Qualicum Beach jazz musician Phil Dwyer could be adding another Juno Award to his collection.
Dwyer’s reputation on the jazz scene has long been at the highest level and he already has four Junos on his mantle. He will find out March 31 if he he gets a 2012 Juno, after he was nominated in the category of Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year for his latest work Changing Seasons, which was released in October, 2011.
If the acclaimed saxophonist/composer/bandleader brings home some prestigious hardware for the project he produced with violin virtuoso Mark Fewer, he said it will be great because he put a lot of hard work into it.
“This one is the project that had the most of me in it,” he said from his home the day before he flew to Toronto.
The violin concerto was recorded in July 2011 at the state of the art Vancouver recording studio The Factory with a 17-piece jazz band and a 21-piece string section. Dwyer said writing the music and bringing that many musicians together to perform it took extensive planning.
“I wrote all the music for it. There were 38 musicians. It was a lot of phone calls to make.”
The combination of a large band with horns and a massed string section integrates diverse musical elements in a fresh new way and Dwyer said, although it was a big undertaking, the end product was well worth it.
He said he had performers come in from all over including Detroit, Toronto, Edmonton and New York.
He said while in Toronto for the Junos he is looking forward to seeing many of his friends in the music industry.
“It will be fun to see everybody. We will be sitting at a table with good friends. If I win … that will be gravy.”
Dwyer and his wife Theresa will be attending the Saturday night event where they give out most of the awards as well as the April 1 Juno awards show which is televised.
He said they are both looking forward to a mini holiday while they are back east and will be visiting their children. Son, Ben, is in the music program at McGill University and daughter, Madeleine, is studying academics at the University of Ottawa.
