playing jazz piano one-handed and doing it better than most people who had use of both their hands.

Primate cloning a success. No, we don't have cloned monkeys yet, but we do have cloned monkey stem cells, which could in turn be used to generate human-compatible monkey organs. Man, it's fun just to type the word "monkey." Monkey.

The late Paul Haines’ Secret Carnival Workers was launched at the end of last month, the occasion marked with a concert by his daughter, Emily (his other daughter is television journalist Avery Haines). Torontoist has been mulling over the book, comprised of poetry, fiction, jazz journalism and album liner notes, since then.

Photo by Carrie Musgrave.

Beginning Friday and running until July 1st, the TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival is smoothly bringing over 60 swingin' musicians to play in venues all across town in what apparently is Canada's best jazz festival. Take that, Montreal!

We're a little late with this week's music listing--blame the election! Er, okay, maybe someone just got immersed in learning a bit of Flash and let it slip. It won't happen again.

If you read last week's Now you'll know all about cover girl Elizabeth Shepherd and her trio's recent swinging set at The Jazz Cafe in London. Now back on home turf, Elizabeth brings her amazing voice, killer chops and strong compositional skills for a set to celebrate the release of her debut album, Start To Move, at The Supermarket tonight, accompanied but of course by her trio. Tickets are $10 and the doors open at 9 pm. Go so you can tell your kids you were there once Elizabeth is all big and famous.

A day late this week, but when you see the crazy number of new shows recently announced, you’ll understand why. With so much variety, there should be something for everyone coming up in the next month or so. Due to the large number of show listings, there will be no links this week (hey, it takes a LONG time to link up this stuff, my friends).

We're sooo confused by the actions of the Toronto Port Authority that we don't even know whether Jazz's decision not to resume service into the Island Airport is a good or bad thing anymore.

City election officials are having a hard time figuring out whether lots of people on the voting list are actually eligible to vote. This may have a direct affect on municipal campaign financing.

This sounds like a potential teen flick, if it already hasn't been made. Four teenage girls case out and rob a west-end clothing boutique, the youngest of them is only 13.

The City wants to allow you to add more items to your recycling bin. Proposals are in the works to allow polystyrene, spiral containers (ie. frozen juice concentrate cans) and even plastic bags. The problem is that the city's recycling capacity is maxed out and the City is desperately looking for more cash to increase capacity.

As a grand finale for the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, the Dave Brubeck Quartet performed an incredible set last night at Massey Hall. Although the group of four could have been called Dave Brubeck and the Geriatrics, these jazz cats were tighter than David Bowie's pants in Labyrinth. 85-year-old Brubeck was absolutely amazing. With Bobby Militello on alto sax/flute, Michael Moore on double bass (no, not THAT Michael Moore), and Randy Jones on drums, the group captivated an attentive audience with two hours of jazz brilliance. The 2 hours seemed like 5 minutes as the old men swung through a selection of jazz standards as well as Brubeck’s own compositions.

It's great when the Jazz Fest finally rolls around because it helps Torontoist justify paying all those banking fees. There are so many good shows that it'll be hard to catch them all, but hopefully this list will help you find your jazz beat. Aside from the acts listed below, music at 49 different venues around the city and the millions of tourist dollars the festival brings into the city, you can catch late night jam sessions every night at The Dominion and at The Rex. Don't forget about Stiffler's Mom either, they've got, um, a good rhythm section.

Hey Toronto! Today is the launch event for the first ever Humanitas Festival, "A festival of what was, is and could be Toronto".

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines.

. The featured performers for the evening are Alexander Toradze on piano and Andrew McCandless on trumpet. If you happen to be between the ages of 15 and 29, you can purchase a ticket for TSO performances (including this evening’s 8pm event) for the meager sum of $12 from the tsoundcheck website. If you are under 15 or over 29, tickets range from moderately expensive to more expensive. Tomorrow evening’s performance will be slightly altered as the TSO will play Shostakovich’s second piano concerto followed by the eighth symphony.

Full disclosure: Torontoist is a former Yorkie, having graduated from the Fine Arts department several years ago with all the requisite loving hatred. But our curiousity about the Fine Arts department's brand spanking new Accolade Project overcame our lingering bitterness (not to mention our longtime dread of the 96A bus - at least it doesn't go along Finch anymore), and so up we trekked to hell and gone Finch and Keele for the official ribbon cutting yesterday.

Like anyone else, Torontoist can't help but be occasionally overwhelmed by the traumatic events in other areas of the world. This week is obviously one of those occasions. Our thoughts are in Louisiana.

The Toronto Beaches International Jazz Festival once again closed down Queen St. East for three days over the weekend. Live bands were playing at every street corner. Thousands of people were dancing in the streets. And roasted corn on the cob - the new street meat at Toronto events - was being sold by the truckload. Restaurants were busy, but never overly crowded. For the few places without street-side patios, windows were opened to allow for the sweet sweet music to filter. A few local business also cashed in the throngs of people jamming the street, staying open well past normal Saturday business hours and offering specials not usually offered. Although we're not quite sure what exactly makes a discount on hair products "jazzy."

- Accordion Guy "posts the cat!" Cat Posting Explainer here.

We at the Torontoist would like to apologize for how repetitive our basketball reports are becoming. As sorry as we are, though, it appears that nothing is changing.