Thursday night’s Conflunce Concerts show at Heliconian Hall was titled Songs from Toronto and consisted of songs by Toronto singer-songwriters arranged for a larger ensemble by Andrew Downing.  And by larger ensemble I mean various combinations of string trio, double bass, guitars of sundry varieties, vibraphone and piano.  To further spice things up some of the songs were sung by Teiya Kasahara who is a rather different Fach than the average singer in this genre.

I have very limited exposure to Toronto’s singer-songer writer community (I didn’t even know it was a “thing”) and so it’s hard to assess where last night departed from some sort of norm or not or to assess whether arranging for a larger ensemble enhanced the experience or detracted from the intimate nature of someone singing their own stuff in their own way.  FWIW I do have a fair bit of experience with singer-song writer music from the British isles and Atlantic Canada and I know that can work pretty well with a band.  Think Liza Carthy or Billy Bragg for example.

So how did I feel about it?  Basically it’s not my music.  There’s more about Romantic Love and personal relations and it’s less rooted in working class experience and class struggle than the music I relate to.  Even songs about relationships are more about emotions and less about sex!  The arrangements tend to reinforce this.  Andrew is a skilled arranger and his background is jazz.  And it’s interesting that there is this intersectionality between jazz and song because where I come from jazz is this kind of elitist bubble all of its own and ensemble arrangements of new songs tend to draw more on folk tradition.

There are exceptions of course to all this of course and there were songs that I really liked.  Justin Orok’s songs are quietly ironic and deal with economic issues in an offbeat way and John Southworth has a quality that’s a bit like a less angry John Cooper Clarke.  There was also some terrific musicianship (from everyone… this is not second rate music making it’s just different…and perhaps just not my thing) and Maggie Keogh has a lovely voice.  I would have loved to see what Patricia O’Callaghan did with this music but she was sick.  Teiya, as always, was amazing.

One of the main reasons I go to Confluence Concerts is because they expose me to music I’m unfamiliar with and sometimes it just isn’t going to “click” for me.  This was one of those occasions.  Still, it’s kind of fun to try and I’m glad I can!

Photo credits: Chara Tan