While the idea of producing an album of voice and instrument duets was mine, the idea for calling it “Pairings” was my husband’s. When “Bedroom Voice” came out in 2013, I received so many pictures of CDs propped up with a bottle of red wine that he conceived of the idea of doing a concert where each song on the album got paired with a wine. It was a natural extension to go from the concept of wine pairings to voice and instrument pairings for this album, especially because I had already recorded some duets with George Koller.

The idea for a song arranged for voice and sax trio was Michael’s, too. He has long been a fan of The Guess Who. One day he played me one of their songs, an obscure tune called Straighten Out. (I’ve actually yet to meet anyone, even fans of the band, who knows this song, but it’s on their “Road Food” album.) The song is full of lush parallel harmonies that Michael thought would be perfect for saxophones.

Around the same time, I happened to meet Steve Jones, a saxophonist, composer, and arranger from Nanaimo. Steve had taught at Malaspina College for years and leads a sax quartet, so he seemed the perfect candidate to translate this old rock tune into a new “pairing” for me.

I knew that my 10 weeks in Toronto would be a great time to attempt a recording of this arrangement. Through my friend David Restivo (whom I will talk about in a future post!) I was delighted to engage three fantastic sax players to record Straighten Out plus one more sax trio song. I had already met tenor sax player Kelly Jefferson in Whitehorse, but bari sax player Shirantha Beddage and alto sax player Rich Underhill were new to me.

The stars lined up to have all three players available (plus David to conduct) for both the recording date as well as a rehearsal a few days beforehand. All three dove in with enthusiasm and plenty of good humour, even when I decided the day of the rehearsal that I wanted to change the key on the tune!

I struggled with this song more than any other on the album, and in fact I decided to overdub the vocals later when I was home in Whitehorse, but I love how it turned out. It’s a very fun little tune and lends a different texture to the album. It certainly fit my theme this year: be terrified and do it anyway. It's a thrilling motto to live by, believe me.

And now there's less than a month until the official release. I should be getting actual CDs in my hands in less than two weeks! Who's excited? (I am!)