|
|
 |
|
 |
< back to press list
McLean beating path to fame
Montreal Gazzette
by Jennifer Prettie (Southham News)
– July 6, 1998
Toronto – Mark McLean might not be in the limelight on this summer’s jazz festival circuit, but those in the know say that won’t last long.
The 23-year-old Toronto drummer, one of the most talked about young jazz musicians in Canada,, will be touring the country quietly as a sideman for Juno award-winner Jane Bunnett, among others. But the word is that McLean will soon rank with the scorching New York-style drummer-bandleaders he admires most.
“He’s the new drummer on the Canadian scene right now,” says Archie Alleyne, a Toronto drummer who has played for 50 years with a staggering list of greats, including Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae.
“There aren’t other drummers like Mark here,” enthused Bill King, publisher of Toronto-based quarterly magazine The Jazz Report.
“There’s something exciting about what he’s doing.”
McLean only just graduated from the University of Toronto’s jazz studies program, but he already has a resume full of the kind of achievements that herald major success.
He’s played with Oscar Peterson and Moe Koffman, scored a main stage Toronto jazz festival slot with his own group, and won this year’s Jazz Report Award for post-secondary school musician of the year, for which he was acclaimed – no shortlist necessary for the first time in the award’s history.
But McLean is also still experiencing the kind of struggle common to most young jazz musicians.
His own band, the Mark McLean Quintet, was turned down for jazz festivals outside Toronto, a sign of dues still to be paid. And he survives on a bewildering array of commitments. He teaches, composes, directs a high school jazz band, leads his own quintet, plays in countless other groups at clubs and private functions, and works for visiting musicians who can’t afford to bring a drummer on the road. He also shops his demo tape around, does publicity for his quintet, and studies piano and drums.
He’s taking the struggle, and the success, in stride. “I’m fortunate,” said McLean. “It doesn’t happen for everyone, I guess.”
The playing style that has everyone buzzing is a high-energy one, which King says is like that of New York-school drummers.
“There’s a fire and energy in his playing that separates him from others,” he said of McLean. King sees only a couple of other Canadian drummers who can play in that style, all veterans such as Archie Alleyne. “He’s in that mold,” said King. “Lets just say he will be there.”
“There’s also talk about the kind of music McLean’s writing, which he describes as “neo-bop” combining elements of jazz, funk, Latin rhythms and traditional swing. “I can see him as a leader, composer, arranger, whatever; “ said Alleyne.
Observers of Canadian jazz are excited by McLean’s progress for another reason. His great uncle, Nova Scotian-born Cy McLean, was a pioneer of Canadian jazz, a highly respected pianist who broke into the Toronto scene as a bandleader in the 1940s, when the city’s bar owners didn’t always relish the idea of hiring black musicians. Cy died in 1986.
Mark McLean actually grew up knowing little about his famous relative-in fact, he credits his older brother; also a musician, with turning him on to jazz. But through a quirk of the close-knit Canadian jazz scene, the two have been connected.
Archie Alleyne was one of the kids who learned music by watching Cy McLean’s band practice through the window of a Toronto rehearsal hall. When Alleyne heard through the grapevine that the younger McLean was graduating, he got in touch. He’s been helping him get some work, and introducing him to the musicians Cy McLean used to play him. Alleyne also made sure he was available to present McLean with his Jazz Report award.
Mark McLean’s now at a critical stage, the time when a young jazz musician needs to tap into a network of older players to get a steady supply of work. So far; he’s succeeded at that too, not just because of his obvious talent, but because he doesn’t take it for granted.
|
|
|
|
