Wednesday night saw a celebration of youth at the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival as a troupe of emerging talents took to the Regent Theatre stage. The group of young musicians performed both instrumental and vocal Jazz standards as well as a few heartfelt ballads.
The concert opened up with a reunion of past winners of the festival’s Rising Young Star award, Bram Gielsen (2006 - Bass), Norbert Botos (2007 – Drums), Daniel Jamieson (2008 – Sax) and Lucian Gray (2009 – Guitar) joined by this year’s winner Eli Bennett on the tenor sax.
The second half of the show saw this year’s youth All-Star Ensemble come together and pay tribute to Cannonball Adderley. Chase Sanborn, a member of the University of Toronto Jazz Faculty, shared the stage with future stars Barbra Lica (Vocals), Daniel Ko (Sax), Matt Wright (Guitar), Andrew Wright (Bass) and Ian Wright (Drums).
All 11 musicians took to the stage together to close out the show with a version of Bye Bye Blackbird.
Update: QuinteLive was also able to talk to Frank Artés, who does marketing work for the Festival. Frank fills us in on what’s planed for the final days of the festival.
One evening last winter, I went to Chez Lucien’s in Ottawa to catch jazz veteran and ace sax player Hugh O’Connor who has a regular Sunday gig there with keyboardist Mark Ferguson. I managed to get a table right beside the 81-year-old O’Connor. There was a kid sitting nearby going over some charts. At one point, O’Connor leaned over to Ferguson and said, “He’s going to sit in with us for a couple of numbers.” Then he nodded to the kid, who opened a case and pulled out a tenor sax.
The young man didn’t look to be more than 16 . . . but when he started playing, he certainly didn’t sound like any 16-year-old. It was just one soaring and searing solo after another. When he was done, he seemed surprised by the applause. He smiled, bowed, put his sax away, and left.
I turned to O’Connor and said, “Where’d you find the kid?”
“He’s a local boy. Studies with MikeTremblay,” O’Connor replied. He paused, and then said, “He’s 16. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
The “kid” was Daniel Ko. And what a great job he does on his solo in this video.