Lulu Presents the Brodie West Quintet from Toronto Nov. 1st

Alexander Varty

Lulu Performing Arts Society

Brodie West wants to come clean. It’s possible, he says from his home in Toronto, that the last time he played on Gabriola he might have taken things a bit too far. Drummer Shawn Abedin certainly did.

Some of the details are lost in the mists of time, but the occasion was a local show by West’s turn-of-the-millennium trio Zebradonk—and if you remember those jazz pranksters you might have some idea of where this is going.

“It was probably a memorable gig!” West says. “We were getting up to all kinds of stuff. And during that gig Shawn poured a bunch of shampoo onto his head—and then there was shampoo lather going all over the placeI”

In Abedin’s defence, the three had recently graduated from music school, and were on a mission to shake up the sharp-suited seriousness of the Wynton Marsalis era. It was a job that needed to be done—and now that it has been done, West’s performance-art days are over.

“I really didn’t keep that up,” he says, laughing. “That was really circumstantial with the musicians I was playing with. The craziness was pretty sincere, though, and I’ve never managed to reproduce that in any other situation.”

Rest assured that shower caps will not be required when the Lulu Performing Arts Society brings a very different Brodie West band to the Phoenix Auditorium on Friday (November 1). (For tickets and more information, visit www.luluperformingarts.ca/.) West’s touring quintet—which includes pianist Tania Gill, bassist Josh Cole, and drummers Nick Fraser and Philippe Melanson—pursues a more subtle kind of adventure, one born out of at least a decade of playing together—or more. “Tania and I have played together since I was 13, or something like that,” West says, “and I’m almost 50.”

Such long-term relationships make negotiating West’s intricate compositions easier. As the saxophonist points out, “We’ve developed our own way of communicating, although it’s not always obvious what we’re talking about.

“It’s almost telepathic, and I feel that’s a real thing with music.

“We know each other’s instincts really well, but you can’t really quantify it or explain it exactly. It’s just a connection that’s pretty magical.”

On the band’s most recent LP, Meadow of Dreams, this rapport plays out in a series of mysterious vignettes, in which the unusual double-drummer format allows for a sinuous, fluid pulse that’s spread across the entire band.

There’s rarely an audible leader, even if West writes all of the tunes, and this suggests that all five players share a rich, mycelial network that’s as complex and interconnected as any ecosystem. What better music for mushroom season on Gabriola?