I thought to try my least favourite things before the end of the month since I'd probably wouldn't spend time during my limited visits to Toronto doing them and Jazz is on that list. There's something about most shows that feel dated and stale. However, I did enjoy the orchestral jazz that Marie Goudy composed for her 12-tet. It will only be her quintet on Sunday night at The Rex, but I did also enjoyed their playing previously.
The contemplative The Huntress was a nice start to an enjoyable show of new material. It turns out that during the pandemic Goudy also fell in love. So she joked that half of her new songs will be uptempo and life-affirming and the other half will be existential despair. Tunes like Made For Me, Hold On To Me, and Planes and Trains were definitely written for lovers. Meanwhile, a song like Dance To the Stars had a psychedelic, "what-is-life-even?" quality. In fact, without the constraint of overarching themes and motifs like her symphonic Bitter Suite, Goudy's music ranged from romantic "movie theme", to sexy blues, to swinging tropical.
As with her last show pre-pandemic, I felt her solos were strongest possibly because of her familiarity with the music. But her quintet stepped up tonight. There were stretches where one great solo would be the impetus to push the next player to new heights. Perhaps not playing for the 100th time Jazz standards set their creativity on high.
Singer Jocelyn Barth seems to be Goudy's only collaborator vocally. I still have a hard time squaring that circle. Barth's full-body emoting (she should sing Kate Bush or Tori Amos) was an odd contrast to Goudy's melody and lyrics (which strays into Tony Bennett meets musical theatre territory). It kinda works but was also distracting.
Overall though, I enjoyed their first set. I didn't stay for the 2nd because I'm not much for late nights anymore. But nothing reinforced Goudy's exception proves the rule than the easy jazz cover of The Girl From Ipanema playing in the background as I was leaving.
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