On July 13, 2008, Elizabeth Shepherd released her second album, Parkdale. After creating an international hipster smash in jazz and dance circles with her first album, Start To Move, the transplanted Montréaler settled into a basement apartment in Parkdale, and began work on a new LP, a musical love letter to the neighbourhood that provided her with a new set of responses to her humanistic musical aspirations.
Parkdale was a work that expanded the spectrum of Canadian jazz, by skewing towards a more breezy and cosmopolitan lyricism while embracing exotic time signatures, hip hop syncopation. To celebrate this pivotal conception at a distance of ten years, a concert featuring the music of Parkdale and the brightest talents of the community came together on Sunday, the 15th of July, 2018, at the ballroom in the Gladstone Hotel to re-sing, to re-imagine, to re-invent the most specifically Toronto music of Elizabeth Shepherd's career.
One of the performers, Denielle Bassels said: “Parkdale" is a beautiful homage to a part of town that I am so familiar with. Hearing Elizabeth Shepherd struck me in a whole new way. Never since Nina Simone have I seen a woman in Jazz so masterful in their compositions. Her rhythms and harmonies are complex without feeling contrived and her compositions are all at once intelligent, raw, and transparent. Her voice is ethereal yet approachable, she speaks to you. For me, I hear that it is alright to be vulnerable and masterful at once. She brings a whole new light to being a female in jazz today."
Performers:
Band:
Nick McLean - Keyboards, Musical Director
Brownman Ali - Trumpet
Scott Kemp - Original Parkdale bassist
Colin Kingsmore - Original Parkdale drummer
Singers:
Red Whyte & Tollar
Chloé Watkinson
The Memberz Reggae Band
Raha Javanfar
Collette Savard and The SavantEs
Valeria Matzner
Jessica Stuart
Denielle Bassels
Jocelyn Barth
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