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<i>The Ryan Driver Quintet Plays The Stephen Parkinson Songbook</i> is the first official release by <b>The Ryan Driver Quintet</b>, my peculiar lounge-jazz group that has been performing monthly in Toronto for 14 years. The goal of this group has always been to breathe a new kind of life into popular ballads from the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. We play only the slow songs, which we fill with odd improvisational meanderings, tenderness, and doorways into other worlds. The members of the group have much experience playing experimental jazz and improvised music in many contexts but together we make a point of bringing the focus back to the essence of song form and infusing it with exciting strangeness and fire. So many exciting things have, of course, been done in the past with this particular repertoire but the five of us do all know a little something about that history and we do each have ideas as to how we might stretch things further still and in different directions. The members of the quintet are, individually and collectively, true adventurers, deeply curious and ready to jump wholeheartedly into unfamiliar territory when the time is right, or uncertain, or even "wrong", all the while maintaining a steadfast grip on deep love and respect for the genre.
It is also the first release representing a new (!) collection of songs by contemporary Canadian composer <b>Stephen Parkinson</b>. This body of work marks a significant divergence from his previous musical endeavours, which have been mostly academic contemporary, electronic, or freely improvisational. Indeed, it is hard to trace any logical musical thread that could have instigated this apparent detour until one realizes his tendency toward music rich in simplicity and elegance. Stephen's new songs were written especially for The Ryan Driver Quintet. It's worth noting that, as with the quintet, Stephen holds the opinion that this form, due to its immense history of treatment and re-treatment in different styles and contexts over the ages and phases of jazz, increasingly offers more boundless potential for creative exploration while retaining those special familiar characteristics that make music palatable to a wide cross-section of the population. He extends full interpretive license to the quintet, knowing full well and even delighting in the fact that we might happily watch a tune dissolve in the middle of a phrase or intentionally lose ourselves in a single gesture for too long, etc., etc. We take many whimsical liberties for the sake of life and joy. We honour music deeply, as well as the social and psychological means through which it comes to exist, evolve, affect, and transmute, and I am sure that this is evident in our performances. Without any background information, there would be no way of knowing that Stephen's songs weren't written 70 years ago. The melodies, chord progressions, and lyrics are fully in keeping with the style and are as lovely as any of the standards that have stood the test of time.
<i>"The Ryan Driver Quintet plays lounge jazz for a parallel universe. But that parallel universe is our own. Although Ryan and his band have mastered the sound and style of lounge jazz circa 1940-1960, the music they play is not nostalgic. Like Borges' character Pierre Menard who wants to rewrite Don Quixote word for word in twentieth century Argentina, Ryan and friends ask what does it mean to bring this sound to life here and now in Toronto, 2013? The Quartet, Quintet and sometimes Sextet have been playing together for 14 years now, mostly in dive bars around Toronto, and the tension between the space of the beloved Tranzac, the Australian/New Zealand social club where I've seen them play so many times, often to what seems like total indifference, or even an almost completely empty room, and the lovely, intimate music that is being made is crucial to what the band is doing. Drunken students, chattering on their cell phones stare in through the windows. The snow comes down. More pints of strong ale are poured. Time appears to grind to a total halt and what is there to do in that moment aside from play the Blues, and fend off painful memories with mysterious cascades of sound. Sometimes the music feels slightly defiant, even tragic, because the echo of this almost acoustic music barely reaches beyond the room to the bland, indifferent metropolis. You have to listen in close to hear Ryan's soft, introverted, soulful voice ... or to get the outrageous but nonetheless honorable meanderings that the band puts these songs through, in their quest to reconcile freedom with feeling. But on the other hand, what the Quintet do is really real in that space, their intention is very pure and it becomes part of the city that we live in too. And now through these recordings, you can listen in too." </i> - Marcus Boon 2014
- Genre
- Jazz