Photographs by Dawn Hamilton.
It was only six years ago where Matthew Tavares, Alexander Sowinski, and Chester Hansen met through the Humber College Jazz Program. Little did they know that just years later they would be playing large music festivals such as TIME and Wayhome, collaborating with creditable musical artists such as Tyler, The Creator and Ghostface Killah, as well as having a headlining tour.
They opened the show with “Speaking Gently”, which will be featured on their new record that will be released sometime throughout May or June, Sowinski told a friend of mine after the show. This song was really interesting, it had a nice build up and come down. When you thought that it was finished after the come down, little did we realize they were bringing intensity back up again, and vise versa. This song was filled was really “unpredictable” per say, because whenever you thought it was ending they just brought up more intensity which was most definitely a crowd pleaser and a great choice as an opening song.
They then moved onto play “Confessions” , and then a fun cover of “Pretty Boy Strut” by Flying Lotus. This really got the crowd going with excitement, where people were clapping throughout the entire track.
“Kaleidoscope” was a nice throwback for the audience, as Alexander yelled to the crowd “Scream as loud as you can and Chester’s gonna ascend you to the fifth dimension!” which got things going.
Sowinski made a large announcement during this set, confirming Leland Whitty (tenor saxophone player) was now a band member. He has appeared to perform with them live many times however, was not an “official” band member.
I didn’t quite catch her last name however, there was an appearance made by Charlotte who went to highschool with Alexander Sowinski, and she had such a beautiful voice. She joined them for a performance displaying her deeper blues sounding voice, which I enjoyed.
Overall the band mainly had a display of their newer material, which was all extremely appealing. Clearly, they are doing something right if the crowd is moshing to jazz music – which was crazy to me. I don’t think this is something that has ever happened before, but it definitely showed how deep into the music people were.
They closed the evening with electronic/hip-hop style jazz track, CS60; which also definitely has a futuristic feel to it. During this time they brought out a large crowd of people onto the stage which I would imagine would be friends, family, and perhaps backstage crew, while playing a composition of “Lemonade” by Gucci Mane and “Bastard” by Tyler, The Creator.
Badbadnotgood never seizes to amaze me. Realistically, how many young adults/teenagers sit at home and listen to jazz music all day? Not a very high amount. The fact that they have the ability to bring this age group into listening to jazz, blows my mind. They are clearly doing something astounding here. I also believe they took a risk while creating this band. Again, jazz isn’t the most popular listen nowadays so with this being said, they took a risk and it ended up working because they just sold out the Danforth Music Hall Saturday night to a majority middle aged crowd. Well done.
