I stepped out into
Ottawa’s dusk and sighed. However many kilometers I’d traveled that day from
the mild Niagara region was but a speck of Canadian geography; still the dotted
path I made from sunny vineyards to near-arctic tundra felt like a journey
through Canada, each town a fertile shade different from the last.
Those six hours in
the car likely weren’t as prolific as Harris Eisenstadt’s catalog, which for
the past decade has spanned an internationalist’s tastes while dabbling
nostalgically of late in Canada, where the Brooklyn-based artist spent his younger years. After
collaborating on thirty-some-odd recordings as a session drummer or member of
September Trio and Convergence Quartet, Eisenstadt’s recent work has found him
operating as a bandleader, touring on the weight of his own compositions. Impressive
though that feat is, Eisenstadt took to the Fourth Stage of the NAC on this
chilly Monday evening and introduced himself by way of the Canada Day quintet.
Now at first it seemed like merely a gracious move to bury his reputation in
the collaborative spirit of his colleagues; I mean the ticket explicitly bears
his birth name, not “Canada Day”, as do the recordings released by this quintet.
But as soon as “Slow and Steady” takes shape, a vibraphone and cymbal-touched
ambient piece topped over by pale horns and a tensely ambling bass, I begin to
understand Eisenstadt’s democratic leanings.
No differently than
how Art Blakey encouraged his sidemen to step up and evolve while performing in
his troupe, Eisenstadt’s Canada Day approached each song as a shared experience
full of instrumental face-offs and solos. Following that icicle-cool opening track – one of
many new tracks, Eisenstadt promised – the band broke into livelier
improvisations. “The Ombudsman I”, which began in oscillating
vibraphone patterns that resonated increasingly like electronic sine waves, swelled
into a dynamic sprawl of scathing trumpet solos and a percussive prowess I’d never
personally witnessed. Alert to every burgeoning note, Eisenstadt proved an able
navigator throughout, introducing well-timed lulls amid the cacophony of horns
and in spastic, concise drum solos, reinstating the tune with fresh purpose.
Thrilling though it
was to hear the band flirt so diligently with discord, Canada Day’s performance
should be credited more to organization than to off-the-cuff improvisation.
Besides the sheet music that positioned itself within eyesight of each musician,
there was a notable regimen that enabled each track to thrive: Eisenstadt and
bassist Garth Stevenson constantly communicated the quintet’s sense of momentum,
Nate Wooley and Matt Bauder (on trumpet and tenor sax, respectively) carried
melody and disharmony at the forefront while Chris Dingman permeated the gaps
between the aforementioned instruments with webs of dreamy vibraphone. That
subsequent lack of negative space might’ve felt overwhelming to the average
listener if not for Eisenstadt’s transitional impetus, which treated each
cluster of improvisation as another compositional link in the chain.
As surely as they’d
stretch off in different directions before reassembling into tight song-craft,
Canada Day’s overall pacing made light of its hour-and-a-half runtime. In one
breath, dual horns would be punctuating funky grooves (“Nosey Parker”) and Dingman
would illustrate how the vibraphone can offer a full body workout (on the
ever-changing new song “Interactivity”). Minutes later, Canada Day would be settling
into the romantic bass and cascading horns of a deft and surprisingly
conservative ode to Eisenstadt’s wife (“Like It Was But a Bit Different”). It
was a well-paced performance in which everyone walked back into winter feeling
elevated. Patriotic, even.
Here's a video that showcases the making of Canada Day II, released in 2011:
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