Even with a limited amount of musicians present at the festival's first day, the jam session was in full swing and sounds like maybe you should check it out?
In the words of Bassist, and jam session leader John Geggie, here is what happened last night:
"ok, so like Robert Plant showed up and we wailed through Houses of the Holy, Dazed & Confused and Whole Lotta Lunch....uuhhh, so, like,...NO...that didn't happen.
BUT the ARC lounge is great...the feel on the bandstand is great, very intimate. It got noisy last night (lots of people at the back) and we will have to rejig the piano volume to cut through but onstage, it is very intimate and it feels right. I like the look of the room and there seemed to be a lot of people in there last night..Colin and the whole team at the ARC are being great...
so, it was a joy as always to play with my pals and co-conspirators in the house band, Nancy Walker and Nick Fraser....they sounded great as always and it was fun to play some new tunes for our opening set - people coming down to the session should note that the opening set by us the house trio is sometimes the most sublime and happening music of the night..I am truly blessed to be able to share music with Nancy and Nick.
We had a good night of jamming - things started off with some local players: Craig Pedersen on trumpet, Lucas Hanemann on guitar played two tunes, the 2nd one being Lady Bird (Tadd Dameron). We were then joined by vocalist Renée Yoxon (sounding GREAT). She sang Bye Bye Blackbird and All Blues. Nancy was sitting out on this segment but I could see her edging back closer to the stage and finally she crept up to the piano because she simply wanted to play ('Renée was sounded so good on All Blues, I just wanted to join in'). It was nice how just her subtle interjections of things on piano spurred Lucas to change how he was playing and go to a different place. It had a great arc and journey.
after a short break, two young players from the Galaxie Rising Starts came up with their horns (Marie on trumpet and Chris on tenor sax)...we did three tunes ending with a fast version of John Coltrane's Blues for Alice (she doesn't live here anymore).
after another shortish break, we the trio finished off the night with Wayne Shorter's ESP. We finished about 1:20am..it was pretty non-stop music and neither Nick nor I had a break all night.
a nice start to the festival jams this year."
The Jam Sessions take place at ARC The Hotel located at 140 Slater Street, Ottawa, ON K1P 5H6
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