I do not normally promote other musicians shows but I decided to make an exception in this case. If you have not heard Caitlin Smith’s Tiny Alligator Large Band it should rise right to the top of your to do list. Hearing band’s like the Alligator’s is what inspired me to become a composer. Caitlin’s band will be performing in Toronto on April 15th 2010 at the Music Gallery. Here is the press release:
Toronto, March 8, 2010 – Having lured two jazz vocalists, an operatic soprano, many instrumentalists and one unsuspecting writer into her quirky musical world, composer and conductor Caitlin Smith brings her new version of the Tiny Alligator Large Band to the Music Gallery on April 15th.
The show will premiere Smith’s new operatic song cycle for big band, “And All of Your Animal Tendencies.” It will feature her setting of a short story by Toronto writer Sheila Heti, from Heti’s 2001 collection The Middle Stories. Heti was cajoled into being part of the project through an online social-media campaign this winter, which can be found at tinyalligator.tumblr.com.
Smith recently returned from a stint in New York, where she studied composition with Jim McNeely and conducting with Gary Fagin and Alan Pierson on a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Being young, broke and lonely in Brooklyn inspired this new work, which also features lyrics written by Smith. “They’re selfish songs,” she admits, “written mostly to console myself.”
For this concert, Tiny Alligator Large band will feature an unprecedented number of singers: Jennifer Ryan, Kristin Mueller-Heaslip and Alex Samaras. They will be joined by sixteen other musicians, including Kevin Turcotte on trumpet, William Carn on trombone and Michele Jacot on winds.
Opening for Tiny Alligator will be Ronley Teper and Her Lipliners. BlogTO proclaims that “if Joanna Newsom gave birth to Tom Waits’ illegitimate daughter and then refused to breastfeed her, the girl might grow up sounding a lot like Toronto’s Ronley Teper.” She can be found at ronleyteper.com.
Just the details:
Caitlin Smith,
Tiny Alligator Large Band,
and All of Your Animal Tendencies
at the Music Gallery in Toronto
Thursday, April 15th, 2010, 8 pm$25/$10
www.musicgallery.org
www.tinyalligator.com
www.ronleyteper.com
For more information, please contact:
Caitlin Smith
[email protected]
647 880 8630 
