<\/p>\n
The end of 2025 marks what we can only hope is the apogee of a dark time for humanity and the planet.<\/p>\n
This reporter started to write about the past year, but \u2013 still recovering from a bad bout of flu \u2013 he gave up.<\/p>\n
Everything one might say is too grim \u2013 starting with a U.S. president who can blithely describe whole peoples as garbage, with total impunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bill Gates still pays millions of dollars in tribute to Donald Trump, despite Gates\u2019 so-called progressive credentials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Multibillionaire Gates, joining the Trump zeitgeist, has also recanted on climate change. It is now no big deal, apparently.<\/p>\n
The rest of the billionaire class not only forks over billions in cash with alacrity \u2013 they fawn obsequiously over their unabashedly Fascist leader.<\/p>\n
In Canada, we have a big-business-oriented prime minister whom a right-wing columnist once dismissed as an acolyte of Marx, Engels and Lenin.<\/p>\n
That was because of a book Mark Carney published in 2021 called Value(s)<\/em>, in which he argued capitalism will not, on its own, solve all of humanity\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n Heresy.<\/p>\n It should be comforting to the columnist that when Carney entered the prime minister\u2019s office in 2025, he left the guy who wrote that radical and heretical book at home, deep in the basement, never to be heard from again.<\/p>\n Carney, the onetime banker, has turned out to be as smart, manipulative, and focused a politician of the Right as we\u2019ve ever had in this country.\u00a0<\/p>\n A case in point: Carney\u2019s supporters chuckle at the deft way he has sidelined Indigenous opposition to his agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last spring, Carney put Indigenous people into a handful of senior cabinet roles. But they have been chastened, it appears, to keep a scrupulous silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the same time, the PM has set up his own Indigenous advisory body, designed to bypass the legitimate representatives of many Indigenous groups in Canada: the Assembly of First Nations.<\/p>\n Enough of that, at least for now. It\u2019s all too depressing and demoralizing.<\/p>\n What this writer needs now is the solace \u2013 and even perhaps quiet ecstasy \u2013 of music.<\/p>\n I have seen how people who are almost non-verbal and suffering from severe, age-related cognitive disorder can come alive in the presence of music performed live.<\/p>\n Recorded music, especially the anodyne offerings of institutional background music, does not have the same effect.<\/p>\n But play some familiar tunes on a piano for these folks, and you will have them singing what one might have thought were long-forgotten lyrics to once-familiar songs.<\/p>\n My thesis is that for all of us, regardless of our state of cognitive or physical health, music provides a spiritual balm that can, at least for a time, shield us from the slings and arrows of an outrageous and too-often horrifying world.<\/p>\n As for me, I am both a player and a listener to music, and I need both experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are lots of different genres of music out there, of course, especially of the highly marketed, commercial variety.<\/p>\n Much of that does not move me, to be frank, though I respect others\u2019 tastes and choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n My own go-to places, musically, are what we have come to call classical music, and, even more, jazz.\u00a0<\/p>\n What appeals to me most about the (small-c) classical repertoire \u2013 from the Baroque of J.S. Bach, Vivaldi and Corelli, to the Classical of Boccherini, Haydn and Mozart, through the Romantic music of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and Dvorak, to the notionally modern music of Bartok, Stravinsky and Alban Berg \u2013 is its precision.\u00a0<\/p>\n Classical music makes large and sometimes flamboyant statements. But it always does so in a precise, carefully-defined way.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is consciously-created and, often complex, music that can sound deceptively simple and tuneful.<\/p>\n You can be moved by Mozart\u2019s 40th<\/sup>Symphony, <\/em>Beethoven\u2019s Late String Quartets<\/em>, Schubert\u2019s Trout Quintet, <\/em>or Bartok\u2019s Concerto for Orchestra<\/em> without knowing anything about how it is made. In orchestral pieces, you might not even be able to tell which instruments are playing at a given moment.<\/p>\n No matter. The world of classical music is not an exclusive club. All are welcome.<\/p>\n But it could enhance your experience if you did know what was going on beneath the surface \u2013 if, for instance, you could hear how a composer has taken one or more melodies and written variations on them, weaving them together in a coherent piece.