A R T STIMES COLONIST B3SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2008
JOSEPH BLAKETimes Colonist
BRAD TURNER QUARTETSmall Wonder (Maximum Jazz)
Jazz renaissance man BradTurner sticks to trumpet andflugelhorn on this recentlyreleased CD. He’s ably backedby his Vancouver-based trio ofpianist Bruno Hubert, bassistAndré Lachance and drummerDylan Van der Schyff on arepertoire of eight of Turner’sevocative originals.
Crisply recorded at CBC Stu-dio 2 in Vancouver, the sessionshowcases Turner’s flawlesstechnique and boundless imag-ination on a varied collection oftightly wound tunes driven bythe leader’s excellent backingband.
They’ve been together for 14years, and you can hear it onevery track. Lachance and Vander Schyff’s loping rhythmicpropulsion is pushed along byHubert’s thoughtful keyboardaccents, while Turner burns anintense narrative through histune’s playful changes.
NORDIC CONNECTFlurry (ArtistShare)
Nanaimo-bred sisters Ingrid andChristine Jensen team-up withSwedish pianist Maggi Olin,Swedish bassist Mattias Welinand Ingrid’s husband, Jon Wikanon drums to produce this beau-tiful collection of richly texturedmodern jazz.
From the opening reading ofOlin’s title track and throughouta repertoire of nine originalcompositions, the quintet playsintuitive, expressive jazz. Chris-tine and Ingrid wrote most ofthe tunes and share tart, bitter-sweet dual lines in front of therhythm section’s softly throb-bing foundation, Ingrid dou-bling on trumpet and flugelhornand Christine on alto andsoprano sax. It’s a warm, under-stated, emotionally powerfuloffering.
MILES DAVISThe Essential Miles Davis(Columbia Legacy)
This two-CD set surveys MilesDavis’ many-faceted careerfrom his teenage breakthroughwith Charlie Parker in 1945 tohis late-season collaboration withmulti-instrumentalist MarcusMiller and Miles’ muted trum-pet brilliance on 1986’s Portia.
The 23 performances captureDavis’ mercurial changes withselections from Birth of the Cool,hard-bop jams on Prestige, col-laborations with John Coltraneand the modal triumph of SoWhat, the orchestral brillianceof his work with Gil Evans, andseveral examples of arguably hisbest band featuring Herbie Han-cock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter,and Tony Williams.
Disc two shines a light onseveral of Davis’ overlookedelectronic masterpieces includ-ing cuts from Bitches Brew,Live Evil, On the Corner, We
Want Miles, You’re UnderArrest, and Tutu.
The scope of the musician’slifetime achievements is breath-taking. If you could only haveone Miles Davis CD, this wouldbe the one.
TERRENCE BLANCHARDA Tale of God’s Will (a requiem for katrina)
New Orleans-bred trumpet starTerrence Blanchard has pro-duced most of the evocativemusic for Spike Lee’s movies.This recording grew out of Blan-chard’s work on Lee’s recentdocumentary, When the LeveesBroke, and it has a sumptuous,cinematic scope.
Blanchard conducts theNorthwest Sinfonia on severalcuts, framing his soulful hornand fine, young band’s offeringswith added grace. It’s simplygorgeous, heartbreakingly beau-tiful music.
Drummer Kendrick Scott,bassist Derrick Hodge, saxo-phonist Bruce Winston, andpianist Aaron Parks add theircompositions to the bandleader’ssong cycle of original work, pro-ducing a sonic portrait of thedevastation and what was lost inthe flood.
The recording’s elegiac toneis unrelenting, building finallythrough Blanchard’s Ghost of1927, Funeral Dirge, and DearMom to the kind of transcen-dence only the greatest bluescan attain.
The greatest jazz is based on
the blues and this kind of tri-umph over adversity. This isinspired and inspiring, greatjazz.
CYRUS CHESTNUTCyrus Plays Elvis (Koch)
Jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut’sElvis Presley tribute is a play-ful romp.
