Jazzman

This past weekend was the second-annual Brantford International Jazz Festival.

Full coverage, including my thoughts on the actual music, can be found in the current issue of the Sputnik (website coming soon, hopefully).

In short, I have some gripes about the scheduling - I think Saturday's acts might have turned some people off, whereas Sunday's were extremely fan-friendly - but was still very impressed with the musicianship top to bottom.

As of this writing, clips of the festival are a little hard to come by on Youtube. However, we do have a couple of the Shuffle Demons, including this 15-second bit which demonstrates a fair bit of showmanship:



After a bit of searching, I did come across some clips from last year's event. The first one I found was this one, the first 45 seconds of which I remembered instantly:



(Tops in the 'related videos' section is another clip from the same family, but of pianist Michael Kaeshammer.)

And finally, one video from Quintessential from last year. Quintessential are a local Brantford band (self-described as 'the largest quintet in captivity'), who apparently will find a place to play around town publicly fairly often. I'm told they played at Victoria Park a few weeks ago. Were they the best band at the 2008 show? No. But I think they were probably my favourite - partially because they played exclusively songs that I recognized and you might two - and now their entire set is on Youtube. Here's a sample:



Can't wait for 2010.

--Ryan