Life Comes Full Circle for Campbell RygaCollaborating again with Renee Rosnes was a chance to renew and old friendshipJim Dupuis 1 of 2 Next>
JD: So, Cam, I hear that you have a CD out with former Vancouverite and now New Yorker Renee Rosnes. Would you tell us about that? CR: Yes. Renee and I co-lead this CD and formed a very wonderful quartet together. Renee and I are roughly the same age. We met in the mid 70s, while we were both involved in the B.C. Honour Band, which is a high school function where the better players, I suppose, were awarded the honour of being involved in the project called the B.C. Honour Band. That’s where I met Renee and actually a number of other people which I still have an association with. That’s a lot of years. It’s thirty years now. But Renee and I and Rudy Petschauer and Chris Nelson formed a quartet together when I moved to Vancouver to go to college. They were all living here and we formed a group called Coastal Connection. We used to play a lot at the old Classical Joint, which was a coffeehouse and the mainstay of the Vancouver jazz scene in the late 70s and into the 80s and generally we’d go right over to Basin Street, which was an after hours club that started about 2 AM and went to about 5 AM. We used to do that every weekend. In the mid 80s Renee and Rudy moved off to New York and Renee found great fame and became affiliated with the Who’s Who of the international jazz scene. Her touring schedule became very, phenomenal. Basically, we kind of lost touch, a little bit. I thought it would be really neat to reunite in some kind of way, shape or form, as much of our collective experiences and busy careers would allow it to. That was the premise behind this. Unfortunately, Chris Nelson, our bass player passed away from cancer at a very young age. (Note: The CD is dedicated to Chris Nelson). At the time of doing this recording I had very much hoped that Chris was going to be part of it, but alas, Chris became too ill, so I have a bass player from Toronto, Neil Swainson, who actually is also originally a BC person. He has a very busy touring schedule with George Shearing and what not, so I was very honoured – and Rudy of course doing a lot of touring – to get all these guys together – and thanks in no small part to the CBC and Claire Lawrence, who really made all this possible. We created, what I consider to be, a beautiful record called Deep Cove. We did it for CBC Records and they actually brought Renee, Rudy and Neil to me, out here in Vancouver, where we recorded it. We’re looking at doing something else in the near future – a new release. It was a very exciting group and a lot of memories. Renee did a lot of writing for that album, as did I, and we really did enjoy it. (Note: Ryga wrote a song for his son, who wasn’t born yet, called “Not Yet Here” for the CD). JD: Good. So what did you do this summer? CR: This summer was pretty much wall to wall, with respect to summer music camps. I’m always involved with many of them throughout the province and back east in Ontario. So that’s what kept me busy, and it seems to be getting busier and busier every year. I must be doing something right because I seem to be getting more and more of these. I seem to have only about two weeks of summer where I’m not actually doing camps and it’s a little bit tough because we have our little boy—he’s now 23 months old and it’s difficult to be away from him and my wife for that length of time. Obviously, you don’t get that time back. So I’m going to try to stay home a little bit more the next couple of years, over the summer. I really do enjoy camps and I enjoy all the educational work I’m involved in. JD: You also teach at Kwantlen and Capilano colleges (in Greater Vancouver), don’t you? CR: Primarily Cap College, yes. I’ve been there for about three years. I have a number of private music students up there and they seem to come from all over the place these days. Some come from out of the province to spend some time with me and that’s very flattering. They are very nice and are playing at a very high calibre. JD: Could you tell us about the Sax Summit? That seems to have happened a couple of times, over the years.1 of 2 Next> |