Press

Composer breaks out jazz for dance troupe
Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald

Published: Thursday, June 05, 2008

Rubim de Toledo is the composer, music director and bass player in Tinge and Tone, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (DJD) new production, which opens tonight at the Max Bell Theatre at EPCOR Centre. The Herald caught up with Toledo as he drove to rehearsal Tuesday. He pulled over and chatted about Tinge and Tone, and all things jazz and DJD-related.

Q. What's Tinge and Tone?

A. In the past, DJD has explored a lot of different types of dance and music that you can consider jazz, but isn't exactly traditional jazz, so this show is a chance for them to get back to their roots, and go back to some more traditional dance and traditional jazz music. It incorporates taps music. It also features a couple different choreographers: Hannah Stilwell and Michele Moss, two of the founders of DJD who have left the company but have come back to choreograph this show; Kimberley Cooper, their current resident choreographer; Sarisa Figueroa, the artistic director of the show, who is doing the bulk of the choreography and Jamie Freeman Cormack. (There is also choreography from Danny Nielsen in the show)

Q. What's the flavour of the music?

A. We're calling it a traditional jazz quintet, because there's five guys. There's a typical lineup: bass, piano, drums, trumpet saxophone, which is a typical jazz quintet format. It's not only very traditional jazz. There's some very early jazz, and then there's some modern jazz. There's some Latin jazz. It kind of goes all over the spectrum. Anything you could add jazz to is in there.

Q. Does collaborating with a dance company fuel you creatively?

A. Oh of course. First of all, just working with DJD is a real pleasure, because they have such a high level of professionality and production. Getting to do these kind of big theatre shows with all their crews, and production and wardrobe people, you know, set designers -- it's just such a great experience as an artist to have that kind of surrounding. Musically, it's great to work with different types of artists besides just musicians, because all of a sudden you're reaching different parts of your brain to find creative ideas. For example, dancers listen to music differently than musicians do.
As a composer, they make certain choices, musically, that I wouldn't necessarily choose -- like I might not want to flow in a certain way, or (have a composition) be a certain duration, or go to a certain place -- but choreographically, that's what they want, so I have to find ways to keep it musical and interesting and true to what my idea as a composer is, but (also) keep them happy. If I wasn't working with dancers (or choreographers), I wouldn't be thinking of those things.

Q. When you aren't working with DJD, what are you up to?

A. (I play with) Bomba, a Latin jazz group. We've been around for many years and we're just finishing our fourth disc. It's (called) Quatro Caminos, which means Four Corners or Crossroads. It's kind of like the next evolution in what we do. It explores instrumental Latin jazz, vocal Latin jazz. There are many guest artists on it. We get into some Brazilian stuff that we haven't done until now. We were just in Europe and now we're going to do some festivals in summer. We'll be playing the Calgary Folk Festival.

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