BY TED SHAW, THE WINDSOR STAR
In a sense, the two concerts by Windsor Symphony and Ron Davis at Chrysler Theatre Saturday and Sunday were tune-ups for their recording session Sunday night.
The featured works at all three were taken from the Davis set of compositions titled SymphRonica.
The classically trained Davis fused orchestral music to jazz in works that quote such composers as Bach, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
He also borrowed from gospel, traditional Jewish folk songs and Quebec fiddle music, to name a few. The com-position Pawpwalk, meanwhile, has a Horace Silver-like groove.
The orchestrations of melodic material are reminiscent of the symphonic early recordings of Chuck Mangione and the orchestra sessions Miles Davis did with Gil Evans.
The concert featured many of the works that will make it on to the CD. There was a beautiful slow gospel composition, Allelujah, and a stunning ballad written for his wife, singer Daniela Nardi, titled Danza Daniela.
Nardi then joined him onstage to sing an Italian pop song.
Davis adapted a Bach melody from the St. Matthew Passion, Mache dich, mein Herze, rein, into a mesmerizing orchestral piece that called on flutist Jean-François Rompré, oboist Graham Mackenzie and the bass player in his trio, Mike Downes, for solos.
Another inventive composition, D'Ror Yikra, employed a traditional Jewish song with quotes from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
John Morris Russell was back on the podium after an absence of more than month, and he seemed invigorated by the occasion. In the samba piece that ended the concert, Thomachonga, Russell left the conductor's stand and invited members of the orchestra to dance.
Another keynote work was Sergei's Shuffle, a boogie- woogie piano piece using themes from Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7.
The trio, consisting of Davis on piano, Downes on bass and Ted Warren on drums, played two songs on their own - a cover of the 1950s pop hit My Shining Hour, and Davis's adaptation of a popular Polish song, retitled My Mother's Father's Song, which was the title of Davis' most recent CD.
The performance Saturday, unfortunately, was marred by the mushy microphone used by Davis. There were some minor flubs in the orchestra, too, which presumably were cleared up for the recording session.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
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by TED SHAW, THE WINDSOR STAR
An orchestral work by Toronto jazz artist Ron Davis has Windsor's fingerprints all over it.
SymphRonica, which Davis and his trio perform tonight and Sunday with Windsor Symphony Orchestra, then record as a CD on Sunday at the Chrysler Theatre, came out of talks Davis had with WSO's John Morris Russell in February 2009.
The work had its world première at the time, but Davis and Russell have fine-tuned it in preparation for this weekend's concerts and the recording session.
When Davis was last in Windsor, everyone was stoked at the WSO's having been nominated for a Juno Award for its first recording under Russell, Peter & The Wolf.
Almost exactly three years later, that enthusiasm is overflowing.
Davis, 54, said the idea for SymphRonica actually goes back to 2007 when former WSO executive director Jay Katz asked him if he had an orchestral work.
"Ironically, I'd just started thinking about it," said Davis. "I was trained as a classical musician and turned to jazz as I got older. But I was always interested in linking the two in one work."
Davis had employed classical effects on his 2005 CD, Shimmering Rhythm, where his jazz trio was backed by a cello, viola, and two clarinets.
SymphRonica is more than just an exercise in stirring the musical pot, said Davis.
"It was inspired by the whole community of Windsor," he said. "It's good news rather than another report about layoffs and plant closures."
Concert times for Davis and WSO are tonight at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2: 30 p.m. at Chrysler Theatre, St. Clair Centre for the Arts. Tickets $11 to $58 available at mywso.ca or by calling 519-973-1238.
tshaw@windsorstar.com
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
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Originally published in The Lawyers Weekly (www.lawyersweekly.ca) October 7, 2011
Michael Benedict
When lawyer Ron Davis realized he lacked the “right stuff” to be a successful litigator, he became a French professor at the University of Toronto. But that, too, turned out to be a career wrong turn. Now, he has found joy for more than a decade as an award-winning, Toronto-based jazz pianist whose talents have taken him to the city’s fabled Massey Hall and venues around the world.
“As long as you don’t care about income, a music career is a happy one,” Davis says. “As much as I liked lawyers and academics, there’s no more friendlier group than musicians.”
Still, Davis, 54, remains a member of the Ontario Bar and works 100 to 200 hours annually helping high-profile lawyers such as Eddie Greenspan prepare facta. “I seem to have a way of analyzing law creatively and finding new perspectives,” Davis says.
The Greenspan connection goes back several decades when the two met as Davis started out articling for renowned family law expert Phil Epstein. Greenspan’s offices were nearby.
To keep up to date with legal developments, Davis reads the Ontario Reports (which is published by LexisNexis Canada Inc. and also publishes The Lawyers Weekly) avidly as well as other court decisions. Through “sleep deprivation,” he also finds time also to maintain a rigorous practice schedule, record music and play.
