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Jay Danley: Canadian Jazz Guitarist, Composer, Recording Artist, And World-Class Session Musician
by Doug Hall
On this show we chat with Canadian jazz guitarist, composer, educator and veteran sessions musician Jay Danley. Danley is a world-class session musician who has contributed instrumentally to multiple Juno award-nominated records (including Hilario Duran, leader of a Latin Big Band orchestra) and is the featured guitarist on the Juno award-winning (Julian Fauth), blues album of the year release. He has performed with a multitude of legendary musicians from around the world. Danley also is recognized as one of Canada's ...
Continue ReadingJay Danley: Robicheaux
by Dan McClenaghan
It is possible to leave the hubbub of the big city behind and still maintain a jazz career. For guitarist Jay Danley that meant pulling up roots in Toronto and relocating to Kaslo, a small village with a population of 1000 in British Columbia, where he built his own recording studio and went about crafting Robicheaux, playing (almost) all of the instrumental parts himself. The title Robicheaux may ring a bell with fans of crime fiction. Detective Dave ...
Continue ReadingThe Hogtown Syncopators: Rotman's Hat Shop
by Martin McFie
For 75 years, Rotman's hat shop on Spadina Avenue in Toronto was the place for the Jewish community and others still wearing hats to buy a fedora, a beret, almost any kind of hat. More than that, it was the story of one man's life; David Rotman lived and worked there, every day fighting a forlorn sartorial rearguard. Finally, the ailing hat shop, a Toronto institution, closed. In some part Mr. Rotman's tenacity served as inspiration for this group; singer ...
Continue ReadingJay Danley: Ethio Jazz Volume One
by Anya Wassenberg
Complex rhythms and relentless grooves are what set music from the so-called golden era of Ethiopian jazz apart, and it's that essential and even hypnotic energy that guitarist and composer Jay Danley captures in Ethio Jazz Volume One. Arguably the most important--certainly the most recognizable--element of classic Ethiopian jazz is its bass-heavy groove patterns. In the hot music scene of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, musicians fused traditional Ethiopian music with North American jazz, ...
Continue ReadingJay Danley: Ethio Jazz Volume One
by Geno Thackara
The roots of Ethio-jazz may date back to the '50s, but Jay Danley and crew show that it's too fresh and funky to be chained to any era--the grooves are slick, the bass catchy, the brisk rhythms expertly woven like the strands of a rope, and the cast is clearly having a good time. The Canadian guitarist covers a lot of figurative ground with Ethio-Jazz Volume 1, though it's the kind of mix that welcomes everyone to the party regardless ...
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