Saxophonist Comes Back To A World of Wonders

For better or worse, this is the era of the 20-year-old jazz wonder. For tenor saxophonist Kirk MacDonald, it comes 11 years too late. Or, to put a more positive spin on it, he was 11 years ahead of his time when, in 1980, three years out of the Cape Breton community of New Waterford, he made his first, good impressions around Toronto as a member of drummer Claude Ranger's band.

In the years following, MacDonald's contemporaries took up the latest, hip saxophone styles out of Los Angeles, bought wind synthesizers and joined fusion groups. Or they studied the masters of the tradition at the Banff Jazz Workshop and spent time in New York. And MacDonald? At 25, he joined an RCMP concert band based in Ottawa.

"At the time, it was a good move," MacDonald said in a telephone interview recently. "It was basically done for security reasons. Things were kind of slow in Toronto and I was looking for a change." That would be financial security, then, not national security, although even now he is guarded in what he will and won't say about the 5 1/2 - year stint that wound up this year.

Whatever it's particulars, the job had MacDonald working regularly and allowed him to pursue his own interests on the side. "You definitely had time to maintain your own direction musically, and that was one of the main reasons for perhaps staying as long as I did."

Indeed, every now and then, MacDonald would turn up in a jazz club in Ottawa, Hull, Montreal or Toronto, still ready, willing and able to wear out yet another rhythm section with his penchant for fast tempos and long, hurtling solos.

MacDonald chuckled at his reputation: "I never thought that I played that fast or that long, but everybody seems to remind me that I do. It's part of the tradition. For me, I see a lot of what I do in terms of self-development. It's important for me to challenge myself and, as well, the other people I'm working with, and in as many different ways as possible."

Does he feel that his Ottawa sojourn has left him lagging behind his contemporaries? "Not really in a musical sense. Perhaps in the sense that I wasn't very visible. Basically, being in Ottawa has been a really good chance for me to sit down and sound out how I felt about the music, and where I wanted to go with it, without the pressures of being in a scene where there are a lot of other things going on musically…It's a different way of going about it, for sure, but one for me that worked pretty well."

That said, MacDonald is moving back to Toronto at the end of the month, but not before he does a whirlwind trio tour of Central Canada with the same Claude Ranger, now drumming out of Vancouver, and Toronto bassist Kieran Overs. The tour starts at the Bamboo in Toronto tonight, followed by appearances at the Baby Grand Theatre in Kingston on Wednesday, the Downstairs Club in Ottawa on Thursday and Claudio's in Montreal on Friday and Saturday.

(There is also a reunion of Ranger's 11-year-old Toronto quartet on Aug. 10 at an Acadian festival in Caraquet, N.B. MacDonald will be there, as will the band's New Brunswick contingent, cornetist Roland Bourgeois and bassist Marty Melancon.)

A recording, MacDonald's second, should come out of the trio's Montreal engagement. His first, a post-boppish effort titled The Revellers, was issued this year by the co-operative Unity label in Toronto. So the career seems to be back on track quickly enough.

And what does Toronto hold in store this second time around? "Well, uh…nothing," MacDonald admitted, laughing, the career already at a sudden stop.

His Ottawa years, however, have left him a little more "secure" then was once the case. "It's not quite as desperate as perhaps it could be. It's a little more relaxed. I can afford to take some time and look out for the things that interest me."

Still, there is a hint of doubt. "I don't know, maybe we're just buying more time here. But I've worked very hard over the last five, six years, so maybe I owe this to myself. At least, that's my thinking. Six months from now, who knows?

The 20-year old wonders these days don't have time, between fashion fittings and record sessions, to think six months down the road.

Asked for some words of advice, MacDonald, who has been down the road and is just now coming back, could only reaffirm his own priorities. "What we all try to do - you know I work with older players a lot - is just to keep working at the music. The reason that most people get into playing jazz is the attraction of the music, as opposed to…

As opposed to the opportunity to wear nice suits?

"Whatever. I've nothing against somebody wearing a suit to a gig. I do it myself sometimes. But the truth of what we do is in the music."