When you think of the ultimate Winnipeg song, which comes to mind? “Moody Manitoba Morning?” “These Eyes?” “One Great City!”?
All of these songs and more will be getting a jazz makeover this weekend courtesy of the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, who are inviting you to sing along with the songs of the city at their Winnipeg Sings Along concert at the Winnipeg Art Gallery Qaumajuq.
The orchestra will be joined by some significant local talent to help bring these beloved tunes to life. Powerhouse vocalist Sol James will join the orchestra to help in the sing-alongs, as will iconic children’s entertainer Al Simmons.
In some ways, Simmons says that the sounds of jazz come naturally to him. “I’ve always been a big fan of 1920’s, 1930’s style music,” Simmons reminisced in a conversation with Nolan Kehler on Morning Light. “It was my younger brother when I was around 16 years old, I was in his bedroom and he's playing me Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and I just fell in love with that style of music.”
In the preparations for this concert, Simmons has enjoyed collaborating on the charts with longtime arranger Neil Watson. While he muses that some of these songs would be quite different in the eyes of their original writers (Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds”, for instance), Simmons also notes that they give audiences more license to join in and sing along.
Simmons is also drawing on his personal experiences with these songs, which have accompanied him throughout his decades-long career. “I remember when I was in high school, The Guess Who played at a noon hour concert at our school,” he shared. “I remember watching them play on stage. At the end of their last song, Burton [Cummings] smashed his guitar on the stage and Randy [Bachman] rammed his guitar through the bass drum head. And I thought, ‘What is happening?’ This is the most bizarre thing I ever saw. And then, a couple of ears later, I drove just by myself to Chicago and New York, and when I was down there, on the radio, ‘Here’s #1 with The Guess Who from Winnipeg!’”
You can celebrate The Guess Who and several other bands that have made up Winnipeg’s musical history at Winnipeg Sings Along on November 30 at 7:30 p.m. Learn more at the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra’s website.