<\/p>\n Jazz is similar in that sense, but to an even greater extent.<\/p>\n The essence of jazz is improvisation. Musicians compose as they play, in real time.<\/p>\n Much of jazz is based on a large repertoire of mostly quite old and established, and some new, popular tunes.<\/p>\n Musicians refer to the songs in the jazz repertoire as \u201cstandards\u201d. The list is long, including everything from Over the Rainbow,<\/em> written in the 1930s, to Stevie Wonder\u2019s You Are the Sunshine of My Life<\/em>, to much more recent songs.<\/p>\n But the essence of the music is not the source material; it is what individual performers make of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n A jazz performance features more than a reading of well-known or lesser-known songs (and some originals). Its most important features are the solos on those tunes by the members of the band.<\/p>\n Indeed, what intrigues me most about jazz is the tension between a high degree of order and precision (like classical music in that sense) combined with a large dose of spontaneity.<\/p>\n Typically, jazz improvisers will quite faithfully follow the rhythmic and harmonic structure of a song, but on the spot will invent new melodies based on those structures.<\/p>\n It is lightning in a bottle. A jazz musician will almost never play the same tune the same way twice. Each interpretation \u2013 each new solo \u2013 is a new adventure.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many great jazz instrumentalists sing the original song to themselves, while improvising on it. That keeps them grounded and disciplined.\u00a0<\/p>\n Except for some more out-there jazz (especially so-called free jazz), jazz as performed these days (and in the past) is highly organized and focused.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jazz is not any-old-thing chaos. It is rigorous, ordered and logical, while at the same time full of liberated musical abandon.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s why it is appealing, and why so many of us find it irresistible.<\/p>\n This holiday season this writer invites you to discover some great Canadian jazz artists, of the past and of the present. Some of you might be discovering this music for the first time. It will be worth your time.<\/p>\n First of all, there is the late flutist and composer Mo Koffman. His best-known piece is an early one, a 12-bar blues called the Swinging Shepherd Blues<\/em>. He also composed the theme music for the CBC Radio show As It Happens<\/em>.<\/p>\n Then, there is the late trumpeter and flugelhornist Guido Basso. He played with everyone in his day, and even wrote and performed theme music for early CBC TV shows, notably Front-Page Challenge<\/em>. Basso\u2019s interpretation of Kurt Weill\u2019s Lost in the Stars<\/em>, backed by a large ensemble including a string section, is sublime.<\/p>\n As well, there is the biggest name of all in Canadian jazz, the late composer and pianist Oscar Peterson. He recorded mostly with trios, sometimes with an added instrument. With guitarist Joe Pass, Peterson did some brilliant recordings. Listen to their reading of the standard Just Friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n Similar to Peterson, we have Montreal\u2019s Oliver Jones, who is still around, though he says he\u2019s retired. Both Jones and Peterson recorded Peterson\u2019s classic gospel-style Hymn to Freedom<\/em>, more than once, in more than one key \u2013 well worth seeking out.<\/p>\n Still young and active are four gifted singers: Carole Welsman, (world renowned) Diana Krall, Caity Gyorgy, Sophie Milman, and, up in Whitehorse, Fawn Fritzen (who sings in multiple languages, including Mandarin).<\/p>\n Both Welsman and Krall accompany themselves on piano \u2013 both, in fact, started on piano and added singing later.\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019ve probably heard of Diana Krall, who lives in California these days. Even if you do not know their names, it is worth checking the others out.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another double-threat Canadian lady of jazz is Bria Skonberg, who both sings and plays trumpet in a classic style, inspired by the likes of Louis Armstrong.<\/p>\n Finally, here are two more pianists: Lorraine Desmarais, also from Montreal, and, originally from British Columbia but now in the U.S., Renee Rosnes.<\/p>\n Both are masters of good taste and technical brilliance on the keys.<\/p>\n And, one more thing, two great Canadian classical <\/em>performers not to be missed are pianist Angela Hewitt and violinist James Ehnes.<\/p>\n If any or all of these fine music-makers do not help dispel the overwhelming feelings of despair brought on by all the unrelenting bad news to which we are exposed hourly, I am not sure what will.<\/p>\n All the best for the New Year to all.<\/p>\nMusic does more than merely sooth the soul<\/h2>\n
Music composed on the spot<\/h2>\n
Some recommended listening<\/h2>\n