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In pondering these ticket stories I am often struck by a noticeable amount of overlap. Of course there are a lot of acts I’ve seen twice or more, tons of venues I’ve been to countless times, and lots of groups tend to tour the same routes at the same time of year, all of which can sometimes make this little exercise of mine a little tricky. Ah, but there are worse problems to have than conflating hundreds of concerts in and out of one another (trust me, I have some of them).
June 25th, 2010 is a kaleidoscopal example of these overlaps overlapping into each other’s overlaps, as I attended the Ottawa jazz festival to see Bill Frisell and Herbie Hancock.
Though this was only my…let’s see now…eighteenth time attending shows at the Ottawa jazz festival, I’ve subsequently gone a zillion more times, and lots of those shows were in the National Arts Centre Studio, which is where Bill Frisell was playing. Heck, of the fourteen times I’ve seen Bill Frisell seven of them were at the Ottawa jazz fest, three of them in this very studio (including another Frisell show featuring different side musicians on the night following this one) and two of them were even on June 25th’s (two were on June 24th’s too, plus one each on a June 23rd, 26th, and 27th. Crazy, huh?). That’s a lot of mid-summer Frisell.
Add to this the fact that just over half of my seven Herbie Hancock concerts were also at the Ottawa jazz festival and, well, you can see how things can sometimes get a bit mixed. Luckily I am a rather big Frisellhead and with a bit of mental jarring I can recall this particular concert quite well.
He was standing in the centre of the small stage with his black Telecaster (outfitted with his signature Bigsby olde-school vibrato arm) with two sidemen set up close on either side. To Frisell’s right was violinist Eyvind Kang and on his left sat drummer Rudy Royston. Melodic and endlessly interesting, the music remained firmly in the realm of “ethereal soundscape”, even during the unmistakable and anthemic Strawberry Fields Forever. It was such a great show that I had little problem sitting through the whole thing, even knowing that a) I would be seeing Bill play in the same room again the following evening, and b) that the legendary Herbie Hancock was playing at the very same time outside on the festival’s main stage. But like I say, such is my love and appreciation for Bill Frisell; I happily stayed in my seat until Bill’s very last note.
That said, after that last note I left in a hurry, racing outside and down to the main stage in time to grab a frosty beer and catch just enough of Herbie Hancock’s set to say that I saw it.
I saw it. It was the legendary Herbie Hancock playing his most crowd-pleasing set-enders. What more do you need to hear?
Todd Man Out 