Last Thursday July 2nd, an enthusiastic crowd braved the rain to gather at the Montreal Jazz Festival and hear a rising star of the growing western Canadian jazz scene – bassist Aretha Tillotson – and her quartet. The set kicked off with a tribute to Tillotson’s home province of Alberta, ‘Kinda Out West’, also paying homage to Sonny Rollins’ album Way Out West. The piece had a playful bebop sound, which the band carried through into their solos, trumpeter Kae Murphy weaving intricate melodies and moving smoothly between single and double time, as well as plenty of triplet runs.
Alongside Tillotson and Murphy were alto saxophonist Tara Davidson and drummer Valerie Lacombe, a band without a chordal instrument. A configuration like this can allow its musicians extra sonic space with which to operate, and they took full advantage on the following tune ‘Cricklewood Lane’, named for an area of London where Tillotson spent some time during a previous residency.
Throughout the set, a highlight was hearing the different ways in which Tillotson fills the space in her compositions, particularly her varied approach to two-horn harmonies. The ballad, ‘Lullaby to Those Before’ featured two separate melodic lines dancing between each other. Compare that with the tight, crunchy harmonies heard on the funky, back-beat driven tune, ‘Jill of All’. There is a clear sense in her music that each compositional choice has been made carefully and deliberately, so that each musical layer adds to the feel of the piece, and the result is a sound that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Ensuring that the set was made up of music composed by women, the band closed out with a piece by the great Mary Lou Williams, titled ‘In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee’. The piece was full of rhythmic surprises and blues inflections, which the band took and ran with in their solos, ending the evening on a real high.
Pan M 360 had the chance to speak with Aretha Tillotson after the concert, to discuss her writing process, inspirations, and love for western Canadian music:
PAN M 360: The group that you have on stage today was different from what you have on the album. Was there a specific process you went about assembling the band for today?
Aretha Tillotson: Yeah, I mean, everyone in the band I’d worked with in many different iterations of things, different bands. So we’ve never played together – the four of us – until today. But I just like to call players that work hard and are very prepared to (sic) the gig and all three of them were very prepared.
PAN M 360: The title of your new album being what it is, I wanted to ask about your experience with the Western Canadian jazz scene. Anything in particular, that makes it special?
Aretha Tillotson: Yeah, you know, I hate to say it. I think it’s more and more liveable to be out west. I think Montreal’s an exception, but there are a lot of places like Toronto that are very hard for young artists to make a scene in. Certainly possible, but I think there’s becoming more and more players that are staying out west and making art out there. There’s a lot of grants and nice things to kind of support our work. I think the scene really feels great these last few years.
PAN M 360: For this album you went with a chordless instrumentation versus previously, you had a much bigger band. Does your writing approach change a lot when you write for that sort of setting?
Aretha Tillotson: Yeah. I did a bunch of gigs with Ingrid and Christine Jensen and that’s how I got to that. I loved how much they kind of had the second sense to feel each other, play chords together, just kind of as an instinct. So I kind of thought now would be a time to try a chordless quartet with two sisters that kind of have ESP together. And also, I was listening to a lot of Ornette Coleman’s quartets, so with that exact instrumentation, so yeah, I thought I’d love to give it a go.
PAN M 360: Awesome. Any other influences that you take with you when you’re writing?
Aretha Tillotson: Yeah. Definitely Sonny Rollins on Way Out West. I thought it was so cool that he came out to Joshua Tree with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne and cut this, another chordless trio album, so that was another big inspiration, how good it sounded. They cut it at 4:00 in the morning, it’s crazy!
PAN M 360: So, thinking of a setting like [the Montreal Jazz Festival] where we got actually quite an engaged audience, despite the rain. Do you change your set ever to suit the setting that you’re playing in or the people you’re playing with?
Aretha Tillotson: Yeah, definitely. I’d heard that Pub Molson was a real hang. I thought it was a small club, and then I did some research, and I was like, oh, this is a giant outdoor stage. So I designed the setlist to be a little more high energy, big bangers, kind of, yeah, fun stuff to play. So maybe a little more ballads at the small clubs.
PAN M 360: Do you notice any differences, I’m always curious to hear, between the way audiences listen and engage now versus pre-pandemic, or the world maybe 10 years ago?
Aretha Tillotson: That’s a good point. I think people are more hungry for live music, in that we’re in a world with more and more canned music and music written by robots. So I think there’s even more of a desire to have a human experience and hear somebody play something live. I felt, even on the show, just the audience building off the energy and us building off theirs. It feels even more intense than it has in past years.
PAN M 360: Last thing, I ask because you talked about featuring female artists on stage. Are there any female artists that are around now that you’re particularly enjoying?
Aretha Tillotson: So many! I studied with Linda May Han Oh, so she’s a huge inspiration, she is so good. I love Terri Lyne Carrington. Her new albums, they’re so wonderful. Love Melissa Aldana, those big cats, my fellow Albertan Kris Davis, I’m really, really inspired by – I love her music. So yeah, those are some women who are really killing it on the scene. Lots of great Canadian women – who are in my band!
Aretha Tillotson’s newest album, Kinda Out West, is out now.
