What do you know! ‘Tis AUTUMN

I am somewhat surprised and yet willing to accept the fact that Autumn has indeed arrived. Summer was wonderful and filled with music and vacation time too.

I’m back to teaching in my music studio and I certainly do have some interesting piano and voice students ranging from very young to much older. Some like jazz. Some like classical music. Some are pop singer-songwriters. Some are absolute beginners. My task? To help teach and guide and motivate and cultivate the joy of music no matter what genre my students are interested in studying.

I still have space for new students in case someone out there is considering lessons. Note: typically, my music room is far more cluttered than this photo indicates and that is a fact! Often song books and piano books begin to pile up during the week. There is table for that specific purpose and every once in awhile I decide to place books back on the shelf in an attempt to keep things tidy, at least for a day or so. Ha!

Aside from my teaching I have some lovely opportunities to perform coming up, here in Vancouver and also in Toronto and I am certainly excited about the month of October.

Soon, I’ll be singing at Vancouver’s premiere jazz club: October 11th at Frankie’s!  I’m delighted about sharing some of the music I’ve been working on this past September. I’ll be singing lots of jazz standards, some are new to me and others I have revised after many years of neglecting or “resting” them. I have one new original that I will debut that evening with my band mates. Reservations can be made here: Frankie’s Jazz Club

Just a week later I will be heading to Toronto to attend the Audio Festival and the Vinyl Festival and, even more exciting to me, I’ll be singing two exclusive concerts with the acclaimed Mark Eisenman Trio. The one of a kind “Jazz In The Kitchen” concert series is where these performances will take place and tickets are available here: Jazz In The Kitchen

Last but certainly not least it’s time for the new Joy of Jazz Concert season to kick off and Sunday October 27 will be a doozy! Kate Hammett-Vaughan and I will be joined by Miles Black and Conrad Good and the evening will be a Cole Porter celebration.

Many years ago Kate performed Porter themed concerts entitled “Kate Loves Cole”. We both love Cole! So, our concert is entitled “Let’s Do It” and we’ll definitely include that song as well as many others. Further information at the website: Joy of Jazz Concerts

Enjoy your Autumn days everyone!

Karin

What’s Your Story Morning Glory?

August greetings everyone! Here in my Vancouver garden the flowers seems content with today’s refreshing rain. Moments before the rain really kicked in, I ran outside to take a photo of my Morning Glory flowers. I love this blue! It’s a good day for me to write a blog about some of the music related projects in my life right now.

I have a new recording which will be officially released in December. It’s called “I’ll Send This Dream” and it is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Thorwardson, a musician who really made an impact on many people with her songs, her sense of humour and her engaging personality. She is dearly missed. Check out more about Nancy at her website: https://www.nancythorwardson.com/

I consider myself lucky to make music with and record with mandolin star John Reischman and incredible guitarist John Miller.  I admire and respect the musicality of both these men so much! Recording engineer Marc L’Esperance  was able to record us “live off the floor” here in our dining room and I am very happy with the end result. It’s natural and unadorned and just the way we like it! We recorded some beautiful jazz standards and we also included some original songs. We’ll be performing a CD release concert later in the year. Thank you to Paul Norton for the graphic design:

I’ve been putting the finishing touches on the next Joy of Jazz Concert Series for 2019-2020. These concerts take place at Hood 29 on Main Street and this year we’re presenting the concerts on Sunday evenings: October 27, December 15, February 23 and April 26. These are early evening concerts starting at 7:30 PM so even people who are working the next morning will (hopefully) consider attending. This is my labour of love series! I am part of each concert however some of my personal pleasure comes from hearing my fellow musicians in performance together and in solo presentations as well. Web-Meister Paul Norton will have the new website up and running soon. Here’s a link to last year’s series: www.joyofjazzconcerts.com 

Take a look at who is involved in the 2019/2020 series!! Yeah, it’s going to be a doozy…

There may be one more “Plato Pop Up Performance” which will be part of this series in 2020. I’m still scheming…

Enjoy the rest of your summer days everyone and thanks for reading my blog.

Karin