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JAZZ CITY
Preview |
Horn-blowing locals
E-town musicians ready to jazz things up
As dawn slowly breaks on the 24th annual Jazz City festival, some of the best local acts are fine-tuning their gear and getting ready to go for a 10-day journey of musical exploration. Here's a quick peek at a few Edmontonians whose notes will be heard this year.
A familiar name to many, multi-instrumentalist Brett Miles has played his fair share of music in and out of our dusty city. Proficient with a wide array of instruments–from the saxophone to the piano–Miles feels the city is a great place to let his inspiration fly with his different approaches to jazz music–even more so than in the United States, where he lived for over 15 years.
"There's so much great original music here," says Miles. "Be it the singer/songwriter[s], the funk bands or the original jazz, the calibre of musicians here is so amazing. It's really an open community and a really giving community."
Dubbing himself "the baddest motherfucker on Earth", the 43-year-old will be bringing his musical experimentations to Jazz Street at Glen Abbey Park on Monday, June 23 (with his Magilla Funk Conduit quintet) and then with his regular trio at Four Rooms (Downtown) on Thursday, June 26. He will also appear with Mo Lefever, as part of her guitar-funk trio, at Four Rooms (Downtown) Saturday, June 21. |
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Magilla Funk Conduit • With Brett Miles and Gravity Collective • Sidetrack Café • Sat, Aug 28 After many years as a leading figure in Edmonton's music community, Brett Miles and his band Magilla Funk Conduit are finally releasing their first proper CD, Just Dance. "Someone said, 'Brett—a record every 10 years, what's up with that?'" Miles says. His response was simple: "I'm slow, I'm aging like cognac."
The Edmonton-born Miles moved to New York City in the '80s and spent 12 years playing with an array of musicians and musical projects. He's been writing his own tunes for 20 years, but the catalyst behind his decision to start up his own band was moving back to Edmonton in 1996 and having his father pass away shortly afterwards.
He had a collection of original songs and a slew of good friends to play with, and so Magilla Funk Conduit was born. "There's this old cartoon from back in the day called Magilla Gorilla," Miles says, "and it was like a stupid Hanna-Barbera cartoon, right? So Magilla was a nickname I called my dad and funk music makes me glad and 'conduit' [suggested] let your energies flow—Magilla Funk Conduit."
But only now does the band have a proper CD to call their own. Miles recently led his fellow members of the Conduit—bassist Thom Golub, trumpeter Bob Tildesley, drummer Dwayne Hrynkiw, guitarists Jamie Philp, Greg Smith and Maureen Lefever and rapper Cadence Weapon (Miles's nephew)—into Zonik Studios with Nik Kozub and laid down the tracks that became Just Dance. "We've done like, a couple of small runs of some live stuff before," Miles says proudly, "but this is the first time in the studio and everything—the whole package, the cellophane and everything."
Everything is in place for the big release of Just Dance this weekend but there is one unexpected development still bugging Miles. "Freakin' Charley Pride is playing the same day as my CD release party—that's just not right," he blurts out. "I have so much respect for every musician that's played before me, but especially the black musicians who are, like, trailblazing and he's, y'know, a country and western black singer, like, 40 years ago! Like, are you kidding me?! And just the fact that he's really good, I have a big space in my heart for him." V