Thanks for the Sun Ra Workshop!

Big thanks are owed to AKG Microphones for the celebration that was this Friday’s giant free outdoor workshop and jam in the sun with 15 members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, accompanied by Ethereal Tribal.

Because AKG and Soundcraft, their Canadian distributor, appreciated immediately how special this opportunity was we were able to make it happen, though we had about 2 weeks from start to finish to plan. The support their rep Jason Bolanis offered on the ground was wholehearted, the artists enjoyed the mics, and at no point did I feel like the vision I had for this event - outdoors, with the mind blowing jazz orchestra, accompanied by crowds of fan jammers, and my favorite fusion contemporary belly dancers - was distorted by the sponsor’s presence, on the contrary actually, Jason helped me figure out how to fill the band’s needs from the rider we received only about 24 hours before the show, drove me up to Italmelodie and helped return the gear, and chatted with everyone we met not just about AKG, but ethusiastically about Indyish as well. Plus we had fun.

And being sponsored by a company whose first major endorsement came from Frank Sinatra, and whose mics are used today by Kanye West is pretty fricken cool, frankly. You can read more about AKG’s history here, they are an enormous company creating world class audio and getting the personal touch right, and this week they put the good Ish in Indyish.

Thanks also go fistpumpingly out to Fringe and Suoni Festivals, who (I believe?) collaborate this year for the first time ever thanks to our Indyish finagling (we plug into already awesome systems and try to connect things to make more new good free art, and it worked! it worked!) These 2 hugely important huge festivals bring so much to the city and to independent arts on the international scale, we are honoured and lucky to have been able to make this small stitch between them which produced such euphoric results. The Fringe Festival gave this show a home and a great sound technician and their notoriety and support team. The Suoni and the OFF Jazz festival who co-produced last night’s major Sun Ra Arkestra show at Sala Rosa (Marshall Allen’s 50th year anniversary in the Arkestra!!) shared the spotlight of their great booking in bringing the Arkestra here in the first place by letting us add this on. They risked cutting into their ticket sales by doing a free event the day before, but in the end everything went well for both shows, last night at Sala was sold out though our show was packed like I’ve never seen that park, so chalk up one for “the more the merrier.” Suoni also shared their music stands, spread the word throughout the fest about the show, and helped me understand what I was taking on and how to go about it and kept me unstressed and excited with their own chill enthusiasm for the idea. I had tears in my eyes all day. Thanks to everyone who was there, and to Sun Ra for keeping the weather gorgeous, and to James Finnerty for helping me believe we could do this, and to Tristan Brand for doing a great job managing and coordinating the whole show and venue, and to Ram and the United Steelworkers crew for helping us out sharing their backline, and to all the other artists in the show, especially Penny Ashton and Franco Proietti Morph-tet!

The greatest thanks of course are owed to the Sun Ra Arkestra, because these life changing jazz musicians are also the most incredibly sweet gentlemen, gracious beyond gracious to us in all our youthful attempts, and sincerely interested in what we’re doing and how we could work together in the future, they hung out and enjoyed the other bands, and came back to the Fringe tent the next day for more indie rock loving before their show. They laughed and told stories and spoke with anyone who approached them, and when I spoke with some of the young Montreal musicians who had been at the jam before the ticketed Sun Ra show on Saturday, they told me they had been put on the guest list by the band. Their kindness, especially the incomparable Mr Marshall Allen, and hilarity, especially Wayne Smith’s (the drummer, only 27!) made you forget for moments in their company how truly great these musicians are, until they took the stage… and blew us all to Space.

Thanks to Marilis Cardinal for my new favorite photo!