Monthly Archives: October 2008

Rachel Beausoleil at the NAC

A demo reel I made for Rachel Beausoleil, using footage I shot of her jazz vocal per­for­mance at the NAC Fourth Stage, as well as snip­pets of an inter­view I did with her. As a way of get­ting more expo­sure for future gigs, she asked for some video that she could shop around to dif­fer­ent venues. I agreed to make this demo reel for her in return for some tick­ets to the show for me and my friends.

It was a won­der­ful con­cert in an inti­mate set­ting. The reper­toire was quite var­ied — from waltz to Bossa nova to bal­lad — but all songs were per­formed as a jazz inter­pre­ta­tions. The setlist includ­ed Aquarius by The Fifth Dimension, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, and Evangeline by Isabelle Pierre.

Of spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance is that the per­for­mance was on Rachel’s 40th birth­day. She had planned the con­cert over a year ago as a come­back after hav­ing two kids and giv­ing up her time for them.

I can now embed videos in HD after acquir­ing a Vimeo Plus account; they look oh-so-sexy, and even bet­ter in full-screen.

One of the high­lights of the night was Tom Posner’s bass solo dur­ing Caravan (a clas­sic Duke Ellington big-band piece) clock­ing in at almost two min­utes. You can see how sur­prised Rachel is when Tom los­es him­self in the music and keeps going on this great flur­ry of notes. This solo is some kind of awe­some that I can’t even describe.

Nylon Smile

In any case, I’ve been work­ing on my projects, though most­ly try­ing to fin­ish the ones I’ve start­ed. Sometimes it seems like there’s no end. Aside from an awe­some Friday night (and an hour after din­ner on Saturday night try­ing to digest a big meal), I’ve been work­ing non-stop this week­end.

At the very least, the days have brought much rain, and even more inspi­ra­tion. I miss the snow, but the rain sat­is­fies for now. I’m not even sure if I like how ear­ly the sun sets at this time of year. Both day and night affect the mind in dif­fer­ent ways, bring­ing out (or mask­ing) dif­fer­ent parts of you that you for­got were there. Each has its own impor­tance.

At one point, I real­ized that life is a series of Jens, from win­ter to win­ter.

There’s been much music too, so much that I’m think­ing about start­ing up a pod­cast again. But it’s anoth­er project, anoth­er idea I have yet to do.

I could have writ­ten so much more about each one of these top­ics, but I tried to keep digres­sion to a min­i­mum. They’d end up being full-blown entries of their own, and I’d nev­er fin­ish writ­ing any­thing. For these entries, the ones that ram­ble about no sub­ject in par­tic­u­lar, I always look for lyrics, or titles, or snip­pets from oth­er peo­ple’s entries that sort of explain the mood I’m in. Yep.

I’ve been feel­ing dis­con­nect­ed, some­what for­get­ting my Taoist teach­ings. This is prob­a­bly a good thing, as I tend to be focused on the thought and the­o­ries too often, and not enough on the appli­ca­tion.

There’s a fine line between res­ig­na­tion and accep­tance. But some­times I feel like I’ve fall­en face-first to one side.

To be hon­est, I’ve been writ­ing this entry for over a week now, but my thoughts and ideas keep branch­ing out. Every time I sit down at the com­put­er, I delete some­thing that’s lost rel­e­vance, and add some­thing more. Like this.

Eagle vs Shark

Eagle vs Shark

Eagle vs Shark is the new Postal Service.

The movie I can’t stop watch­ing. The movie I can’t watch with any­one else.

Not because it’s painful in any way, but because it’s sacred. A movie where no one else would under­stand the way I see it. A reminder that I was adored once too, when some­one loved me beyond lim­it or con­di­tion. (A mem­o­ry that I need right now.)

But I will leave you with this lit­tle song, if only for a short while. You need colours and can­dles in your room when you lis­ten though, and an imag­i­na­tion will serve you well. Having a make­out part­ner and wear­ing a cos­tume of your favourite ani­mal is option­al.

That is all you need to know, for this is all I can say.