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SAVAGE LOVE
MUSIC / SAVAGE LOVE Vancouver jazz legend Paul Plimley dies at 69
by Mike Usinger
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The Vancouver jazz scene is mourning the passing of pianist Paul Plimley. Friends, fans, and musical collaborators are reporting that Plimley passed away from cancer at the age of 69.
One of the city’s most gi ed improvisors, the pianist was a founder of Vancouver’s New Orchestra Workshop Society in 1977, as well as a mainstay of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Over the course of a career that spanned six decades he recorded albums as a bandleader with the likes of bassists Lisle Ellis and Barry Guy, and percussionist Trichy Sankaran.
As a respected collaborator, he also made records with American sax player Joe McPhee, guzheng innovator Mei Han, and California composer Anthony Davis.
First enamoured with rock giants such as Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin, Plimley’s world was rocked in his mid-teens when he discovered improvised American jazz. at set him down a path which established his as one of the greats of the Canadian jazz scene.
While technically gi ed, Plimley was noted for understanding that playing music should also be joyful and fun. In a review of the 2012 collaboration Hexentrio (which featured the pianist with Guy, and Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli) long-time Straight jazz critic Alexander Varty wrote, “But there’s more than mere technique going on in this music, which ranges from hushed, impressionistic meditations to scarifying blasts of noise to eeting passages of sweetness and light. What most animates the band is its giddy physicality, likely stemming from the curious corporeal rapport between the drummer and the pianist.”
at joy was also a hallmark of Plimley o stage. On Facebook, friend Jhayne Faust wrote. “It feels impossible that we’ve been robbed so soon of his goofy laughter and kind heart, his iconoclastic, arty jokes and his frankly adorable everything else. He was a so , gentle man, who did his best and was, quite o en, successful at it. I was blessed to know him. We were all blessed. May his memory always be a celebration.”
Jazz writer Mark Miller weighed in with, “I am stunned by word tonight from Vancouver of the passing of Paul Plimley, one the Canadian jazz scene’s true originals, at the age of 69. I once described him as ‘an impulsive improviser whose considerable expressivity and physicality at the keyboard, post-Cecil Taylor, was leavened by a lyricism born—he would say—of Debussy and a twinkling sense of humour, if not mischief, entirely of his own.’”
Vancouver composer Lan Tung remembered Plimley as someone who was above all willing to share his knowledge with his peers, whether they were established or just starting out.
“To Paul Plimley, a great friend and mentor!,” Tung wrote on Facebook. “Paul was willing to spend the time to play with me when I was just at the beginning stage of improvising. He taught me so much. He was a great in uence and inspiration to so many. He named his commission for the Orchid Ensemble ‘Proliferasian’, and later allowed me to call my new ensemble in that name. When Paul came to Orchid Ensemble’s rehearsals of the piece, we had a 4th part to the trio—that’s his dance. He demonstrated with his body how we would all play in di erent tempo at the same time...” g
Pianist Paul Plimley—widely respected as a boundary-pushing collaborator, scene builder, and a giving friend with a sharp sense of humour—leaves a rich legacy. Photo by Brian Nation.
Savage Love fans step up after Dan’s tech disasters
by Dan Savage
My laptop died last week. My laptop couldn’t die when I was in the o ce, with capable techsupport people close by. Oh, no. My laptop lost its will to live when I was thousands of miles away, in a country where I don’t speak the language. So I wasn’t able to access my Savage Love email—which is a problem, since no questions means no column. So, I put out an SOS on Instagram, asking my followers there to send me their quick-and-dirty questions. I wrote my responses on my phone… which I dropped at one point, shattering the screen, because of course I did. So, my laptop is dead, my phone is broken, and my thumbs are bloodied. But I got this week’s column done with the help of my followers on Instagram. anks, gang.
- Dan
b IN THE MOUNTAIN-climbing community there is a backlash against a route at a particular climbing site that’s named Gangbang. Critics say it refers to a nonconsensual sex act. Your thoughts?
