A Tour of the Blues - St. Louis to New Orleans: Andrew Homzy's NOLA NightHawks

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Thursday, November 3rd, 2016
7:30 PM to 9:30 PM

A Tour Of The Blues - St. Louis, Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans Andrew Homzy’s NOLA NightHawks Featuring three guest vocalists - Robyn Fortunat, Layla Hansen, Dominique Pashley Celebrating the music of W.C. Handy - the "Father of the Blues”. 13 musicians perform 15 of W.C. Handy’s compositions - a musical journey from St. Louis Missouri to New Orleans, Louisiana.

A Tour of the Blues: Celebrating the Music of W.C. Handy, will be performed on Nov. 3, 4, 5 and 6 at Chemainus Gardens Pavilion, 3042 River Rd., Chemainus. 

Tickets, available at:

Rainforest Arts, 9781 Willow St., Chemainus, 

Oak St. 49th Parallel Grocers, Chemainus, 

Fascinating Rhythm, 51 Commercial St. Nanaimo

$20 advance, $15 students, and $25 at the door

For information, phone 250-324-1900.
[email protected]

W. C. Handy’s hues of blues have been sung and played by the worlds greatest musicians including: Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Art Tatum, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey, Eartha Kit, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, Gil Evans, Dave Brubeck, The Canadian Brass, Stevie Wonder, Hugh Laurie ~~~ W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” has been recorded over 2,100 times - since it was published in 1914.

The Father of the Blues, W.C. Handy, has a huge fan on Vancouver Island.

Nanaimo’s Andrew Homzy, musician, arranger, jazz scholar and Grammy nominee, is so fond of Handy’s compositions that he has created a revue of some of his best-known tunes: A Tour of the Blues: Celebrating the Music of W.C. Handy.

The revue, following on the wildly successful production of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill late last year, will be co-produced by impresario Pat Selman and the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society in November.

Handy, one of the most influential American songwriters, penned such classics as St. Louis Blues, Memphis Blues, Yellow Dog Blues and Beale Street Blues in the early 20th century.

One of many early blues musicians, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form, taking it from a regional style — Delta blues — with a limited audience to one of the dominant forces in American music.

Homzy has arranged each Handy tune for three vocalists and his 10-piece NOLA NightHawks band, which has performed regularly on the South Island since it was formed three years ago.

Homzy, who moved to Nanaimo in 2009, was a key figure on the Montreal jazz scene for more than 40 years, where his Jazz Orchestra, with Homzy on piano, played regularly at the Montreal Jazz Festival and whose performances were broadcast many times on Radio-Canada.

He was nominated for a Grammy for his research into the music of legendary jazz bass pioneer Charles Mingus, writing comprehensive notes on his work and co-producing Mingus’s six-CD set, Passions of a Man: The Complete Atlantic Recordings 1956-1961.

Homzy fondly recalls a bus trip he and a schoolmate took to New York City in 1963 to buy some sheet music after graduating from high school in Cleveland.

Visiting Handy Brothers Music, they met Wyre Handy, W.C.’s son, who kept pulling sheet music off the shelves as they named their favourite Handy tunes, and who refused to take any money for the arrangements they took back home to Cleveland.

“We learned a lot while we were in New York,” Homzy recalled. “But the two or three hours we spent with Mr. Handy were the best time of our trip.”

The revue will feature vocalists Robyn Fortunat, Layla Hansen and Dominique Pashley, along with trumpeters Greg Bush and David Herman, trombonists Darren Nilsson and Craig Burnett, clarinetist Claudio Fantinato, baritone saxophonist Rod Alsop, guitarist Jesse Marshall, bassist Rob Uffen, drummer Alicia Murray and musical director Homzy on piano.