Secret Society

They go up north and come back south

We made it through the entire tour without breaking Ingrid and Jon's baby. Success!

Secret Society's first-ever Canadian incursion was well-documented by local pamphleteers and ink-stained wretches:

Paul De Barros, Seattle Times

With a chewy, innovative band that featured several players who also hail from this area — trumpeter Ingrid Jensen (Vancouver Island), drummer Jon Wikan (Seattle) and Ryan Keberle (Spokane) — Argue delivered a 100-minute set that heaved with great tectonic shifts and a sci-fi vibe, perching intense jazz solos over driving, minimalist pulses and a thunderous underbelly of electric guitar and amped-up acoustic bass.

Alexander Varty, The Georgia Straight

 Across the street at the Vogue Theatre, the mood was darker and more pensive for North Vancouver–born Argue’s return to his native land.

Peter Hum, The Ottawa Citizen

The 18-piece big band led by Argue, a 36-year-old Canadian ex-pat living in Brooklyn, delivered lush but lucid, altogether fresh and stimulating original music. A feast of gorgeous musical details, manoeuvres and transformations, Argue’s six songs and one encore prompted whoops of appreciation from a diverse audience.

John Kelman, All About Jazz

As the band entered, it became even clearer that Argue's personal touchstones range far and wide, with guitarist Sebastian Noelle creating orchestral swells and gritty power chords, Matt Clohesy pushing the time on electric bass and Wikan driving the groove with plenty of spontaneous action.

Michael Jackson, DownBeat

When he introduced his “Jacobin Club”—an homage to the misadventures of Robespierre—a “parable about absolute power corrupting absolutely,” the vividness of Argue’s imagination and historical detail was apparent.

Sharonne Cohen, JazzTimes

The 18-piece big band soared through the leader’s intricately arranged, challenging material. Reeds and brass filled the room, Ingrid Jensen’s trumpet shining on “Transit” and James Hirschfield’s trombone on “Habeas Corpus.”

David Ryshpan, Settled in Shipping

The highlight for me was the new piece, "Chapter 1: Neighborhood," from the upcoming Brooklyn Babylon project. It introduces leitmotifs from the rest of the suite, each of which reflects a certain hallmark of Argue's compositional vocabulary: the opening, post-Minimalist E pedal in the piano and reeds, shifting towards an almost disco-like backbeat for Mark Small to soar over, which returns after a circus waltz with a sombre lining.

J.D. Considine, The Globe and Mail

Argue’s Secret Society, the 18-piece big band he brought from New York, painted some brilliant soundscapes during their 90-minute set.

[N.B. "Pharaoh Magnetic" is a new one on me -- I almost wish I'd been clever enough to think of that pun.] 

Kerry Doole, Exclaim

One definite Toronto Jazz Festival highlight was the Toronto debut of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society. Led by Vancouver-born composer Argue, they have become darlings of the New York scene, and their simply stunning 90-minute performance showed why.

Mike Doherty, Maclean's

The band melds the harmonies and syncopation (if rarely the straight-ahead swing) of jazz with the sound processing and complex beats of electronic music, the atmosphere and expansiveness of film music, and the intensity of adventurous rock.

En français...

Alain Brunet, La Presse

Ayons confiance, car ce jazz du musicien canadien (transplanté dans la Grosse Pomme) aspire tout sur son passage. Non seulement draine-t-il les grands enseignements du big band moderne (George Russell, Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson, Maria Schneider, etc.), mais encore intègre-t-il nombre de musiques cruciales de notre époque: improvisation libre, minimalisme américain, musiques symphoniques contemporaines de tradition européenne, grandes musiques de film pour orchestre, mais aussi rock indie ou même électro!

Annie Landreville, SCENA Jazz

Gros coup de cœur sur disque, gros coup de cœur sur scène : Le Darcy James Argue Secret Society. Quelle équipe! Bel ensemble, solides solistes (Ah ! Le solo d'Ingrid Jensen en fin de course... il résonne encore dans mes oreilles!) et compositeur inspiré et inspirant.

Audio highlights from the tour coming soon...

Don't tell me what cannot be done

Secret Society's first-ever Canadian tour began early Sunday morning in a less-than-auspicious manner. The band had gathered on the corner of 42nd and 5th at 4:30 AM, waiting for a 4:50 AM pickup from the Newark Liberty Express bus. For you non-New Yorkers out there, Newark Airport is basically the Eighth Circle, except it's also incredibly difficult to get to, especially when you're trying to make a 7:30 AM international flight. Taxis from Manhattan can run you upwards of $100 (and even more from Brooklyn), so this bus was our only viable option.