Using his command of gospeland blues-informed jazz improv-isation, Chestnut and his funkyband reimagine Presley’s canonwith highly stylized abandon,uncorking a second line-drivenHound Dog with echoes of Pro-fessor Longhair and other NewOrleans keyboard giants. Don’tBe Cruel is given an elegant,urbane reading. Can’t HelpFalling In Love features a surpris-ingly funky earthiness. Love MeTender is rendered in waltz time,It’s Now Or Never with a Latingroove, while Chestnut’s versionof Don’t sticks pretty close toElvis’ cheesy, romantic reading.
Suspicious Minds and In theGhetto showcase the pianist’smastery of the material, as doeshis most outlandish reading, adazzling Heartbreak Hotel.Chestnut offers a swing originalcalled Graceland and a tenderreshaping of the old gospel tune,How Great Thou Art to wrap-upthis surprisingly successful jazztribute.
THE BEST OF JAZZ CDs
From bebop to Elvis,these discs define cool
Canada’sunexpectedAfghan warMARIA KUBACKICanwest News Service
Early in, early out — that wasthe plan back in February 2002when Jean Chrétien’s Liberalgovernment sent Canadiantroops to Afghanistan as partof an international coalitionmandated to drive out the Tal-iban in the wake of the Sept. 11terrorist attacks.
It was supposed to be ashort-term mission, but sixyears later, Canada is stillmired in a messy war that’sclaimed the lives of 79 Cana-dian soldiers so far.
A new Global Television doc-umentary examines howCanada ended up digging itselfin deeper and deeper inAfghanistan.
Revealed: The Path to Warairs March 11 in advance of aparliamentary vote on anextension of the mission thatwould see Canadian troopsremain in the volatile provinceof Kandahar until 2011.
“I’m fascinated by trying touncover how the decision wasmade,” said Global Nationalanchor Kevin Newman, whoco-produced, co-wrote and nar-rated the film.
“It’s not always about help-ing the people of Afghanistan.”
Some of the choices madealong the way have been moreabout pleasing the Americans,the documentary suggests.Having decided against partic-ipating in the war in Iraq,Canada felt pressured to con-tinue making a major contribu-tion in Afghanistan.
“People ask why are we inKandahar,” said Newman. “Ithas less, probably, to do withAfghanistan than it has to dowith not going to Iraq.”
Based on the ShaughnessyCohen Prize-winning book TheUnexpected War: Canada inKandahar by political scientistJanice Gross Stein and formerDefence Department insiderEugene Lang, the documentary
looks at Canada’s involvementin Afghanistan from the inside.
It’s a chronological accountbuilt around interviews withthe politicians who made deci-sions on policy as the conflictdeveloped — including formerprime ministers Jean Chrétienand Paul Martin, as well as for-mer defence ministers JohnMcCallum and Bill Graham.
The documentary also sug-gests that our military leaders— especially the current chiefof the defence staff, GeneralRick Hillier — sawAfghanistan as an opportunityto show the world that Cana-dian forces were capable notonly of peacekeeping but of acombat role on the world stage.
Canada was compelled toparticipate in the initialAfghanistan mission onceNATO invoked Article 5, whichstates that an attack on onemember is an attack on all.Beyond our responsibilities asa NATO member, there wasalso the need to show our loy-alty to the U.S.
Still, Canada’s part in thewar in Afghanistan was nevermeant to be an open-ended con-tribution, notes Stein in thefilm. The original plan was “Sixmonths in, six months out, tidy,wrap a bow around the pack-age.”
It’s turned out to be anythingbut tidy as Canada’s role grewto include leading the Interna-
tional Security AssistanceForce in Kabul in 2003 andassuming responsibility for theprovincial reconstruction teamin Kandahar in 2005 — a com-bat zone where 2,500 Canadiantroops are still deployed.
“This is the story of Canadagoing to war by incrementalsteps, without ever fully real-izing it,” says Stein in the doc-umentary.
“We make a small little toein the water, and then we pullout,” said Newman. “Then wego back a little longer, and thenwe pull out. . . Now we’re aboutto go in the longest with theproviso that we’re pulling outin 2011, but as the documentarysort of suggests, sometimesthings change in the fullness oftime and the 2011 date, whichseems permanent today, maynot end up being that at theend.”
Newman says the documen-tary was inspired in part byThe Best and the Brightest,David Halberstam’s book abouthow a series of incrementaldecisions led to the protractedU.S. war in Vietnam.
