Salmon Arm’s Jake McIntyre-Paul is back from the coast for the holidays, and will be bringing a special performance to the Shuswap Theatre stage on Dec. 28 that will feature live, original music from Shuswap artists.
Having just left for Vancouver in the fall to begin studies in the jazz program at Capilano University, McIntyre-Paul says it has been a great experience and has introduced him to some new sounds and ideas about music.
“It’s going good, I just finished my last exam for the semester, a keyboard test, and I have been learning a lot. It’s pushing me in some new directions, looking at theory a little bit more and classical analysis of music,” he says.
McIntyre Paul is a well-known musician in Salmon Arm, playing as a part of multiple groups within the city, as well as joining in open jams and special concerts with other musicians in the area. The jazz group Ptriodactyl, which he started with Jessica Heaven and Gavia Lertzman-Lepofsky of Vancouver, has also toured through the Shuswap multiple times this year.
He will be joining a host of fellow Shuswap musicians during the upcoming concert, and is looking forward to sharing a familiar stage with some familiar faces.
“The concert will feature two bands, my own quartet, which will feature my friend Chris Petterson, a tenor sax player who graduated from SAS and studied at Vancouver Island University. There will also be my friend Dan Smith on guitar, who is becoming locally known and actually graduated from the program I am in now. Then I have Brian Pratt-Johnson playing drums which is really exciting, he just retired and up until now I have been asking him to do projects but he has been too busy teaching, it’s exciting to get him on board for something,” McIntyre-Paul says.
Related: Jazz group Ptriodactyl set out on second Shuswap tour
The opening act for the show will be the Jordan Dick trio, which will also feature McIntyre-Paul on bass and a special guest on drums.
The performance will be a special one for McIntyre-Paul, not only as a reunion with some other well-known Shuswap artists, but as a premiere for many of his own original songs which haven’t seen the stage as of yet.
“I should mention we will be playing almost all original material, that is a first for me. I am going to be debuting six or seven songs that have never been played live before. I have a couple brand new songs, two or three that I wrote during the semester. I have two or three tunes I have written over the last year or two before I got to Capilano, and then a couple even older tunes that I never quite got finished,” McIntyre-Paul says. “I am really excited, I have composed them but I haven’t brought them to life yet so it will be fun once I get home to scramble up the guys and try and get it all together and see how they actually sound outside of my brain.”
Another exciting development is Ptriodactyl releasing their first physical album, which will be available for purchase at the Dec. 28 concert.
“That finally all came together, we got the licensing and manufacturing and it’s all here. During the July tour we spent three evenings in a studio with rough plans and just kind of like played a bunch, and this is what happened,” he says. “It was cool, we were pretty excited with how it turned out and how the covers and stuff look, Jessica did a nice job designing everything with the artwork.”
The show kicks off at 7 p.m. on Dec. 28 at Shuswap Theatre; tickets are $25 and can be purchased at Acorn Music in Salmon Arm. Proceeds from ticket sales will be going towards a tuition fund for McIntyre-Paul as he continues his studies.
@Jodi_Brak117
jodi.brak@saobserver.net
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