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George's Spaghetti House
George's Spaghetti House was a jazz club located at 290 Dundas Street East in Toronto. History In 1956 entrepreneur Doug Cole (1925–2012) bought the restaurant, keeping the existing name. Cole began to feature jazz at the restaurant on weekend evenings, and starting on 5 September 1960 booked music six nights per week. Saxophonist Moe Koffman served as the booking agent for the club. As a result, Koffman frequently booked himself into the club, giving rise to a running joke amongst Toronto's jazz fans and musicians, who would phone the club and say, "I'd like to know who is playing tonight, and I won't take Moe for an answer." Nevertheless, many of Canada's most famous jazz musicians played at the club, including Don Thompson, Ed Bickert, Guido Basso, Doug Riley, Terry Clarke, and Rob McConnell. Cole later opened a restaurant called Castle George on the second floor of the building. He also operated two other clubs in Toronto: Bourbon Street and Basin Street, which occupied th ...
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Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later d ...
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Moe Koffman
Morris "Moe" Koffman, OC (28 December 1928 – 28 March 2001) was a Canadian jazz saxophonist and flautist, as well as composer and arranger. During a career spanning from the 1950s to the 2000s, Koffman was one of Canada's most prolific musicians, working variously in clubs and sessions and releasing 30 albums. With his 1957 record ''Cool and Hot Sax'' on the New York-based Jubilee label, Koffman became one of the first Canadian jazz musicians to record a full-length album. Koffman was also a long-time member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass. Early life and education Koffman was born in Toronto to Jewish immigrants from Poland. His parents operated a variety store. At the age of nine he began his musical studies in his native city, studying violin. He studied with Gordon Delamont, and later attended the Toronto Conservatory of Music, now the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto, where he was a student of Samuel Dolin. Career Koffman dropped out of school when he found work ...
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Don Thompson (musician)
Donald Winston Thompson, OC (born 18 January 1940) is a Canadian jazz icon who plays double bass, piano, and vibes. Thompson's career as a performer, recording artist, producer, session musician, and music educator has lasted for more than 50 years. One of Thompson's best-known musical associations was his membership in Paul Desmond's "Toronto Quartet" from 1974 to 1976, along with Ed Bickert and Jerry Fuller. Thompson also worked for several years in the 1970s and 1980s with guitarist Jim Hall. Thompson was also a member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass for more than two decades starting in the late 1960s. From 2005 to the present, Thompson arranged and performed on all of singer Diana Panton's albums. Thompson first met Panton in the 1990s when he heard her sing as a high-school student, and he encouraged Panton to study at the Banff Centre, where he was one of her faculty instructors. Thompson has been a fixture on the Toronto jazz scene since the late 1960s when he m ...
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Ed Bickert
Edward Isaac Bickert, (November 29, 1932 – February 28, 2019) was a Canadian guitarist who played mainstream jazz and swing music. Bickert worked professionally from the mid-1950s to 2000, mainly in the Toronto area. His international reputation grew steadily from the mid-1970s onward as he recorded albums both as a bandleader and as a backing musician for Paul Desmond, Rosemary Clooney, and other artists, with whom he toured in North America, Europe and Japan. Early life Bickert was born in the small Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonite village of Hochfeld, Manitoba to Harry Bickert, a Russian Mennonite immigrant from Molotschna colony and Helen Dyck of Plum Coulee, Manitoba. Bickert's parents were semi-professional musicians, his father playing fiddle and his mother playing piano. As a child, Bickert and his family moved to Vernon, British Columbia where his parents operated a chicken farm and had a small country dance band. When he was ten years old, Bickert started playing a ...
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Guido Basso
Guido Basso, (born 27 September 1937) is a Canadian jazz musician who was a member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass big band. He is a trumpeter, flugelhornist, arranger, composer and conductor. Life and career Basso was born in Montreal, Quebec, and he began playing the trumpet at the age of nine. He studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal. His professional music career started in his teens, and American singer Vic Damone included him on an international tour in 1957–58. In 1958, he joined singer Pearl Bailey and her husband, drummer Louis Bellson, touring North America with them and their orchestra until he moved to Toronto in 1960. There, Basso became a studio trumpeter and occasionally played harmonica. In 1963, he became music director for CBLT's ''Nightcap'', a job he held until 1967. He subsequently held a number of music director positions with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as being active as a performer. Beginning in 1975, h ...
