We made a video recording of one of our sets. To listen, please visit the Playlist on Youtube, or use the player below.

Here is a list of the songs we performed, (mostly jazz standards) with links to the videos:

• Ocean Apart – Geoff Peters
• Quiet Night – Geoff Peters
• Bemsha Swing – Thelonious Monk
• Killer Joe – Benny Golson
• Blue Bossa – Kenny Dorham
• Alice in Wonderland – Fain/Hilliard
• Blue Train – John Coltrane

pegEsus Quintet Live at Hermann's Jazz Club (poster by Oliver Brooks)

Back in August I performed a show with the pegEsus Quintet at Hermann’s Jazz Club in Victoria.

pegEsus is led by vocalist Peggy Hogan, who is currently studying music and literature at Concordia University.

The pegEsus Quintet is: Peggy Hogan voice, Geoff Peters piano, Ben Fast bass, Nick Houghton drums, and Amanda Paterson saxophone.

I recorded the show using my Minidisc recorder and camcorder, and put together the whole thing online as a series of Youtube videos.

• Watch entire show on Youtube
• Download the MP3′s of the concert (free)
• Check out Peggy’s myspace page.
• See my article on how use Minidiscs to record live music.

Here is a set list and links to the individual videos:

Set 1:

• Song For My Father by Horace Silver

• Your Mind is On Vacation by Mose Allison

• Close Enough for Love by Johnny Mandel, Paul Williams

• Bye Bye Blackbird by Ray Henderson

• Straight No Chaser by Thelonious Monk

• Georgia on My Mind by Hoagy Carmichael

• West Coast Blues by Wes Montgomery

Set 2:

• Softly as In A Morning Sunrise by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II

• A Timeless Place (The Peacocks) by Norma Winstone / Jimmy Rowles

• It Ain’t Necessarily So by George and Ira Gershwin

• Twisted by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

• God Bless the Child by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.

The show includes:

• Herlin Riley. “He’s probably the master of the New Orleans drum style,” Whitaker said.

• Two more visiting New Orleans men, pianist Peter Martin and multi-instrumentalist Don Vappie, who plays the banjo for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and his own Creole Jazz Serenaders.

• The Professors of Jazz, a combo that includes Whitaker, Wilkinson, Rivera, Randy Gelispie, Rick Roe and, this year, Anderson.

• The Beaumont Brass Quintet.

• More MSU classical musicians – pianist Panayis Lyras, cellist Suren Bagratuni, violinist Dmitri Berlinsky and tenor Richard Fracker.

• Baritone Haijing Fu. He and Fracker sing with the Metropolitan Opera.

Had a lesson with Chris Sigerson today. Worked on a Cedar Walton tune called Holy Land. holyLand.mid. This one is like a jazzed-up gospel tune, with a classical-style piano interlude in the middle. I also had prepared There is No Greater Love, for which he showed me a cool “deceptive cadence” Ab7 A7 BbMaj7 instead of going directly to BbMaj7. And we worked a bit on All Of You, where he showed me this really cool #11 voicing for Bb7b9 (B,D,E,Ab), as well as pedalling over Bb for the A section. An exercise he gave me for improving my sense of time is to look at my watch and try to count 15 seconds without looking, and check to see if I’ve kept good time. This will be fun to try whenever I’m waiting for the bus. A phrasing tip he gave me was to make up some nonsense words that have a rhythm to them, and think of them when playing.

Today I saw the Metronomes at the Silvertone on Commercial Drive. Colin suggested we go, since the guitar player, Neil Cruickshank, plays in Leisure Lab.

Very funky, inspiring stuff. Makes me want to JAM!!! The pianist had a good setup – a Rhodes/Synth combination – it was interesting to observe his technique: at one point during a funk tune he was moving his whole forearm up and down rapidly, playing in perfect syncopation. He was also doing very interesting moves with his left hand – not just filling in chords but rather adding a tasteful rhythmic element. Too bad the audience turn-out was not too great – most of the audience members were musicians themselves. I wonder whether you have to be a musician to appreciate this stuff.