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On June 27th I and a small contingent of my music-loving compadres were fortunate to see the wonderful Sisters Euclid perform at the Ottawa jazz fest. It’s not like the Sisters aren’t popular; if you read these things with any persistence you’ve surely noticed that as far as I am personally concerned the band is very, very popular. But in a global sense they are only popular amongst the very small group of people out there who have heard of them, which isn’t many so they aren’t at all famous.
But despite their popularity (if not their lack of fame) it was the venue that was responsible for the relatively thin showing by my fellow music-eaters for this particular Sister Euclid fiesta. For though we were all excited that the group was in Ottawa for the jazz festival, they had been booked into the tiniest of the festival’s venues. And while the 4th Stage is a nifty little venue* it should be pointed out that a) it has a capacity that barely hits into triple-digits and b) during the jazz festival priority seating is given to individual ticket-holders which leaves full-festival pass holders (like me and all my chums) concerned they might not get through the door. As a result people with festival passes often lean towards sure-thing shows on bigger stages when deciding which event to see on any given night.
Anyway, it was the Sisters so of course everybody got in.
Good thing too, because the show was fantastic! I really, honestly can’t recall a time when this band didn’t completely knock my socks off. Gary Taylor on drums. Wow. The guy is like a big eyes-shut smile with sticks floating musically behind his kit. Always bright and alive and never intrusive. Crispy. Ian DeSouza on bass. You just have to appreciate a grown man who has given over the bulk of his days to the thick low end of vibration. It just does something calming to a pile of skandas to get shook up that way for that long, and Ian is one of those piles of skandas. Well, I don’t really know the guy but he sounds like it.
Now was this before Mark Lalama replaced Rob Gusevs on keys? Hmm…I think it was Rob…not sure. The two guys certainly brought different things to the table…equal but different. Mark is younger and a bit jumpier whereas Rob was like an elder statesman of harmonic support but either way the role of the keyboards in a Sisters show has always been to create a crystalline wash of cushioned wallpaper for Kevin Breit to beat his musical brain against for two hours at a stretch.
It’s just such a blast of pure joy for me to watch Kevin Breit turn his random brain waves into discernible musical notes. When I watch him play time stands still. I think it’s because my heart pretty much stops beating at every solo. The ideas just keep coming and coming and coming, and each one is as shocking and surprising as a lucid absinthe dream. Angular, elongated, growling, and wafting unexpectedly between thick chunks and thin slippery wisps…and that’s just the first twenty seconds! Then it gets manic, furry, strange, abstract, perforated, pompatous, and alternately cerebral and Neanderthal. Now, imagine if I stretched these superfluous adverbial adjectifiers out for several miles without once even thinking about repeating myself and you would be getting close to what I experience when Kevin Breit plays a solo.
I know, it’s only mindfulness and the opposite of mindfulness operating in tandem like a crazy jazz-rock Yin Yang cycle of modal birth-and-rebirth, but I like it, like it, yes I do.
*Especially once the small venue got a good going-over when the rest of the National Arts Centre underwent extensive renovations in 2017.
Todd Man Out 