Missionary position in the absence of consent is not sex; it’s rape. A gangbang with consent is not rape; it’s sex.
at said, most representations of gangbangs in lm, porn, literature, et cetera, portray nonconsensual scenarios with women as the victims, and it’s understandable why some would want the name of that route changed. So change it.
b WHAT DO YOU do when you’ve told someone who is supposed to be a friend to stop making sexual comments but they keep saying sexually charged things?
You realize this person isn’t a friend and hang out with your actual friends instead.
b BRITISH FAG HERE. (I mean, cis gay guy in his mid-30s in the U.K.) I am living in Germany. My question: you had a British caller living in the USA on the Savage Lovecast a few episodes back and he said his accent alone unbuckled belts there. Is it true? German guys do not nd my accent sexy. But if I moved to the States, would I be drowning in cock?
Cock is a solid (ideally), not a liquid (although with a powerful enough blender, anything is possible), so you would be choking on cock over here, not drowning in it. And, yes, a British accent is a plus in the USA—because unlike Europeans, Americans don’t have to put up with mobs of English tourists hopping on cheap ights, terrorizing our city centres with their drunken bachelor/bachelorette parties, and puking on our doorsteps.
b HOW DO I tell my friends and family that I’m poly now?
Use your words.
b BEST WAY TO tell your hubby his armpits have started to smell? (He’s never needed deodorant before!)
Use your words!
b HOW DO I tell my boyfriend nicely that he needs to brush his teeth more o en? He’s very sensitive to this kind of feedback, but I don’t want him to have stinky breath in a work meeting!
Use your words! When my breath stinks or I need to take a shower or use some deodorant, I’m grateful when my partner says something to me—because I’m a grownup.
If your partner can’t handle this kind of feedback, you need to ask yourself why you’re wasting your time on someone who isn’t a grownup.
b I’M A 40-YEAR-OLD woman. I was sexting with a guy (29) who started sending me nude/sex pics (including face shots) of another woman he had been with, without her consent. He thought it was sexy, but I was repulsed. Teachable moment or trash him?
If you ghost him, he’s likely to assume the photos he shared (and the massive consent violation they represent) weren’t the issue or even an issue. He needs to know.
So teach, then trash.
b CAN YOU PLEASE explain the di erence between transgender and transsexual? A lot of arguments happen online about the semantics of these foundational de nitions, so some clarity would be appreciated. ank you!
Definitions and redefinitions come at us so fast these days—to say nothing of
from previous page rede ning old de nitions as hate speech— that there’s no point attempting to answer this question. Because by the time this column is published, odds are that whatever I write today will be out of date and/or a cancellable o ence.
But so far as I know right now, all transsexual people are transgender but not all transgender people are transsexual.
b DO YOU THINK we will keep seeing significant changes in sexual-orientation self-labelling in the future? In the future everyone will have their own niche sexual orientation for 15 minutes— and their own neo-pronoun and their own pride flag.
And it’s going to be even more confusing than it is now, and everybody is going to get everybody else’s orientations, pronouns, and flags wrong all the time, and absolutely everybody is going to be upset with absolutely everyone else, all the time.
The oceans will rise and the planet will bake and we will be arguing about whether “cake” can be a pronoun as the meteor hurtles toward the doomed planet Earth.
b MY S.O. IS good friends with a number of their exes. I know it’s probably a good sign that they are mature, but it makes me jealous and paranoid. How to get over that?
Keep telling yourself that being friends with exes is a good sign about your SO, and then carry that thought to its logical conclusion: being jealous and paranoid about your current being friends with his exes is a bad sign about you—not a fatal sign for this relationship, but de nitely something you should work through with a shrink.
b I’M THAT RARE thing, the one-minute woman. How do I delay orgasms?
Every time this subject comes up, someone recommends low-dose SSRIs. Ask your doctor if they’re right for you.g
Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. Email: questions@savagelove.net. Listen to Dan on the Savage Lovecast. Columns, podcasts, books, merch, and more at savage.love.
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