|
Joe Sealy -
Bio & Photo
|
Hoagland
Howard Carmichael was born in 1899 in Bloomington, Indiana.
His father was an itinerant labourer, and his mother
helped to support the family by playing piano at the
local movie house and for university dances. "Ragtime
was my lullaby," Hoagy said, but his mother warned
him against a musical career. He studied law at Indiana
University but already had his own band, The Carmichael
Syringe Orchestra, inspired by a Dadaist poet named
Monk, who advised him, "There are other things
in this world besides hot music....I forget what they
are, but they're around." Another early influence
was the playing of legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke.
When Hoagy played an improvised tune for him, Beiderbecke
asked, "Whyn't you write music, Hoagy?'
His first efforts, Washboard Blues and Riverboat Shuffle,
met with modest success. He gave up his law studies
and moved to New York to pursue a song-writing career,
but had to take a low-paying job in a Wall Street brokerage
to make ends meet. He was tempted to give up, but met
the Indianapolis dance-hall pianist Reggie Duval, who
passed on some of his own lively style, as well as words
of encouragement: "Never play anything that don't
sound right. You might not make any money, but at least
you won't get hostile with yourself."
Duval's advice began to pay off for Hoagy: in 1929 Stardust
was published, and in 1930 he recorded Georgia On My
Mind, Rockin' Chair, and Lazy River. His songs were
heard by other, more famous, performers like Louis Armstrong,
Duke Ellington and the Dorsey brothers, who recorded
their own versions and made them popular on radio. In
1936 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked with such
lyricists as Johnny Mercer and Frank Loesser, and became
a star performer in his own right. He appeared in films
like To Have and Have Not and The Best Years of Our
Lives, and in 1951 he and Mercer won an Oscar for In
The Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening. He even hosted
his own television show, The Saturday Night Review.
Through the 1950s and 1960s he continued to compose
and to act in films, and produced two volumes of memoirs.
In 1971 he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame
as one of its ten initial inductees. Indiana University
awarded him an honourary doctorate the following year.
In 1979 the Newport Jazz Festival honoured him with
a tribute at Carnegie Hall, called "The Stardust
Road: A Hoagy Carmichael Jubilee." Hoagy Carmichael
died in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 27, 1981.
Richard
Ouzounian. (writer/director)
Cindy
Church (vocals):
Originally from Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, Cindy spent
her formative musical years in western Canada, making
her first recordings with The Great Western Orchestra,
touring and recording with Ian Tyson, and embarking
on a solo career. Her three solo albums (Love on the
Range, Just a Little Rain, and Cindy Church) all include
some of her own songs, and her friendship with co-writer
Sylvia Tyson helped lead to the formation of Quartette,
with Sylvia, Caitlin Hanford, the late Colleen Peterson,
and, later, Gwen Swick. A superb singer with a distinctive
voice and a technique she uses only to illuminate the
lyric, Cindy invests the songs she performs with warmth,
charm and feeling. Now living in Toronto, she has not
only acquired a national reputation as one of the best
singers in the country, but an international reputation
as well - and one that will only be enhanced by her
interpretations of Hoagy Carmicheal's best work. She
has been nominated for Juno Awards on two occasions,
and has also been nominated for awards by the Canadian
Country Music Association.
George
Koller (acoustic bass, vocals):
Truly one of the most versatile musicians in Canada,
George has accumulated hundreds of amazingly diverse
performing and recording credits in his 26-year musical
career. A founding member of The Shuffle Demons, he
has also toured and/or recorded with Bruce Cockburn,
Loreena McKennitt, Holly Cole, jazz sax master Phil
Woods, British superstar Peter Gabriel, Jane Siberry,
the Toronto Tabla Ensemble and Canadian country music
icon Ian Tyson, to name just a few. While recognized
primarily as a bassist, he plays a wide variety of other
instruments - including a number of Indian stringed
instruments, among them the sitar, sarode and the violin-like
esraj. His award-winning solo CD, Music for Plants,
Animals, and Humans, has been highly praised, and his
recent activities include producing debut recordings
for a number of new artists, as well as the release
of two independent CDs for Yoga practice (Chants des
Lumieres, and Music for Internal Arts).
Joe Sealy (piano, vocals):
Joe Sealy has enjoyed a highly successful career as
a musician, actor, composer, music director and recording
artist. Featured in the Bravo television Jazz Man series
and in Adrienne Clarkson Presents: The Spirit of Africville,
he was also featured in stage productions which paid
tribute to two immortal singers - Ma Rainey's Black
Bottom and Lady Day; he won a Dora Mavor Moore award
for music direction in the Toronto production of Ain't
Misbehavin' which honoured the songs and the life of
the great Fats Waller. He's toured with Blood Sweat
and Tears, performed with artists as diverse as John
Candy, Sammy Davis, Joe Williams and Milt Jackson, and
was featured in the 20-city tour of Timothy Findlay's
Piano Man's Daughter. He performed his Juno-winning
Africville Suite in Canada, the United States, and Europe,
and was nominated for a Gemini award for his musical
score for the documentary film The Road Taken. He recently
wrote and recorded a new theme for TVO's book programme,
Imprint, and has just released a new CD, Blue Jade,
with fellow musician Paul Novotny.
|
