The Composers Collective Big Band: The Toronto Project
The Composers Collective Big Band

Toronto boasts such a vibrant and diverse mix of ethnicities and locales, it offers a perfect springboard for compositional imaginings. For The Toronto Project, the Composers Collective Big Band (CCBB) asked numerous city-based jazz composers to write about the neighbourhoods and aspects of the city that most inspire them, the result an immensely satisfying collection of large ensemble performances. The concept, frankly, is so inspired and rich in artistic possibility, it's a wonder no one did it before.

Led by trombonist and composer Christian Overton and founded in 2005, the CCBB is an eighteen-piece jazz ensemble featuring some of the city's best musicians, many of them bandleaders in their own right and with flourishing careers of their own. Taking part, for example, are Tara Davidson (alto and soprano saxes, flute) and trombonist William Carn, known for their Carn Davidson 9 group, as well as bassist Justin Gray, who also contributed “Interweave” to the project.

North America's fifth largest city, Toronto has long been a breeding ground for dynamic jazz talent, and The Toronto Project shows just how robust the city's talent pool of musicians and composers currently is. Eight formal compositions are performed, with each preceded by a brief field recording of the locale to be musically addressed, often in the form of a public address announcement from a subway station or bus stop. That gives the recording the feel of a travelogue, as if one's moving through the city one place at a time. As might be anticipated, much of the material is uptempo in keeping with the city's high-energy pace (e.g., Shirantha Beddage's frantic “Transit,” which considers how Toronto might appear from a bird's-eye view).

One of the best pieces, the resplendent “West Toronto Ode,” appears first, written by Cuban-Canadian Pablosky Rosales and designed to celebrate the warm community of Little Portugal and capture the city's “melting-pot” character. Rosales contributes a fine Cuban Tres guitar solo, but the swinging performance's even more memorable for the swirling flutes with which it begins and the sultry, jazz-funk groove delivered by Gray and drummer Jeff Halischuk. The ensemble's lustrous horns and woodwinds also do much to distinguish this fabulous scene-setter. Sultry too is Overton's episodic “Spadina,” which captures the vivid colour of the district and its busy Chinatown area. Davidson elevates the tune with a snake-charming soprano turn before Amely Zhou's erhu adds a wistful element that segues into a breezy Overton solo and inspired ensemble interplay.

Different city locales were inspirations, from St. Clair West (“Non-Sequitur”) to Liberty Village (“Inside the Toy Factory”). Whereas trombonist Tom Richards' action-packed “Non-Sequitur” grants alto saxophonist Chris Roberts an excellent stage to strut his considerable stuff, Chelsea McBride's “Inside the Toy Factory” makes full use of the ensemble's resources with a hard-driving number alternating between bop-styled and infectious funk episodes. On Gray's “Interweave,” the presence of Ravi Naimpally's tabla helps bring the city's Indian culture to the fore, as do sinuous saxophone phrasings by the Kays, Jonathan on tenor and Andrew Kay alto. On the quieter tip is the lyrical ballad “Finding Home,” co-composed by Maya Killtron and guitarist Erik Patterson and featuring a lovely vocal by her that reflects on the feeling of solitude a person can sometimes experience when living in a city filled with millions. The musicianship and arrangements are excellent throughout and serve the material extremely well. The eight composers who contributed to The Toronto Project must, one presumes, be thrilled by the dynamic treatments their material receives on the release. As a musical portrait of the city, it flatters the writers and Overton's ensemble in equal measure.

May 2023