Clearly, Davis’s creative gifts are strongest in the music field. His childhood Toronto home was filled with the sounds of classical music, but he had to badger his struggling Holocaust-survivor parents to buy a piano. He was eight years old at the time. A few years later, Davis was exposed to jazz. “I knew I had to play that music,” he says.
When he practised at school, girls would hang around the piano to listen. “That gave me all the motivation I needed,” he says.
Davis made his public debut at 13, playing the “Maple Leaf Rag” at a convention held by the now defunct Toronto Ragtime Society. His professional debut came at 16 at the opening of a Toronto restaurant. Club and restaurant gigs continued for several years, helping to put Davis through university and law school.
As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, Davis studied French — and loved it. He wanted to pursue language studies at the graduate level, but his parents made a “persuasive” case that he, like an older brother, should take up law. A compromise was struck: Davis went to law school, but only because the University of Ottawa had just launched a French language common law program.
After practising for a year in a firm where his older brother Milton was a partner, Davis realized he had made a wrong career choice. “To be a successful litigator,” he says, “you need the ego of a gladiator and the calm presence of a judicious mind. You have to be analytical but also assertive, regardless of the facts. I’m not just confrontational enough.”
At the time, 1986, Davis ran into one of his French teachers from university. Within a year, he was working part-time as a lawyer—“ unheard of in those days”— and taking full-time graduate studies at the University of Toronto. After his PhD, he taught there for a few years but again felt unfulfilled.
That’s when another chance meeting had a profound effect. Davis met a jazz saxophonist who persuaded him to pick up the piano after a 12-year hiatus. Soon the duo was playing gigs and the rest, as they say, is history. Now, Davis has seven albums behind him, several of which have received major recognition, is working on three others.
Davis has toured Asia times, playing once before members of Japan’s imperial The three new albums in development include one as accompanist to his singer-wife Daniela The other two are for his jazz One is with the Windsor Symphony, playing a fusion classical music and jazz, a concept Davis has termed SymphRonica.
Clearly, while writing briefs keeps his mind sharp supplements his earnings, has become Davis’s calling.
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Published on shalomlife.com
“I’m a Jew, I play jazz -- Jewish Jazz.” jokes Ron Davis, the first of many artists to participate in Toronto Jewish Music Week performances. According to the internationally acclaimed composer, the Toronto and Toronto Jewish jazz scene is one of the best right now. “Toronto is a jazz haven.”
Davis played beautiful renditions of various Jewish jazz artists, which brought a warm and jovial tone to the room. His presence was magnetic and his comic stories definitely held up with the audience.
With pieces like “It Might As Well Be Spring” and the fun bebop sounds of Sunny Rollins, I ventured to close my eyes and daydream a black-and-white silent movie in a swanky jazz joint from the 1940s. His music takes you to a different place and you’re no longer watching him perform, you’re feeling the performance.
Davis also treated us with compositions of his own work and shares a delightful story regarding his new album, My Mother’s Father’s Song.
His mother, Alice, used to tell him a story about her father’s restaurant in Warsaw, Poland, which was a popular spot in the 1930s for politicos. She claimed it was so well-known that they had written a song about it. However, she couldn’t remember anything about the piece and no family members were able to confirm details, which ultimately lead him to believe that the story was probably fictitious. Some years later at the Polish pavilion at a fair, the story finally became a reality and the song was rediscovered. Naturally, Davis immediately took the opportunity to learn to play, "Bal u Grubego Joska" or "Party at Fat Joe's," paying significant homage to his family.
Lucky for us, after telling the story he played the emotional and historically rich song. I was moved by the journey that this piece of art had taken before fate brought it Davis and his family.
After an incredible hour of music and jazz-ucation (jazz-education), I had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the performer.
On inspiration:
“It varies, it varies extremely. There are songs that are written in passion, in anger, songs written straight from the head, or songs written just from basic pleasure. But I will say this -- there’s a line by Phillip Roth in the book Every Man, and it says ‘Amateurs worry about inspiration, the rest of us get up in the morning and just go to work.’ It’s such a part of my fabric that I can’t possibly separate inspiration and actual composing or playing.”
On advice for young artists:
“There are two parts to this answer, the second part is the good news. The bad news is that before you go into the arts as a profession [realize] that it’s a business, and when you’re in the music business there can often be far more business than music. The good news is this, if you’re prepared to do the work and you love your art enough to devote your life to it [suffer the same slings and arrows as anybody suffers], and still find a place to make your art, it’s the best thing in the world.”
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The title tune of Ron's most recent recording, My Mother's Father's Song, was profiled recently on national CBC Radio.
Produced by radio veteran Barb Dickie, and aired on the popular CBC Radio1 program Tapestry, the profile recounts Ron's discovery of an old piece of Polish folk music, and what he learned about his family's past and the grandfather he never knew.
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- Profile description from the Tapestry website
A brilliant adventure. On his latest recording, My Mother's Father's Song, Ron Davis embraces both his family's rich cultural heritage, and boldly re-engages with the jazz standard.
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