Terminal City Brass Band a the Painted Ship - 27 April 2025

The Terminal City Brass Band features Michael Coury on trumpet, Tim Sars on sax, Brian Harding on trombone, Marc Lindy on tuba, and Liam MacDonald on percussion, plus everyone on vocals.

The sousaphone (/ˈsuːzəfoʊn/ SOO-zə-fohn) is a brass musical instrument in the tuba family. Created around 1893 by J. W. Pepper at the direction of American bandleader John Philip Sousa (after whom the instrument was then named), it was designed to be easier to play than the concert tuba while standing or marching, as well as to carry the sound of the instrument above the heads of the band. Like the tuba, sound is produced by moving air past the lips, causing them to vibrate or "buzz" into a large cupped mouthpeace. Wikepedia

This past Sunday I was invited by my friend Neil Wedman to accompany him to the Painted Ship - 2884 W Broadway, Vancouver. It is a smallish restaurant bar that features a house band every Sunday called The Terminal City Brass Band, beginning at 4PM. Wedman’s friend Brian Harding plays in it and I met Harding years ago when he performed with the Jazzmanian Devils.

It was most pleasant to sit with Wedman at the bar and listen to the band play one of my favourite Duke Ellington compositions, Caravan.

While there I ran into friend Ona Grauer with her mother and daughter.

Ona Grauer

But there was another friend there with his partner. It was Mark Haney who happens to be a remarkable classical (etc) stand-up bass player who for many years was the composer in residence at the Mountain View Cemetery (yes!). He would organize avant-garde concerts there in the acoustically privileged theatre usually used for funeral gatherings. It seems that when the city of Vancouver first learned about this it quickly ended Haney’s tenure.

Haney was the creator of something called Isolation Commissions which ocurred during the Covid years. Haney would obtain donations and then he would commission local musicians to compose and play in what became 80 wonderful videos. My favourite involved trombonist  Jeremy Berkman playing his instrument in an underground parking lot.

Jeremy Berkman - Isolation Commission & 81 

All about Mark Haney's Isolation Commissions

It is unbelievable that it had to be Wedman who would inform me of lovely music being played only two blocks from my Kits house. I will return next Sunday.

And that Haney’s wonderfully peculiar position at the Mountain View Cemetery, is no more says something about how city hall DOES not promote culture. We need a Pierre Polievre type of polictian not to defund the CBC but to defund city hall full on politicians who seem to do nothing.

But for me the most exciting feature of the Painted Ship concert by the Terminal City Brass Band was to listen to those loud oompahs on Mark Lindy's tuba. When I see him again on another Sunday I will have him explain if his tuba is also a bass horn and a sousaphone. 

Anybody who might question the decided unfocus of my photographs should be aware that I use a device called a Lensbaby on my Fuji X-E1 digital camera. My days of shooting for newspapers and magazines are long gone. I can now do as I please.