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The Year in Music Festivals

Posted on December 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Aretha Franklin

2011 is coming to a close, what a year it was in music! Especially Music Festivals! I attended a few this past year. Starting with the Winterfolk Blues & Roots in February, of which I helped out as a volunteer. Took a lot of pix.Then later in early June, I slummed around the Waterfront Blues Festival, held at Woodbine park.

A couple weeks after that, the Toronto Jazz Festival kicked off with the great Aretha Franklin, to which I had the great opportunity to photogragh after I did video’s for my good friend, Jordan John with his band, the Blue Angels, who opened this awesome festival! That was freakin fantastic! amazing-amazing i tell ya.

My TO Jazz Fest tour continued with a trip back to the main stage to see Dubmatix, a local 2009 Juno nominated reggae-dub-d&b outfit, and then the Spanish Harlem Orchestra! These guys had a following there that night. A spiritual moment happened. Incredible!

On Monday I had a very serious decision to make. Robert Cray at the Main Stage, beautiful tasty guitar with this guy’s band, never seen him before live, or….. SOULIVE at the Lengendary Horseshoe Tavern. Fusion, hipster, funky, soul jive groove nastyness! Yeah! ( I hope to see R. Cray at some point, but not this day) What a blast Soulive is to see perform in a small club. A little too dark for the camera, but I did what I could. Great stuff!

Unfortunately I could not attend the rest of the TO Jazz fest that week, so it goes. I did however have the upcoming Beaches Jazz Fest scheduled to ensure I was in the city for the duration. As I will detail:

This week long festival held July 15th – 24th , 2011, starts at Woodbine Park, a multi stage setup with several acts performing through-out the first weekend of the fest. The weekdays that follow are when things get really hoppin. Seminars and workshops educate and entertain us until Thursday night, 6pm, when Streetfest starts off, the always popular outdoor streetfest, were Queen Street is closed to cars and every corner for several km`s has a live band playing. This continues daily 6-11pm until Saturday night.

Saturday and Sunday, the final weekend of the fest, we have a full lineup of acts performing on the octagonal stage at Kew Gardens, just off Queen street. People lounging back on the grass of this natural ampitheatre, soaking in the vibe and atmosphere that only a hot, summer music festival can provide. Good Karma.

Going over my images, it would appear that that was the last music festival I attended in 2011.

Ahhhh, the summer of 2011, sweet music. thank you. Check out my various galleries of each of these festivals plus I will also include their respective web pages. Please enjoy responsibly. thanks.

Winterfolk IX Photo Gallery Winterfolk Web Site

Waterfront Blues Photo Gallery Waterfont Blues web site

Galleries from the Toronto Jazz Festival:

Aretha Franklin Spanish Harlem Orchestra Soulive

Toronto Jazz Festival web site

Beaches Jazz Festival Photo Gallery Beaches Jazz Festival Web Site

Review : Winterfolk IX Feb 18-21,2011 Toronto

Posted on February 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

This years Winterfolk Blues & Roots Festival was a great time to see numerous established and new artists perform their songs and get a real roots music vibe going on. I was helping out as a soundman most of the time along with other volunteers to make everything go smoothly for the musicians and host venues.

I had a couple glitches to take care of, like monitor levels, faulty equipment, but nothing was a complete ‘train wreck’

My main beef was the lighting. The places I took photos in had just a row of spot lights on a stand, some with coloured gels, some just white. On occasion I was able to access the stand and adjust the light levels and direction of the spot lights but other times I couldn’t even get to the control due to the all the people in their seats.

I did manage to get a few resonable shots and corrected some overexposure/white balance issues as best I could with Lightroom afterwards. I used the D90 set at ISO1600 with the Tamron 28-75 f2.8 lens. I should have watched my Highlight Warning indicator to watch for blownout areas but realized afterwards it was off.

Regardless I got to listen to a lot of really great music without having to wear earplugs. Plus I met a lot of fellow fans, photog’s and musicians, all of whom where friendly and very happy to be there.

Can’t wait until next year. Check out the complete gallery Winterfolk IX