Joe Trio - Cameron Wilson, Charles Inkman, Allen Stiles , 18 July 2019

 Vancouver has one very good thing of everything (one less since the Umbrella Shop closed). It has Stanley Park, the Orpheum, Granville Island, the Turning Point Ensemble, Bard on the Beach, Standing Wave, Early Music Vancouver, Arts Umbrella Dance Company and

Joe Trio

Because Joe Trio was founded in 1989 some of the newer folks might not know the existence of this trio (Cameron Wilson, violin, Allen Stiles, piano and Charles Inkman, cello).

They would be at a loss perhaps understanding that the trio is sort of a compressed (one less) Kronos Quartet that may have had an overdose of laughing gas at the dentist.

They play classical music, contemporary music (including new just composed music), music you have never heard before, baroque music, jazz and it is all injected with an equal part of virtuoso excellence and dry humour.

Any concert of Joe Trio is one that will make you smile, enlighten you and perhaps help you snub at some of those classical music snobs in their smoking and straight jackets. These are musicians that put on pants one leg at a time.

Imagine such a concert in the comfort of an intimate living room with your feet on a carpet while you and your Rosemary (not really as I mean my Rosemary) while sitting on a plush sofa.

That was the case tonight in a concert at trombonist and bass hornist Sharman King’s home complete with wine and food. The concert was a prelude to a tour by the Trio to Ottawa, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Stratford.

My Rosemary seldom smiles but she went over her daily quota tonight in over smiling.

Not that the music was ever as funny as The Sad Story of Little Joe Who Played the Violin which ends with Joe being a pop-tart breakfast for a vicious lion.

Nor would my Rosemary have noticed my tears while Joe Trio played an orchestration by José Bragato (a Piazzolla cellist) of Piazzolla’s Verano Porteño.

Few can ever answer my question, “Has any other composer ever written music about one city (Buenos Aires)?" And I seldom tell anyone that I fell in love with an Argentine girl at a live performance of Piazzolla playing La Milonga del Angel at the Teatro Florida in Buenos Aires in 1967.

The Trio played Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, an Argentine Milonga Nocturna by J Plaza, some Gershwin (The Man I Love), a couple of tunes by Brian Wilson, and a Cameron Wilson original Jive in Blue Minor which was one of his first commissions for the California St.Michael Trio.

But besides that Piazolla what got me in the gut was the Andante con motto

movement from Schubert’s Trio op 100. This was elegant music with pathos in which the Trio amply proved that they don’t always have to be funny to be really good.

One surprise of the evening was that the Trio with just the banging of a gong (only once) was a quartet wit Vern Griffiths on the gong.

Vern Griffiths

During the interval I had a chat with the CBC-retired sound man Don Harder (wearing pants and not a kilt). This man is famous among his peers but unheralded by the rest as so much talent is hidden in our low key CBC. I have been told that Cecilia Bartoli tried to lure him to return to Europe to be her recording engineer. He turned her down. One of his peers, Sharman King told me that there are plenty of bad recordings made at the CBC through the years that contrast with the excellence of Harder’s.

I have two of his recordings. One is a raw solo playing of Bach’s Chaconne,  Partita in D minor for solo violin (BWV 1004) played by Monica Huggett. Any closer with the sound and Monica would be stepping on my toes. I had the good fortune of being assigned to photograph Huggett at her Portland home. I gave her a copy of Harder's recording which she had never heard. She was pleased!

The other is a recording of Gidon Kramer playing Piazzolla’s “Tango Operita” María de Buenos Aires complete with the narration by the Uruguayan librettist and poet, Horacio Ferrer. The group (a small orchestra) played at the Chan. I have Kramer’s official version recorded elsewhere and it is a poor copy of my Harder original. What is Harder’s explanation? “Alex I recorded it on the fly but it was in the Chan.” It would seem that the Chan made the difference. Sharman King and many others would disagree.

And so it was a fine evening of good music in a friendly place surrounded by a few friends.

What could I possibly want? 

For Don Harder to record some version of this concert.

In Praise of the Trombone by Sharman King 

Don Harder  The Distilation of Perfect Sound
Piazzolla and the romance of appliances

Jive in Blue Major by Cameron Wilson played by the St. Michael Trio

Schubert Trio with Tomkins on cello (I know her)

Piazzolla - Milonga del Angel