The current decision mak-ers chose not to participate inthe film, despite producers’best efforts to persuade keyTories, including Prime Minis-ter Stephen Harper, to agree tointerviews. Gen. Hillier wasalso approached.
“Nobody would agree to talkto us,” said Newman.
The Liberals, on the otherhand, were able to speak freelynow that they’re no longer inpower.
Former defence ministerJohn McCallum, in particular,is disarmingly frank, speakingopenly about how Canadaended up being stuck with theunenviable job of trying tobring security to the increas-ingly dangerous province ofKandahar. “We dithered, and soall the safe places were takenand we were left with Kanda-har.”
9/11 attacks setCanada on pathto Kandahar
ALEX STRACHANCanwest News Service
The story of Canada’s war inAfghanistan has been toldbefore, but only in part.
Revealed: The Path to War,an ambitious, hour-long newsprogram produced and nar-rated by Global Nationalanchor Kevin Newman, laysout the entire narrative, asrecounted by the political lead-ers and military officials whomade the decisions — deci-sions that, in Newman’s words,“Canadians have died for.”
The program begins withthe now-familiar images ofhijacked passenger jets crash-ing into the World Trade Cen-ter on Sept. 11, 2001, but itdoesn’t dwell. Jean Chrétien,prime minister at the time, isshown delivering a post-9/11eulogy to then-U.S. ambassa-dor to Canada, Paul Cellucci —“In the end, it is not the wordsof your enemies that youremember; it is the silence ofyour friends . . . there will beno silence from Canada” — andformer prime minister PaulMartin’s assertion, in a one-on-one interview with Newman,that, “We share more than justa continent” with the U.S.
The Path to War provides astraight chronology of steadilyescalating events, from the ini-tial agreement in 2002 to ashort-term combat role in Kan-dahar — “early in and earlyout,” in the jargon of the time— to 2003’s peacekeeping rolein Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul,to the 2005 decision to commitmore than 2,000 troops to a fullcombat role in Kandahar.
Path to War is more than astraight chronology, though.Newman sits down with a widerange of officials, includingChrétien, Martin, formerdefence minister Bill Graham,former veteran affairs minis-ter John McCallum, Martin
aide Scott Reid and Celluccihimself. He gets them to con-fide what happened behindclosed doors in the chambersof power.
How the key decisions weremade, when, and more impor-tantly, why, prove harder to pindown.
Path to War relied on vet-eran foreign affairs policy ana-lyst Janice Gross Stein andformer defence chief of staffEugene Lang’s book The Unex-pected War as a template. Steinand Lang provide frequent tes-timony throughout the pro-gram. That testimony is bothilluminating and sobering.
“The problem,” Stein cau-tions at the outset, “is it’s easyto get in, but not so easy to getout of a deployment.”
That’s easy to say with theclarity of hindsight, but it’s animportant reminder just thesame. Canadian Forces havebeen posted to Bosnia for 15years, Stein notes; no one antic-ipated at the time they wouldbe there for so long.
The implication of Bosnia isplain, as Parliament wrestleswith the dilemma about whatto do in Afghanistan.
That is the real reason forPath to War. It’s more than astraight history lesson. It setsthe groundwork for thenational debate: are Canadiansprepared to sacrifice for anoble cause, and how longshould the country remaincommitted to the mission ifother countries in NATO areunwilling to commit their ownmilitary forces to a farawayfight?
Rapidly unfolding events inAfghanistan frequently makeit onto the nightly news.Instant satellite communica-tions, 24-hour news channelsand a virtual army of expertsand foreign policy analystseager to jump in with theiropinions have created the dis-orienting effect of a farawaycombat mission unfolding inreal time, before our eyes, inour living rooms. Path to Wartries to put those events in alarger context.
REVIEWWhat: Revealed: The Path to WarWhen: Tuesday, 10 p.m.Channel: Global
CANWEST NEWS SERVICEGlobal National news anchor Kevin Newman narrates Revealed:The Path to War, which airs on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
Global Television documentary examines the decisions behind the military mission
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“A PULSE-POUNDING THRILLER.”Carrie Rickey, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
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