Blue Skies
Thursday May 22, 2008
By Kelly McManus - North Shore Outlook
It all started in the south of France. Rebecca Jenkins and her husband Joel Bakan were drifting in a river boat, drinking wine, eating fresh baguettes and playing jazz for one another on a little guitar.
“Oh, it’s very romantic,” laughs Jenkins. “Floating down the river ... tying up on the French countryside ... cycling around on little rented bikes.”
When the couple returned home to Vancouver, they went straight to the studio and recorded Blue Skies (carried by EMI/Maximum Jazz), 12 jazz standards with Jenkins doing vocals, Bakan on guitar, and their friends Alan Matheson and Liam MacDonald handling the other instrumentals.
Jenkins and Bakan are what you might call a renaissance couple.
She’s a prolific actress with a genie under her belt for her 1989 performance in Bye Bye Blues, where she played jazz singer Daisy Cooper. Her awards and nominations include feature films Wilby Wonderful (2004) and Marion Bridge (2002). She’s also an ex-rocker and all-around musician who has toured with the Parachute Club and Jane Sibbery.
Bakan is a UBC professor, a former clerk to a Supreme Court judge, and the screenwriter/author of The Corporation (the film and the book).
Whenever they can, Jenkins and Bakan travel the world together. Those travels tend to involve music.
Once, in Oslo, a few years ago where Bakan was doing a book tour for The Corporation, a business associate took the couple to a candlelit bistro where he pulled out a little guitar. Bakan and Jenkins gave an impromptu serenade in the restaurant.
“We love playing music together,” Jenkins says. “We just feel things the same way.”
They weren’t always so synched. Twenty years ago, when they met as friends, Jenkins was playing the epic live scene on Toronto’s Queen Street. She jammed with Bakan one night and her folk background didn’t quite mix with his more structured jazz training. “I stopped and was like, what are you doing?” she remembers of their jam session. “Just stop it!”
They laugh about it now, because about six years ago, the two friends fell in love. Meeting up for a dinner party with their old pals in Toronto, something just clicked between Bakan and Jenkins.
Pretty soon she came to visit him in Vancouver where he picked her up at the airport.
“I came to the bottom of the escalator and saw him across the room and that was it,” remembers Jenkins. “We are pretty crazy in love with each other. It’s beautiful.”
In the studio producing Blue Skies, it struck the pair that all 12 jazz standards were love songs, from All of Me to Moon River to Blue Skies – not something they consciously planned, but something that just seemed right.
“It’s the same thing I look for in a script that draws me to music,” says Jenkins. “Good writing and melody (that’s) simple, complex and intelligent.”
The couple now lives in West Point Grey with their two children (each from previous relationships).
Jenkins’ daughter, Sadie, 12, a singer and a pianist, and Bakan’s son Myim, 11, a drummer, enjoy watching their parents perform together.
“We’re starting to do this thing on Sundays,” says Jenkins. “We go to the Jazz Cellar (in Vancouver) for dinner. They (Sadie and Myim) have very discerning ears. They listen really carefully. It’s really neat.”
Jenkins and Bakan will perform Blue Skies at The Cellar May 30 and 31. Showtimes are 8:30 and 10:15 each evening, with tickets at $15.
After a few tour dates set for the fall and next summer – they’re too busy to tour this summer, Bakan with a new book and Jenkins with a feature film project – the couple plans to hit the studio again to record more jazz, some original songs, and a few covers they’ve been playing together while “barefoot” on the beaches out at UBC or sitting out on their patio.
Jenkins says they had so much fun making the last album, they can’t wait to get started on the next.
They hope for those compositions to follow the same mood as Blue Skies – impromptu, relaxed and honest recordings “that aren’t big on the presentation but just show the songs for what they are.”
Maybe, for inspiration, a few trips to the south of France will be in order.
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Thursday May 22, 2008
By Kelly McManus - North Shore Outlook
It all started in the south of France. Rebecca Jenkins and her husband Joel Bakan were drifting in a river boat, drinking wine, eating fresh baguettes and playing jazz for one another on a little guitar.
“Oh, it’s very romantic,” laughs Jenkins. “Floating down the river ... tying up on the French countryside ... cycling around on little rented bikes.”
When the couple returned home to Vancouver, they went straight to the studio and recorded Blue Skies (carried by EMI/Maximum Jazz), 12 jazz standards with Jenkins doing vocals, Bakan on guitar, and their friends Alan Matheson and Liam MacDonald handling the other instrumentals.
Jenkins and Bakan are what you might call a renaissance couple.
She’s a prolific actress with a genie under her belt for her 1989 performance in Bye Bye Blues, where she played jazz singer Daisy Cooper. Her awards and nominations include feature films Wilby Wonderful (2004) and Marion Bridge (2002). She’s also an ex-rocker and all-around musician who has toured with the Parachute Club and Jane Sibbery.
Bakan is a UBC professor, a former clerk to a Supreme Court judge, and the screenwriter/author of The Corporation (the film and the book).
Whenever they can, Jenkins and Bakan travel the world together. Those travels tend to involve music.
Once, in Oslo, a few years ago where Bakan was doing a book tour for The Corporation, a business associate took the couple to a candlelit bistro where he pulled out a little guitar. Bakan and Jenkins gave an impromptu serenade in the restaurant.
“We love playing music together,” Jenkins says. “We just feel things the same way.”
They weren’t always so synched. Twenty years ago, when they met as friends, Jenkins was playing the epic live scene on Toronto’s Queen Street. She jammed with Bakan one night and her folk background didn’t quite mix with his more structured jazz training. “I stopped and was like, what are you doing?” she remembers of their jam session. “Just stop it!”
They laugh about it now, because about six years ago, the two friends fell in love. Meeting up for a dinner party with their old pals in Toronto, something just clicked between Bakan and Jenkins.
Pretty soon she came to visit him in Vancouver where he picked her up at the airport.
“I came to the bottom of the escalator and saw him across the room and that was it,” remembers Jenkins. “We are pretty crazy in love with each other. It’s beautiful.”
In the studio producing Blue Skies, it struck the pair that all 12 jazz standards were love songs, from All of Me to Moon River to Blue Skies – not something they consciously planned, but something that just seemed right.
“It’s the same thing I look for in a script that draws me to music,” says Jenkins. “Good writing and melody (that’s) simple, complex and intelligent.”
The couple now lives in West Point Grey with their two children (each from previous relationships).
Jenkins’ daughter, Sadie, 12, a singer and a pianist, and Bakan’s son Myim, 11, a drummer, enjoy watching their parents perform together.
“We’re starting to do this thing on Sundays,” says Jenkins. “We go to the Jazz Cellar (in Vancouver) for dinner. They (Sadie and Myim) have very discerning ears. They listen really carefully. It’s really neat.”
Jenkins and Bakan will perform Blue Skies at The Cellar May 30 and 31. Showtimes are 8:30 and 10:15 each evening, with tickets at $15.
After a few tour dates set for the fall and next summer – they’re too busy to tour this summer, Bakan with a new book and Jenkins with a feature film project – the couple plans to hit the studio again to record more jazz, some original songs, and a few covers they’ve been playing together while “barefoot” on the beaches out at UBC or sitting out on their patio.
Jenkins says they had so much fun making the last album, they can’t wait to get started on the next.
They hope for those compositions to follow the same mood as Blue Skies – impromptu, relaxed and honest recordings “that aren’t big on the presentation but just show the songs for what they are.”
Maybe, for inspiration, a few trips to the south of France will be in order.
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