The Oakville Jazz Festival 2008.oakville jazz festival

I was estatic to be part of the festival this year. The festival started Friday Aug. 8th @ 7:00  and I was the first up on the East Stage.The sound crew and volunteers were very professional and accomodating since I brought my own 'ears'. Although the perdicted weather was thundershowers, the clouds parted and revealed blue skies for my performance.I brought along some of the best Toronto musicians  to back me up: Kelly Jefferson on sax, Tyler Emond on accoustic bass, Anthony Panacci ..s and Jeff Halischuk on drums.

We zipped through the scheduled one and a half hour without a break! Since I'm residing on Oakville these days many of my neighbours rode their bikes down or brought their lawn chairs and parked themselves in front. It was great to see familiar faces! Many people joined them and before too long the entire area was full of jazz lovers. Two small kids were demonstrating uninhibited dancing throughout my performance! Of course I couldn't control myself either as evidenced in many of the recordings made.It was a great showcase in 13 songs, over way too fast! See photos in my slide show.

Unfortunatley Saturday was a bust. It rained out all of the scheduled perfomers. Sunday, I was  sitting front row for Carol Welsman. She was backed up by Toronto's best: Mark Kelso on drums, Jake Langley on guitar and Rich Brown on bass. An hour and a half of her greatest smoothest hits and it only sprinkled rain for a moment! See photos in my slide show.