Phil Dwyer - BEAUTIFUL

[charlene]

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/general2/20...dian-songbook/

Not too long ago, celebrated Canadian jazz artist Phil Dwyer gathered together some of his favourite musicians to participate in a somewhat unconventional celebration of our national songbook. Dwyer chose a collection of iconic Canadian tunes and created new arrangements for each one. He recruited a crew of stellar jazz artists -- Laila Biali, Davide Direnzo, Don Thompson, Vince Mai, Rob Piltch and Jodi Proznick -- to help bring these new interpretations to life.

We were lucky enough to capture a selection of the Canadian Songbook for Jazz tracks on video, including the above clip, which features the Phil Dwyer Septet performing Gordon Lightfoot's "Beautiful." After the jump, you can feast your eyes and ears on these talented musicians as they perform Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song," Joni Mitchell's "Free Man In Paris," Randy Bachman's "Undun" and Louis-Jean Cormier's "Moi-Leger."

[Cathy]

Beautiful sounds like an bad accompaniment to a nightmare. What makes the song beautiful to my are the lyrics, and emotion Gord puts into it. The oooing and aaahing just doesn't do it for me. Tower of Song is a little better, but is also lacking because of no lyrics. Free Man in Paris.... yuck. Bachman's Undun is a travesty. I would not have recognized it as Undun if he hadn't named it Undun. I don't know Moi-Leger or Loius-Jean Comier, but I'm betting Louis' version is much more peasing to the ears.

I don't like today's jazz. Sounds like a jumble of notes and weird chords all mish-mashed together. In high school, I played electric guitar in the jazz band, but we played a different style that included a lot of old swing standards. It was a blast!

Cathy

[JimFitzD]

Hello All,

My first post / comment here ....... apart from short thank you's for commenting on my GL cover's.

Glad I'm not a jazz musician -hard enough learning how to do stuff here....never mind all them dots. !!!...they did have them right way up yeah ?......

The footnotes at the bottom of the video did mention that Phil's a great joker, that's true......and that was after two days solid rehearsal to get it just right..... Sorry my first's a 'downer'...but hey, that's jazz. !!

I'm not educated enough.

Jim