Caribbean Latin Jazz band, CANEFIRE played TOBAGO JAZZ EXPERIENCE, APRIL 25

Canada             Cuba          Trinidad

update 3 on April 25

The Arbor Room, Hart House, University of Toronto was the venue of a free concert on March 12 given by Canefire, a seven piece band featuring pan men, Jeremy Ledbetter, and Marc Mosca from Trinidad; Cubans Alexis Baró on trumpet, drummer Chendy León, Alberto Suarez on percussion and bassist Yoser Rodriguez; and Canadian saxophonist Braxton Hicks.

 

The previous weekend (Saturday, March 07), the band was at the Millpond Centre at 106 Victoria St. W., Alliston, Canada where, as simcoe.com has reported, “Canefire brought the house down with a blend of saxophone and steel drums, with an infectious rhythm of the island beat.”

Canefire’s sound is grounded on Trinidadian Calypso, Latin, Jazz and Blues.  No wonder since Ledbetter has lived and worked in Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba.

His experience in and with Trinidad has seen him share the stage with all-out Calypso bands and the calypsonian, David Rudder – with whom he has a seven-year working relationship as his pianist, musical director, arranger and producer – and artists like Ralph McDonald and Andy Narell who have found a happy medium at the Calypso-Jazz junction.

Jeremy Ledbetter, who can now be said to be at home there too, earned himself a degree in Jazz performance from York University in Toronto.

Canefire goes back to Trinidad off and on and was originally scheduled to return to the Caribbean in April for the Tobago Jazz Festival, now deceased.  They in fact made the trip on April 25, but to the replacement festival called Tobago Jazz Experience.

The band was on the same Latin Jazz stage with Trinidad’s Élan Parlé led by pianist Michael Low Chew Tung aka Ming, and Mungal Patasar.

Canefire has one CD on the market, a 2005 recording of original material called Kaiso Blue.  Narell is in there as a guest.  But that was then; this is now: The Andy Narell Group, steel pan Caribbean Jazz, 8 p.m. April 3, UNC Asheville’s Lipinsky Auditorium; and April 22, Pan Jazz in d Yard, Tobago Jazz Experience with Liam Teague and others.