AIMToronto Orchestra at the third annual X Avant Festival of New Music
October 26, 2008 • Polish Combatants Hall • Toronto
Sound Mass Articulations by David Fujino

The AIMToronto Orchestra's 1-1/2 hour concert was performed as a continuous sound collage of six compositions in which the probing soloists Scott Thomson (trombone), Ronda Rindone (clarinets), Christine Duncan (voice), Colin Fisher (tenor saxophone), Ken Aldcroft (guitar), and Kyle Brenders (soprano saxophone) responded to the music's thickening curtain of sound, where sparse echoes and percussive accents of piano, drums, and vibes, played throughout.

Many sections had the sounds of new music (the vast wheels creaking and unspooling in the sky ... and especially that sense of open space); but with its implied beat, Duncan's creative vocalizations, and the modal sections, this open music clearly comes out of the free jazz improvising tradition.

I remember one section that began with whispered words exchanged amongst all the musicians; then changed into angular rhythmic phrases from the vibes and bowed strings; and then cut directly to bass clarinetist Rindone, out in the open, squalling in all registers.

... An hour-and-a-half or so later, the concert basically ended with vocalist Christine Duncan camping away delightfully, like an out-of-kilter soul singer, stuck in the middle of an avant garde orchestra, belting away.

"I've never heard anything quite like that", a fellow audience member said.

The AIMToronto Orchestra is populated with many of Toronto's most sensitive and dedicated free jazz players and they really laid down some serious compositions and some serious playing that afternoon.

It was fine music in a nice venue.

AIMToronto Orchestra
(Association of Improvising Musicians)

Kyle Brenders, Artistic Director
Nick Fraser, Germain Liu & Joe Sorbara (percussion)
Rob Clutton & Pete Johnston (basses); Tania Gill (piano)
Tilman Lewis (cello); Mika Posen (violin); Ronda Rindone (clarinets)
Rob Piilonen (flute); Ken Aldcroft (guitar); Christine Duncan (voice)
Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet); Scott Thomson (trombone)
Colin Fisher (tenor saxophone); Evan Shaw (alto saxophone)
Kyle Brenders (soprano saxophone and conducting)
www.aimtoronto.org

The Compositions
"Year of the Boar" (Justin Haynes) – "Cross-Fading Accents" (Germaine Liu)
"Follow Line Flow Line Follow" (Kyle Brenders)
"Rendered in Desperation on an Obtuse Façade Near Home" (Joe Sorbara)
"Through and Thru" (Kyle Brenders) – "Is It Better When I do it Like This?" (Justin Haynes)