The Pearl Company

The Jazz Connection Big Band: Friday, March 22. Doors at 8:00, Jazz at 8:30. $15 /$10 artists/students.  The JCBB is a powerful, well-established 17-piece jazz ensemble comprised of professional and semi-professional musicians from the Hamilton/Toronto area, performing only the best modern big band charts from the books of Goodwin, Martin, Menza, Rich, Basie, and many other great contemporary composers. Jazz Connection delivers high energy, uncompromising, straight ahead jazz performances combining the highest level of musicianship and great charts in an entertaining show that equally engages the jazz enthusiast and the casual listener. The incredible acoustics at The Pearl easily accommodate their very cool (and uh, hot…) surround-sound. Another great evening!  http://www.jazzconnection.ca

Riverrun: Thursday, March 21. 8:00pm. $15 /$10 students/all artists: Riverrun is a quartet made up of some of Toronto’s strongest musical personalities. Their sound has been described as “electro-chamber-jazz” and “minimalist-avant-garde-pop”. Cinematic, delving, and disciplined, Riverrun cuts across stylistic boundaries and goes deep into the moment. In March of 2013, Riverrun takes to the road in celebration of their new release, Unravel. Recorded live and mixed/transformed by the visionary Peter Lutek, Unravel escapes the confines of conventional parameters in a torrent of adventurous and at times heart-breaking sound.
In a break with tradition, Unravel is being released on USB flash-drive, packaged alongside bonus material including video, images, text, and remixed audio prepared by Scott Peterson. Quoting from the band, “Riverrun returns to Hamilton to perform at one of Ontario’s best-sounding venues, The Pearl Company.” If you go to their site, you can hear one of their compositions delivered from the stage at The Pearl:  http://www.insoundmusic.com/weblog/errunriv/

Elizabeth Shepherd: CONCERT CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS! Rescheduled to June 8. Friday, March 15. 8:00 pm. Admission: $20.00. CBC Radio will be here recording this concert for their “Canada Live” concert series! Elizabeth is the only jazz vocalist/pianist to ever have been long listed for the Polaris Prize – Canada’s most prestigious music prize. The two-time JUNO nominee has received widespread praise for her original compositions, but on her fourth album ‘Rewind’ Elizabeth showcases her skills as an arranger and interpreter, breathing new life – and soul – into songs both familiar and forgotten. Some of them are well-known standards; others are obscure songs or French tunes that Elizabeth heard and fell in love with when growing up in Paris.   The Toronto-based soul-jazz innovator has previously released three widely acclaimed records and toured extensively in North America, Europe and Japan. She has sold out legendary clubs from Tokyo to Detroit, and played festivals like Montreal and North Sea Jazz Festivals. www.elizabethshepherd.com “Stunning…. original and exciting” -Seattle Post (US) “Extraordinary talent” -RBBKulturradio (GER) “A hugely original musical mind at work” -Toronto Star (CAN)

Tannis Slimmon with Katherine Wheatley: Saturday, March 9. 8:00pm. Admission: $15.00/$10.00 students/artists. Tannis Slimmon has been performing, songwriting and recording for over 30 years, at one point as a member of the critically acclaimed Bird Sisters. Her exceptional voice “full of gentle grace and unobtrusive dignity” can be heard on more than 80 albums (including those by Willie P. Bennett, Valdy, and Rheostatics). Highly regarded for her compelling live performances, enchanting melodies, and strong lyrics, Tannis’ third album “In and Out of Harmony” is being featured at this album release concert. She will be joined by her talented partner /producer /co-writer /multi-instrumentalist Lewis Melville. “A breathtaking vocalist with a bright, angelic disposition, Slimmon is a favourite folk attraction whose harmonies are as warm as her smile.” – Exclaim www.tannis.ca
Katherine Wheatley tours as a solo singer-songwriter, she is a member of “Betty and The Bobs”, and she plays guitar in WendellFerguson’s band. Her music has been used for TV series, documentaries, and films. This geologist-turned-musician recently released her 3rd CD, “Landed”, a recording that reflects the grace, power and emotional impact of her live performance. “She turns pebbles of everyday life into dreamy mountains of song.” (The Toronto Star) www.katherinewheatley.com

Susie Arioli: Thursday, March 7, 8:00pm.  $20 advance/ $25 at the door. This Jazz vocalist from Montreal has six albums on her track record, three of which were Juno nominated, and all of which are bestselling jazz titles in Canada. Recognized for the gentle, warm voice that she brings to her authentic interpretations of jazz and blues numbers, the charming and talented Susie Arioli has carved out a solid reputation for herself in Canada and on the international scene enjoying an ever-widening popularity in France, Japan, and the U.S. On the heels of the success of her album, ‘Christmas Dreaming’ (a critically acclaimed disc, gone gold in Canada) she’s taken another step in her rich and inspired career with a new album appropriately titled ‘All the Way’. It finds her at the peak of her art, bringing her singular touch and finely modulated voice to thirteen songs from the enduring repertoire of the Great American Songbook. On this seventh studio recording, Arioli explores an emotional and vocal range that reaches further than ever and yet never strays from the unique sensibility that has captivated an ever-growing public for many years now. www.susiearioli.com “Intensely warm and supremely cool simultaneously – nice trick.” — Jamie O’Meara, Montreal Gazette “Susie is unerringly right in what she chooses to sing and unrivalled in how she sings it.” – Peter Goddard,Toronto Star.

Chloe Charles: Saturday, March 2: 8:00pm. Admission: $15.00/$10.00 students/artists. Glenn Macdonald opens for Chloe. (Glenn is a local songsmith/poet, and a riveting performer). The press have likened Chloe Charles to everyone from Björk to Billie Holiday, Amy Winehouse to Adele, Alicia Keys to Joni Mitchell. Her unfathomable range defies all straitjackets of classification. She sings with the voice of an angel; she’s a spellbindingly different singer-songwriter, a self-taught classical guitarist, and her blossoming career is about to go off the scales with the release her first full-length CD, Break The Balance. Charles reinvents every spoke on the songwriters’ wheel, then wraps them up in riveting choruses, with sumptuous strings and percussive precision.  “Julian Lennon’s stepsister sings unique and colourful songwriter-pop songs with an introverted beauty of surprising clarity.” Rolling Stone (Germany) “Somewhere Billie Holiday rests secure her work was not in vain.” ?Blue Indian, USA “Poised, charismatic and quirky…” National Post www.chloecharles.com

Ambre McLean & Tara Holloway: Friday, March 1: 8:00. Admission: $15.00/$10.00 students/artists. It’s a Whirlwind Tour and they’re coming to Hamilton! Ambre McLean (Busted Flat Records) “Ambre’s voice, is an instrument itself: gorgeous, sometimes with a rich, bluesy feel, other times a sweet mellow sound, alternatively soft and ferocious, always carrying these tunes straight to your musical heart.?” (David Yazbeck, CKCU FM).  It doesn’t take long for her talent to make her seem larger than life, filling the room with the kind of songs that make you remember lost loves and abandoned dreams. www.ambremclean.com And Tara Holloway (Light Organ Records) Somewhere in the sonic vicinity of Liz Phair and Susan Tedeschi lie the tunes of Tara Holloway, whose debut Sins to Confess exhales and thrashes in equal measure. But whether Holloway belts or bawls, rocks or ruminates, the blues is ever present, and she’s at her best whenshe sets foot into its darker haunts. www.taraholloway.com They will be joined by Steve Vincent (Busted Flat Records, The Baudelaires), also a member of the Ragged Bankers.