So you can imagine our stunned reaction when the driver failed to stop and sailed right by us, despite our frantic waving. At that point, faced with a choice between waiting another 30 minutes for the next bus, or dropping hundreds of dollars in cab fare, I figured, "Okay, if we wait for the next bus, we'll probably be at the airport by 6 AM at the latest, which still gives us 90 minutes until our flight -- and how busy can Newark Airport be on a Sunday morning?"

Well, by the time we got to our terminal, it was more like 6:15, and "pandemonium" doesn't even begin to describe the scene. The departures area was packed with so many bodies we were barely able to squeeze in the door. Thankfully, a handful of co-conspriators had arrived earlier by other means -- they were able to fight their way to the front of the group desk, and engage in some first-class stalling until the rest of us were able to catch up to them. We managed to get everyone checked in for the flight within 30 seconds of Continental closing it.

Having arrived in Vancouver by the skin of our teeth, the rest of the tour actually went surprisingly smoothly -- especially considering our touring party consisted of 19 musicians, one sound tech, and our newest co-conspirator, Jon and Ingrid's nine-week old baby Kårinna (pictured below):

There were other close-calls involving instruments (always stressful trying to fly with all those horns), gear, etc, but ultimately, we played every show we were supposed to play and nobody died, which in my books marks the tour as a resounding success.

Again, huge thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation for helping to underwrite our 2011 Canadian incursion.

Incriminating evidence coming soon, including photos, audio, press, and such like.

In a beautiful place out in the country

In a few scant hours, Secret Society's 2011 Canadian Incursion officially begins. Our schedule is, as they say up North, jam-packed, but  I will do my best to post updates and incriminating evidence here.

You can also follow our progress on Twitter -- on my own feed as well as those of my co-conspirators Rob Wilkerson (oops -- originally linked to the wrong Rob Wilkerson, fixed now), Josh Sinton, and James Hirschfeld.

Here is where we are playing:

Sunday, June 26th at 9:00 p.m.
Vogue Theatre
918 Granville Street in Vancouver, BC

Tuesday, June 28th at 10:30 p.m.
OLG Stage at Confederation Park 
100 Elgin Street in Ottawa, ON

Wednesday, June 29th at 6:00 p.m.
Théâtre du Gesù
1200 de Bleury in Montreal, QC

Thursday, June 30th at 5:30 p.m.
The Outdoor Stage at Metro Square
221 King Street West in Toronto, ON

And all the kids, all the kids that want to make the scene, here in North America

My homeland has recently been behaving in a most extraordinary manner. The Canadian dollar is currently worth more than the Gringo greenback, the NDP are outpolling the Liberals in the upcoming Federal election, and last night, to everyone's shock, the Vancouver Canucks somehow managed to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Game 7.

Further investigation is clearly warranted. Therefore, I am authorizing Secret Society for a strategic insertion into Canadian territories. Our incursion will proceed as follows:

26 June 2011
Vancouver International Jazz Festival
Vogue Theatre
9:00 PM
Tickets

28 June 2011
Ottawa International Jazz Festival
OLG Stage at Confederation Park
10:30 PM
Tickets

29 June 2011
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
Théâtre du Gésu
6:00 PM
Tickets

30 June 2011
Toronto Jazz Festival
The Outdoor Stage at Metro Square
5:30 PM
Free admission

In all seriousness, Secret Society have performed in London, Milan, Amsterdam, and various other European locales but will be our first time hitting the Canadian jazz festival circuit and I am so stoked to be able to bring my co-conspirators on a tour of my home and native land. We're counting on our Canadian partisans to help get the word out, so please tell all your buds about these shows!

Bigband travel expense are no joke and there's no way we would be able to do this without the very generous support of the following awesome organizations:

The Canada Council for the Arts!

And the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation!

The Society is insanely grateful to both of these organizations for making this tour possible.

Also, there is some official stuff I am supposed to say in acknowledgement of their support. Ready? Okay:

"This tour is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which enables Canadian audiences to discover artists from other regions and provinces."

And:

"This engagement is supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation."

Okay then. See you hosers later.