Have Horns Will Travel

Summer and Fall went by quickly. Here are a few snapshots of where our musical adventure has taken us:

Owen Sound's Mudtown Music and Arts Festival

Tall Ships Owen Sound

Queen Street, Toronto

Toronto Island

Kensington Market, Toronto

Guelph, Ontario

What a Blast!

Today's concerts and workshop went well. Not only did our youngsters had a blast playing; teachers and students exit the gym in two-steps and big smiles on their faces.

We'll do it again next Thursday. Three schools!

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Music and Dance is what makes my world

Fwd: Our Big Day

Nolan and Kaelin got up at 5:30 this morning. Well, apart from the fact that it is band morning and they needed to be at school by 7:00, today is also Day One of our Spring School Tour. The younglings have spent days co-ordinating what to wear for this gig. They even went out and got a nice vest for one of the boys during their break when taking advantage of early dismissal and busking downtown on Wednesday.

Our hallway is once again packed with instruments waiting to be loaded into the van. We will be heading out to our first destination, Sydenham Community School, in less than an hour!

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Music and Dance is what makes my world

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Music and Dance is what makes my world

To quote Sun Ra:

They tried to fool you, now we got to school you! 

Just seven days to go before our 2013 Spring School Tour where we will play our kind of music for the gradeschool kids at no less than five Owen Sound elementaries where we'll play some, chat some, and hope to inspire at least of few kids to take up band instruments when they get to Grade 7!

It's going to be an adventure: 11 musicians sharing two vans with a sousaphone and who knows how many instrument cases, with three shows a day (two and a workshop on one of them) and all said and done before the final school bell rings!

Django Reinhardt Three Fingered Lightning

Django Reinhardt Three Fingered Lightning - YouTube

Earth Hour Lights Out! – Toronto Beaches March 23

Earth Hour Lights Out! – Beaches | Beaches|Life magazine: �

THE FIRST ONE OF ITS KIND, EARTH HOUR LIGHTS OUT BEACHES

What are you doing on Sat. March 23? Come and join the Beaches first celebration of Earth Hour LIGHTS OUT! Together with Music, Dance, Lights Out Ceremony, Candle Lights and Paper lanterns. Drum up Earth Hour awareness while having lots of fun. Take the ONE Hour beyond!

We need your help to get the Word Out, TELL YOUR FRIENDS! INVITE THEM TO JOIN YOU!

Entertainment Update:

We have solo artist Nikki Lemonbeat – ykulele, Ted Sherk Base will be perform at the Bandshell; The Eighth Street Orchestra (family of 5 from Owen Sound) show case… More update to come…

�This event is presented in partnership between Beaches Living and Applegrove Community Centre. Thanks for the support of Boardwalk Place and�all our volunteers! �

ESO @ Kitch - Copenhagen

ESO @ Kitch - Copenhagen

Composed by Charlie Davis in 1923, legend has it Bix Beiderbecke and the Wolverines attended a Davis concert, and then swarmed the composer backstage after the show to beg permission to record his tune in '24.

Oh, and for the record, the song title refers to a popular brand of chewing tobacco -- does that make it rated R? — recorded at the KITCH Bar in Toronto 2013-03-12

Fletcher Henderson did a great cover of this one too, arranged by Don Redman (although arguably a collaboration of many) catapulted the Henderson band out of the commercial sound of the day and is considered by many to be the first fore-shadowing of what would become the big-band Swing sound.

Eighth Street Orchestra on CBC Music

Eighth Street Orchestra on CBC Music - Free Streaming Radio, Videos, Songs, Concerts & Playlists

The Orchestra may have a nuclear core of the Murphy family, but on any given date our musical friends might include local elementary, middle school and high school band kids, other buskers who'll sit in for a set or three, musician spouses out on a shopping day lured in to "just play one more" (and some of them get hooked! :) ...

Just as it should be, music as a social architecture, a shared place and time where we, this community of players and audience together with the streets and offices and trees and out into the cosmos beyond, all come alive in a dancing timespace groove we create together

Night Market Marquee

The lineup for the Lupercalia Night Market boasted a pretty fine array of street artists. I think I caught more than a few of the club date performers milling about in the Market audience too ;) The Night Market was the scene to be seen!

Eighth Street Orchestra is back!

Thank you, Lupercalia!

It has been over a month since our last gig at the New Year's Eve Countdown. Winter seems especially long when we cannot get outside and play. Needless to say, Kelsey's invitation to help create a scene at the winter festival's night market was most welcomed. All of us were there. I mean ALL of us. For a good 2 hours(30 minutes break in between), all the pent up energy flowed through our bodies into our instruments and exploded into the room filling the market up with joyful noise.