My friend the music teacher, Katrina Anderson (aka artist Fontana Swing) has been running an amazing little invitational concert series in her beautiful studio space on Carlaw. We'd done a Six String Nation presentation there a while ago with Kurt Swinghammer and Lindy and she wanted to somehow involve me in the this upcoming series. We came up with the idea of the SWiNG SeTS, where I would do a brief interview with the artists at the top of the show and guitarists among them would have the opportunity to play Voyageur during their set.
Last night was the first concert in the series, featuring two artists I've known for longer than I'd care to admit: guitarist, composer and environmental sound-sculpturist Mark Sepic and genius of the harmonica Carlos del Junco. Each took a couple of spellbinding solo turns but mostly it was great to see the rapport of a 20-year musical relationship in action.
Mark lead off the second set with a version of the "Hockey Night In Canada" theme played on his hockey-stick-xylophone and then picked up Voyageur for a duet with Carlos on Bruce Cockburn's "Momma Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long". Mark and I had been talking for ages about getting his hands on this guitar so it was a lovely moment, a great song to do it on and a brilliant accompanist in Carlos.
Thanks to Mark & Carlos, Katrina Anderson, Hailey Knight, Jennifer Moore, Kevin and Daniel and everyone who came out and filled the room at Gallery Fontana Swing. Next show is October 28th with Lisa Patterson's ROAM project. Visit the site for more info.
Posted at 3:15 PM