May 3, 2017
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Changing Direction ... cont’d words. “Do you want to be serious?” Stetch recalls the maestro asking. “I said, ‘Of course. I am professional already,’ and he said, ‘Well, you need to play better than that.’” Stetch credits that encounter, and his subsequent studies with Hatheway, with changing his life, especially his approach to playing the piano. “In terms of the physical connection with the piano, and making sound, and unlocking kind of a new love for beauty and sound in music, and phrasing, I think he’s the guy for that,” Stetch says. “But in terms of ideas and compositional textures and all those kinds of things, that just comes from everywhere.” Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, Stetch was exposed to an eclectic mix of music. His father played saxophone in dance bands and had an extensive collection of jazz records. Two of his uncles were closely connected to Edmonton’s venerable jazz club, The Yardbird Suite, from its beginnings. Then, there was the strong cultural and folkloric tradition of his family’s Ukrainian heritage. In his teens, Stetch played sax with Dumka, a popular wedding band in the Edmonton area. “I didn’t really like classical that much when I was younger, because I associated it with a culture of people that I didn’t feel I would relate to,” he admits. “I don’t know exactly what that means, but I love it very much now. Whenever I do listen to music, it’s mostly that.” Coming out of high school, and wanting to pursue music, Stetch thought the music program at the University of Alberta might be the answer. “But the only thing they of-
fered for me was classical saxophone, because I was a sax player. I wasn’t very good, and I wasn’t really good enough to do classical, but that was the only fit. It was not hard to get in, but it wasn’t very fun.” He found a better fit at Grant
ism, drew praise from Downbeat magazine as “one of the best solo piano recordings in recent years.” The positive response to that album surprised Stetch, who had originally thought it would be “silly” to try incorporating Ukrainian themes into the jazz idiom.
PHOTO: Reuben Radding
Stetch’s signature meld of classical music with traditional jazz, flavoured by Eastern European and even pop musical references, will be on display in Whitehorse on Wednesday, May 10 at a special Jazz Yukon-sponsored concert at The Old Fire Hall MacEwan University, then a community college, where he made the transition from sax to piano at the age of 19. Later, he pursued a full music degree at McGill, which also exposed him to a rich jazz scene. “There were so many people playing, and we were located right downtown. That was a great time.” During more than two decades of composing and performing, Stetch has racked up six Juno nominations and released 16 albums so far. One of them, a solo piano trilogy entitled Ukrainian-
“In fact, some of the best responses were from non-Ukrainian people. They appreciated that it was from my roots, and that it was from a true place. So that was interesting.” Although Stetch is best known as a jazz musician, he isn’t comfortable with rigid categorization of musical genres. “Especially in the music schools, it seems crazy to me that there’s a whole classical department of people that only teach classical, and then there’s the specialist jazz people. It’s starting to blend and bleed over a bit now,
and I want to be involved in that,” he says. “It seems so segregated right now. Or, when it is a mishmash, they have to make a big deal, and they have to say we’re a blend of all kinds of things. Really, I think it will turn out that there will be so many blends that there will either be a million different channels, or categories, or else we’ll just call it music.” Stetch’s signature meld of classical music with traditional jazz, flavoured by Eastern European and even pop musical references, will be on display in Whitehorse on Wednesday, May 10 at a special Jazz Yukon-sponsored concert at The Old Fire Hall. Besides Stetch, the quartet known as Vulneraville consists of Steve Kortyka on sax, Philippe Lemm on drums and Ben Tiberio on bass. While they’ve only played together for a year, the four have already produced one live album and have developed “sort of a tribe language,” Stetch says. “There’s more ease and fluidity with the stuff the more we play. A lot more kind of smiling at each other, that sort of thing. It’s my first group ever where I’ve really felt a sense of devotion. We get together pretty much every week, just to get more ease with it, and a deeper understanding and evolution.” The current tour also marks the beginning of a homecoming for Stetch, who will be relocating to Vancouver in the coming months. The May 10 concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available online at www.yukontickets.com, as well as at Arts Underground and the Yukon Arts Centre box office. Ken Bolton is a freelance writer who lives southeast of Whitehorse.
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Here are a few of the answers you have been searching for: When is Condor Airlines First Flight of 2017? Sunday May 28, 2017 When is Condor Airlines Last Flight of 2017? Sunday September 17, 2017 What five cities does Condor Airlines fly from? Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Whitehorse and Halifax. Who is Condor’s interline partner in the Yukon? Air North Classical music has been widely dominated by Germanspeaking composers. Name 3 historically famous ones born in Germany: Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner and R. Strauss. German people are the world’s second biggest beer drinkers after the Czechs. How many breweries are in Germany? How many brands of beer? In total, there are approximately 1,300 breweries in Germany producing over 5,000 brands of beer. The highest density of
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popular drink outside of the United States. It’s consumed 130 million times every day around the world. 800 Million of this street food is eaten in Germany every year: Over 800 million currywurst are eaten in Germany each year – currywurst is a sausage served with a spicy sauce, and is a street food that has become a cult classic in Germany. About 7 million currywurst are eaten in Berlin alone. There’s even a museum in Berlin dedicated to the popular snack. Germany shares borders with how many other countries: Answer is 9: Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. How many stacks of What’s Up Yukon publications are on issuu? Trick question, many of you answered how many stacks are on our issuu site, however only 6 of those stacks are What’s Up Yukon Publications.