A 2018 Concert To Honour The 10th Anniversary of Elizabeth Shepherd's Parkdale and The Launch of Corby's Orbit

 

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

Two Major Heart Blenders and One Major String Bender Blazing Up Music For February In T.O.

 Influential Montreal singer / songwriter / producer

  Elizabeth Shepherd

is visiting Toronto Saturday for a close encounter at Hugh's Room  with the wildest of guitar players to be found in our 

City of Guitarists, 

Mr.Kevin Breit.

She will be giving us a ring at 6:20 to predict the concordant serendipities that will no doubt ensue.

 And in advance of her long-awaited Park Eddy CD release party at The Cameron House next Friday night,

 hostess / chanteuse and the uncrowned Queen Of Grossman's Ms. Chloe Watkinson will be visiting and probably dropping a live jam around 5:00.

Music Changes Everything : Friday March 12 Transubstantiation

Dears: Canadian Music Fest is transforming the city into a tuneswept wilderness of moans and wails and lyrical forests and beat-battered shores. Awash with sonic splash, the Orbit takes on all available hands. Soozi from Betty & the Bobs and Swamperella beamed up first with an intense a capella Peter Pan. Jory Nash came in to Simonize us in support of the tribute show, 50 Ways To Love Paul Simon, at Hugh's Room tonight. Poet James Strecker, who is part of Elizabeth Shepherd's gig at Glenn Gould Studio Saturday night was up at the crack of noon to read from his jazz book Black;
"We are not fools who take our singing for
granted, lest we talk of only the weather and
then we die. Each day we measure our steps
with music and open our hearts before one another".

Ruth Minnikin from Halifax and, once ago, The Guthries came in at 1:00, supporting a great new record, Depend On This. Good words and brave notes. We heard David Dacks, around 1:30, the Groove editor ( what a great job description) for EXCLAIM with samples from his CMF showcase coming up on Sat Mar 13. Huelepega Soundsystem is a really neat livetronica cumbia/dub fusion project that features David and Sergio Elmir from CIUT on the decks and LARRA SKYE, VANESS ALEGASSI, FREEMAN DRE & THE KITCHEN PARTY, and MELTING POT.

I was at Lee's for Speech Debelle last night; she makes a lot of sense, very rapidly, with a lot of detail and truth. Wouldn't let Toronto be Toronto. There was a west-end T.O. 'tronica duo, too, that was very beautiful, with thoughtful lyrics and strange bubble rhythms, called the New Look. Loud intimacy...And Neon Indian really got the crowd excited; a young (19) singer with a roaring band and a table full of computers that he rode like a keyboard.

Tell Everybody: you guys GOTZ to see The Wheat Pool at the Cadillac Lounge on the last Tuesday of this month (March 30)...Hauntario is the record, classic for life.
See ya in the CyKLoNe, transmogrifying, transubstantiating and transploring the munificence.

Happy Irish New Year!

old man leudecke lass vicious black hen black hen11:03

yukon blonde TRIVIAL FIRES YUKON BLONDE bumstead 11:07

ruth minnikin sleeping and dreaming depend on this ruth 11:11

sonny and cher it's gonna rain look at us atco 11:16

soozi peter pan live in orbit 11:22

the rural alberta advantage Edmonton hometowns theraa 11:28

jeff bridges fallin' and flyin' crazy heart sdtrk fox searchlight 11:32

rachelle van zanten my country where your garden grows RvZ 11:37

monkey junk beefy beefy beefy 11:42

lightning Hopkins once a gambler crazy heart sdtrk new west 11:48

james steckler readings from black live studio 11:53

elizabeth shepherd one more day heavy falls the night do-right 11:59

beautiful nubia revolution time irinajo eni obanke 12:04

fred Hammond i know what he's done love unstoppable verity 12:08

melanie Fiona sad songs the bridge universal 12:12

delhi to Dublin celtic dub delhi 2 dublin turner 12:17

sissel and the chieftains siuil a run tears of stone rca 12:22

kate rusby purple heather awkward annie pure 12:28

russell gunn he critic's song ethnomusicology justin time 12:33

michael buble the maple leaf forever sounds of vancouver 2010 emi 12:38

GILLES PETERSON 3 TRACKS BRAZILIKA FAR OUT 12:45

RUTH MINNIKIN depend on this/ interview / animals of bremen / live

depend on this rm 1:04

dan mangan tina's glorious comeback nice, nice, very nice fu:m 1:22 Y

huelapega soundsystem mix / interview 1:30

1:45 John Wort Hannan with the grain queen's hotel 1:45

children collide chosen armies the long now universal 1:50

BEATLES across the universe LET IT BE....NAKED emi 1:55

Wonder in Corbyland

Well the Orbital module was jammed up on the 5th. Ordered up an extra keg of oxygen for an interview with Todd Brown, programmer for the Canadian Music Week Film Festival at 11:30, transformative song voyager Tanya Philipovitch riding in with live songs from her Secret Fiction Romance disk at 12:30, and late- rising but luminous Elizabeth Shepherd, beaming in flashdark-style to present and discuss some new tunes from Heavy Falls The Night. Wonder abode:

Playlist crucial as usual

robert smith very good advice almost alice buena vista 11:02

the miles can i speak to Shawna blood on the blazer miles 11:05

K-os burning bridges yes remixed indobo 11:11

Melanie Fiona cry baby the bridge universal 11:15

melanie doane adam's rib adam's rib sony 11:19

matisyahu for you light sony 11:23

tony gits ghetto people long journey tg 11:27

kate rusby planets awkward annie pure 11:33

todd brown interview cmw film programme 11:36

r.e.m. #9 DREAM instant karma amnesty international 11:42

cfcf come closer continent paper bag 11:48

huun huur tu ancestors call eternal electrotone 11:57

massive attack paradise circus heligoland virgin 12:02

tanya philipovich secret fiction romance / interview / secret fiction romance

doin' time12:06

darkmean happy banjo franken cottage vibewrangler12:28

the beige the exterminating angel el angel exterminador beige 12:33 ghostkeeper like moose do ghostkeeper flemish eye 12:37

language arts cough drop where were you in the wild l-a 12:42

postdata tobias grey postdata emi 12:47

zeus the renegade say us arts & crafts 12:53

jason collett lake superior rat a tat tat arts & CRAFTS 12:57

the monotones the book of love rock n roll era time / life 1:01

hot hot heat track 1 1:05

A.R RAHMAN & alka yagnik ringa ringa slumdog millionaire fox searchlight 1:11

jimmy rogers act like you love me the complete chess recordings chess1:17

otis rush my love will never die mourning in the morning atco 1:22

dinah Washington no more dinah jams polygram 1:27

mel keith you're not here ..and the strombachs merle song 1:32

elizabeth shepherd a song for dinah washington / interview / the taking

heavy falls the night do-right 1:37

toshiko akioshi Santa Barbara ...modern jazz denon 1:55