It was a beautiful moon this morning as I took the streetcar eastbound along Dundas Street to the bus station. I really wanted to catch the 9am Steve Coleman workshop here in Guelph at the Festival and I made it.

Good to see him again and interesting and informative to hear Eve-Marie Breglia speak of the Documentary she made about Steve’s world travels and music called Elements of One.

Steve and Eve both spoke about the same amount and focused mostly on the documentary which was fine with me. (I was especially interested as there is talk of a documentary being made about me…stay tuned)

I did a podcast interview with Jen Shyu, the vocalist for Five Elements too. Hopefully that will be online soon after you are reading this.

Soon after that we had a really nice lunch provided by the festival and then went downstairs to hear Ravi Naimpally, Oliver Schroer and Tanya Tagaq Gillis. The combination of tabla, fiddle and throat singing was a great idea and with these three great artists it was never anything less than vivid. If I had a budget to make other people’s records at Guildwood Records this would be high on my list of priorities.

I also caught part of the percussion workshop that included Paul Plimley Jesse Stuart and Le Quan Ninh among others.

The question of what makes an improvised music concert “happening” was on the table and this became quite interesting. Personally I was glad to hear Paul and Le Qun Ninh agree that it is not always happening. (I find some folks in the improvised music community are unwilling to analyze or compare shows, records etc.)

Paul Plimely went as far as saying that with the people he is put together with it is rarely “happening”. Then he added that if he is immediately transported somewhere else or the music starts to play him that it is a good clue that things are going to go well.

Nice to hear some discussion as well as playing at a workshop. (this is not always the case)

I think I will go and find my accommodations here in Guelph, and get ready for this evening’s concert featuring Hard Rubber Orchestra and Joelle Leandre with Bill Dixon.

I look forward to any comments from others attending the festival! I will return asap.

Tim

p.s. I was a little weired out about being here as a media person but I was almost immediately over that as people continually come up to me to talk to me about my music.