GREAT UNCLES OF THE REVOLUTION: Blow The House Down

Great Uncles of the Revolution

Blow The House Down

© 2003 Black Hen Music (776098141924)

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Acoustic, eclectic avant-folk by Juno Award-winning quartet

notes

The Graet Uncles of the Revolution was formed in 2001 by Toronto double bassist Andrew Downing. Joining Andrew in the group are Kevin Turcotte on trumpet, Jesse Zubot on violin, and Steve Dawson on slide guitar. The group has just released their second album Blow The House Down, and Their first album, Stand Up! (Black Hen/Festival) has garnered critical acclaim, winning a West Coast music award in 2002, and being named by Ross Porter of CBC’s After Hours as one of the top albums of 2001. The group also captured the ‘Grand Prix de Jazz’ at the 2002 Edition of the Montreal Jazz Festival for their live performance there.

Blow The House Down features compositions by Andrew Downing and Kevin Turcotte, as well as a thorough retelling of Sergei Prokofiev’s classic musical tale Peter and the Wolf. It also features drawings of the story by Toronto theatre designer Yesim Tosuner. In its short lifespan, it has already been met by favourable praise.

The group’s music is hard to categorize, falling somewhere between jazz, roots, classical, and gypsy music, and never adhering to a particular style for long enough to pin it down. The four instruments all work as equal parts of the band, each providing melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and improvisation at one time or another in the course of a performance. The way the four interweave their parts and improvisations provides for a musical ride that seems to cause smiles, tears, and laughter.

The Great Uncles have made their way across this great land of ours many times, as well as travelling abroad to England this past summer. They find themselves at home at jazz festivals, folk festivals, concert halls, clubs, and back yards anywhere, and have played as far east as St. John’s Newfoundland at The Ship Inn, as far north as The Dawson City Music Festival, and to close to 10,000 people at the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. They have shared shows with The Rheostatics, opened for Dave Brubeck, and played with Jane Bunnet and her Cuban all-star band.

The four individuals each boast a pretty hefty resume on top of all of it. They have shared stages and recording projects with the likes of Moe Koffman, Gil-Scott Heron, Eugene Chadbourne, Taj Mahal, Long John Baldry, Kelly Joe Phelps, Guido Basso, Rob McConnell, Patricia O’Callaghan and Albert Schultz.

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  • Playful Country Jazz for sunny autumn days
    author: Oliver Kahl

    I liked it immediately. As a filmmaker I'm always searching for music that awakes pictures and feelings. And the Great Uncles of Revolution succeeded in doing this. Not only with their adaptation of Prokovievs programmatic music Peter and the Wolf but also with the rest of the album. With a small unplugged instrumentation (Mostly trumpet, violin, some western or hawaiin guitar and bass) they take you to a jazzy journey with country elements, sometimes Charleston-like (The Roustabout) but always swinging, so that it is hard to sit still. Apart from the Captured!-Track which seems to be an experimental Intermezzo, The Wolf and The Hunters, which I found a bit ardously to listen to, you can listen through the whole CD and discover one inspired music track after the other. I felt sitting very close to the musicians, as I invited them for tea and they brougth their instruments with them. That happens for example when you are listening to the last track of the album. The Jaye Reprise you can even hear the pumping feet of the pump organ. Obviously the musicians had very much fun during composing and recording this music. And you can always see a winking eye. That is very inspiring and entertaining.

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