Canto

A weekend afternoon in early March, and three musicians gather to rehearse in a crowded living room. The rehearsal space can barely fit them and their instruments as they tune up, warm up, confer quietly on practice order. A pair of concerts is in the offing.
"Ten Thousand Miles, then."
Suddenly, they are playing, filling the room with sound like an acoustic sunrise scouring the landscape with blinding beautiful light. The song gathers momentum, an old ballad set to new music, a tale as timeless as breathing. The final major resolving chord. Then peace.
"Well," says Kim Erickson at her piano. Damon Dowbak, on mandocello, and Sage Reynolds, on standup bass, grin, gaze expectantly. "That's quite fine, since we haven't played together since last August!"
"I'm on two hours' sleep," Reynolds quips, adding that he had played a late night gig in his current home city of Montreal before flying in the early morning to the Lakehead.
Their words speak of the special challenge posed in playing and staying together. Their music belies the separation. In spite of Reynolds living thousands of kilometres away, the members of Canto pick up where they left off. 2006 was a good year for them, with local concerts at the Lakehead Unitarian Fellowship and a well-received set at Summerfolk in Owen Sound, Ont. Prior to that, they were not strangers to one another.
"I've known Sage since he was a little kid," muses Dowbak. "I watched him grow up. All of a sudden, he was amazing!"
"I'd been living here for four years in 2004," Reynolds answers. "I'd jammed a lot, played with Damon, Danny Johnson, Cliff Ojala, and of course Kim."
"We worked together a few times," adds Erickson, "and then in 2006, we coalesced into Canto. It seemed a natural thing."
Erickson's turn of phrase describes Canto well, especially given the welter of influences that the three veteran musicians bring with them, both in their writing and their cover songs.
Dowbak and Reynolds are both steeped in jazz, Reynolds working as a full-time bassist and session man in Montreal. Erickson is as comfortable in cabaret music as she is in classical music, along with folk styles of a variety of countries and traditions. All three cite world music, especially Latin American, African and European music as a lasting influence and love. The group's name and signature song, in fact, stem from a traditional Portuguese singer.
"Canto is the title of a fado song by Misia (pronounced Mee-Shee-Ah," says Erickson. "She writes beautiful string music, very dark."
Members of Thunder Bay's Canto will showcase their own writing as well as their musicianship in their forthcoming concert. For her part, Erickson has moved a considerable distance from the music of her Away cd (2000).
"My voice is lower, darker in colour, and my writing is more introspective, gutsy and strong," she says.
Dowbak is more recently come to writing, pleased to be showcased for his own work after years of backing up fellow musicians. Both he and Reynolds are immersed in the jazz improvisation tradition.
"I like to set up a framework," Dowbak says, "and work from that. In one of my pieces, everybody would take a section and improvise from there. Last year, we had no encore, so we improvised one on the spot!"
"I write what I hear, but what I hear isn't necessarily out there in modern jazz," Reynolds adds. "I like to create strong melodies you can grab onto, good grooves, music that's interesting. Any complexity is a byproduct, not the central thing."
For all their shared views in music, members' differences are also important. In their upcoming concert, Dowbak and Reynolds will work through several jazz and world-influenced pieces in duet, while Erickson will do several turns as cabaret vocalist in the styles of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. For these songs, Danny Johnson will accompany on piano. And there is Canto, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
Canto (Kim Erickson, Damon Dowbak, and Sage Reynolds) will perform Saturday, March 10, beginning at 8 p.m., at the Lakehead Unitarian Fellowship, 129 S. Algoma St. Tickets are $15 adult; $12 students and seniors; available only at the door.
- Peter Fergus-Moore, March '07. - The Chronicle-Journal