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Doug Riley
Douglas Brian Riley, CM (April 12, 1945 – August 27, 2007) was a Canadian musician, also known as Dr. Music. He spent two decades with the Famous People Players as its musical director, besides his participation on over 300 album projects in various genres. Riley died of a heart attack on August 27, 2007. Biography Riley was a graduate of the University of Toronto and studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Doug Riley was born and raised in Toronto. At the age of two he was diagnosed with polio. When he was three, as a way to help cope with his physical disability and to provide him with a means of self-expression, he began to study piano. In his teens, he played with R&B band the Silhouettes. He attended the University of Toronto and, in 1965, graduated with a Bachelor of Music. He went on to do his postgraduate work on the music of the Iroquois. In 1969, Riley was the arranger and keyboardist on Ray Charles' album, ''Doing His Thing''. In a 2006 interview wi ...
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Terry Clarke (drummer)
Terence Michael "Terry" Clarke C.M. (born August 20, 1944, Vancouver) is a Canadian jazz drummer. Clarke studied percussion with Jim Blackley and played with Chris Gage and Dave Robbins early in his career. From 1965 to 1967 he toured in a quintet with John Handy, and joined The Fifth Dimension in 1967, remaining with the ensemble until 1969. In 1970, he moved to Toronto, where he began a longstanding association with Rob McConnell's group, Boss Brass; he also played with Ed Bickert, Ruby Braff, Jim Galloway, Sonny Greenwich, Jay McShann, Emily Remler, and Frank Rosolino. In 1976, he toured with Jim Hall for the first time and in 1981 did an international tour with Oscar Peterson. He relocated to New York City in 1985, where he played or recorded with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Eddie Daniels, Oliver Jones, Roger Kellaway, Helen Merrill, Ken Peplowski, and Joe Roccisano, among others. He played with the Free Trade ensemble in 1994, a quintet composed of Clarke, Ralph Bowen, ...
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Rob McConnell
Robert Murray Gordon "Rob" McConnell, (14 February 1935 – 1 May 2010) was a Canadian jazz trombonist, composer, and arranger.Jeff Sultanof. Experiencing Big Band Jazz: A Listener's Companion'. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; 8 November 2017. . p. 150. McConnell is best known for establishing and leading the big band The Boss Brass, which he directed from 1967 to 1999. Biography McConnell was born in London, Ontario, Canada, and took up the valve trombone in high school. He began his performing career in the early 1950s, performing and studying with Clifford Brown, Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, and later with Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson. He studied music theory with Gordon Delamont. In 1968 he formed ''The Boss Brass'', a big band that became his primary performing and recording unit through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
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Bourbon Street (Toronto)
Bourbon Street was a jazz club located at 180 Queen Street West in Toronto, Ontario. Operating between 1971 and 1986, it was one of Toronto's preeminent jazz clubs and featured many internationally renowned musicians. History Bourbon Street was opened in 1971 by Doug Cole, also the owner of George's Spaghetti House. The club featured a largely American musical lineup that was backed by a local house band. In the fall of 1975 both Jim Hall and Paul Desmond recorded live albums at the club for A&M Records A&M Records was an American record label founded as an independent company by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962. Due to the success of the discography A&M released, the label garnered interest and was acquired by PolyGram in 1989 and began distr .... These albums both feature all-Canadian bands. Cole sold the club in 1983; Bourbon Street continued to feature music until 1986. The building has since been demolished. Live albums *Jim Hall - '' Jim Hall Live! (1975) *Paul Des ...
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Order Of Canada
The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the centennial of Canadian Confederation, the three-tiered order was established in 1967 as a fellowship that recognizes the outstanding merit or distinguished service of Canadians who make a major difference to Canada through lifelong contributions in every field of endeavour, as well as the efforts by non-Canadians who have made the world better by their actions. Membership is accorded to those who exemplify the order's Latin motto, , meaning "they desire a better country", a phrase taken from Hebrews 11:16. The three tiers of the order are Companion, Officer, and Member; specific individuals may be given extraordinary membership and deserving non-Canadians may receive honorary appointment into each grade. , the reigning Canadian monarch, is th ...
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Governor General Of Canada
The governor general of Canada (french: gouverneure générale du Canada) is the federal viceregal representative of the . The is head of state of Canada and the 14 other Commonwealth realms, but resides in oldest and most populous realm, the United Kingdom. The , on the advice of Canadian prime minister, appoints a governor general to carry on the Government of Canada in the 's name, performing most of constitutional and ceremonial duties. The commission is for an indefinite period—known as serving '' at Majesty's pleasure''—though five years is the usual length of time. Since 1959, it has also been traditional to alternate between francophone and anglophone officeholders—although many recent governors general have been bilingual. The office began in the 17th century, when the French crown appointed governors of the colony of Canada. Following the British conquest of the colony, the British monarch appointed governors of the Province of Quebec (later the Cana ...
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Defunct Jazz Clubs
Defunct (no longer in use or active) may refer to: * ''Defunct'' (video game), 2014 * Zombie process or defunct process, in Unix-like operating systems See also * * :Former entities * End-of-life product * Obsolescence Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
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