Meet the Choir Boys...

It's funny how things converge without you even knowing it...

I was in a used CD store in Halifax, Nova Scotia - if you get to Halifax you MUST check out TAZ RECORDS - a while back and decided to root through a .99 cent bargin bin. As a rule, I avoid bargin bins in good record stores because they know what's valuable and what's not and their opinion generally coincides with my tastes, so it's usually a waste of time. But something - a niggling little voice - told me to peruse what was there. I did and I found this: The Choir Boys With Strings. Now, if I had done this a year earlier I probably would have overlooked this CD because I was not familiar with any of the players. But that previous year I had completely immersed myself in the music of Mark O'Leary (for my money, the most consistently surprising and exciting guitar player playing today) and had become acquainted with many musicians he had collaborated with on his fifteen or so albums that I had been unaware of to that point. Two of these players - trumpet player Jeff Kaiser (who appears on O'Leary's On The Shore) and bassist Steuart Liebig (who appears on O'Leary's Signs) - had left lasting impressions on me. The third player - guitarist G. E. Stinson - was on my radar because he was a member of Alex Cline's ensemble. So three out of four members of the Choir Boys were players I'd heard many times, though I had no knowledge of the Choir Boys. Naturally, I grabbed the disc and now you get to hear it. There are eight pieces but are, essentially, two suite-like pieces: tracks 1-5 and tracks 6-8. The music is quite free, incorporates electronics and tape loops and is recorded live in concert.

Enjoy!