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Featuring the NOW Orchestra with special guest Amina Claudine Myers and the Voices of Joy Chamber Choir.

NOW Orchestra and Amina Claudine Myers
November 16, 2007, 8 pm

Vancouver East Cultural Centre
1895 Venables Street
Vancouver, British Columbia

Tickets are $20 regular, $15 for members and $5 for students.
Available at the door, at the VECC box office or at TicketMaster (www.ticketmaster.ca / 604.280.3311).

Hear it NOW: The 20th Annual Celebration of New and Improvised Music

Featuring THE NOW ORCHESTRA under the direction of Coat Cooke with special guest AMINA CLAUDINE MYERS

Since 1987, Hear it NOW has brought creative, inventive music to Vancouver audiences, showcasing the finest local, national and international players. NOW’s special guest this year is acclaimed pianist, organist, vocalist, composer and arranger Amina Claudine Myers, who appears with the large ensemble at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre with guest vocalists Christine Duncan, Phoebe MacRae, DB Boyko, Viviane Houle, Peter Hurst and Matthew MacTavish . Celebrate the NOW Orchestra’s 30th anniversary with its 20th Hear it NOW presentation.

More about the concert on www.noworchestra.com/.

The NOW Orchestra is keen on working with guest artists, either workshop or residence style. Past collaborators have included René Lussier (Le Tour du Bloc) and George Lewis (The Shadowgraph Series). These previous projects cast the outside musician/composer as a featured guest. Pola puts Marilyn Crispell in the role of an integrated guest -- which probably explains why the album is billed to the NOW Orchestra with Crispell, and not the other way around, as was the case with the Lussier and Lewis projects. The grande dame's piano is not mixed front center; she is not taking one solo after another, either. She is simply playing with the orchestra, as part of the orchestra. She also contributes one composition, the 15-minute "Yin Yang," which gives the NOW quite a workout. High in dynamics, with excellent use of the band's skillful brass section, the piece is an exhilarating run for your money. Ron Samworth's "M.C." (a set of initials that should be easy to solve) is where the pianist is featured the most and offers another highlight. Artistic director, conductor, and sax player Coat Cooke penned the other four pieces, including the punchy three-minute conduction "Pola" and the concluding "Suffused with Blue Light," a delicate work with recitation by vocalist Kate Hammett-Vaughan, who is otherwise underused on this album. Every instrument in this 14-piece big band is exquisitely recorded and separated, giving all the more "whoomp" to the massed trumpets and trombones. Some fans of Crispell will probably feel she deserved a bigger spotlight, but the NOW Orchestra is always worth a listen, with or without her. ~~ François Couture, All Music Guide

“I regard the Now Orchestra as one of the finest large creative ensembles active in the last decade. The combinations of high levels of individual creativity and virtuosity with a strong sens of collectivity is a rare and treasured combinations that the Now Orchestra manifests very strongly...” ~~ George Lewis

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By the time of this recording, the Canadian-based NOW Orchestra had established itself as perhaps the leading (and one of the few) free-style jazz-oriented large groups in North America. Boasting some exceptional talent, such as pianist Paul Plimley, cellist Peggy Lee, and trumpeter Rob Blakeslee, the Orchestra combines an affinity for sophisticated compositions with its propensity to work with acclaimed guest musicians. This is the orchestra's third recording with trombonist George Lewis, whose extraordinary improvisational skills place him in a singular category of world-class soloists. All of the pieces on this recording were written by Lewis, who once again shows himself to be a sophisticated and wide-ranging writer, incorporating a plethora of influences from swing to avant-garde jazz and even postmodern classical music. Lewis conducts his largely complex compositions and also solos convincingly on three of the tracks. While it easy to prefer some of ewis' acclaimed small group recordings to his big-band works, there are still numerous joys to be found here -- partially due to some of the surprisingly impressive improvisations from the Orchestra's lesser-known members such as saxophonist Coat Cooke and trombonist Ralph Eppel (who has at least partially absorbed Lewis' unique vibrato and style). Occasionally, Lewis' writing gets bogged down in over-sophistication, but when he is in top form, as on his edifying "Smashing Clusters," fireworks explode as he seamlessly blends composition and improvisation. ~~ Steven Loewy, All Music Guide

“I regard the Now Orchestra as one of the finest large creative ensembles active in the last twenty years.” ~~ George Lewis

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WOWOW was recorded live on November 14 and 15, 1997, as the NOW Orchestra was celebrating its 20th anniversary with a concert series in hometown Vancouver, Canada. Three new works were created for the occasion, all of them featured (in part) on this CD.

The music is typical NOW: a big hard-bopping stage band sound with a rocking rhythm section (including guitar (electric)). The three works showcased here are built in contrasting sections, exploiting the orchestra's ability to run at 200 m.p.h. and stop on a dime. Thoroughly composed passages (usually a solid beat with hot staccato licks) are followed by free improvisation sections where everything seems to fall apart, only to pick up later on, stronger than ever. Guests George Lewis (trombone), Vinny Golia (clarinets/saxes/flutes) and Paul Cram (clarinet/tenor sax) add power to the NOW's already strong line-up (including pianist Paul Plimley and the four members of the quartet Talking Pictures). A female vocalist is used in all three works, although more distinctly in "WOWOW," where she howls the line "Suicide by side".

WOWOW is an entertaining record and a very good example of what the NOW Orchestra is capable of. Two weaker points are the under-use of Ron Samworth, a great guitar player almost unheard on this disc, and the presence of crude edits. It seems the goal was to fit all three new works on the album, but it has been achieved at the cost of editing, most evident on "WOWOW" when the piece fades out on a newly-installed groove. ~~ François Couture, All Music Guide

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In early 1995, Montreal avant-garde guitarist René Lussier flew to Vancouver, bringing with him drummer Pierre Tanguay, to meet with the NOW Orchestra. Recorded in the studio over two days, Le Tour du Bloc (Around the Block) is proof that the orchestra learned all of Lussier's tricks. This CD makes a great companion to the guitarist's previous album Le Corps de L'ouvrage, only expanding the sound palette, thanks to the 15-piece ensemble. The music is filled with stop-and-go signals, humorous circus-like licks, opposite melodies clashing into cacophony, and complex counterpuntal figures ending on ludicrous resolutions. "Première Course" and "Le Tour du Bloc" are typical fast-paced pieces, full of twists and turns. "Call Now" takes a more subtle form, developing nice contrasting motifs. "Y'a Rien de Facile" is a bombastic show closer defused by a long fade out. Le Tour du Bloc features strong musical performances by Lussier and Tanguay, but also by John Korsrud (trumpet), Peggy Lee (cello), jazz pianist Paul Plimley, and Kate Hammett-Vaughan on vocals. Even though this album represents a singular experience for Lussier, it remains true to the style he developed in his early-'90s projects. ~~ François Couture, All Music Guide

"Large ensemble from Vancouver playing René Lussier’s compositions. Positively uplifting!" ~~ George Lewis

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