Going for Baroque - The Cornwall Standard Freeholder

By KATHLEEN HAY

Duo Affinité are everything you expect, yet perhaps, everything you don't expect in a classical, yet contemporary, performance.

Comprised of world-class musicians, bassoonist Nadina Mackie Jackson and horn player, Guy Few, the pair's press photos are at first glance more than a tad striking. Jackson, resplendent in a gown bedecked with feathers, sports a vibrant close coif that leads one to imagine this is where Stravinsky might have found inspiration for his "Firebird."

Few has no less a flair for style, often adorned in unbuttoned 3/4-length jackets, black silk evening suits -- maybe some leather -with his goatee shaved to clean angles.

Together, they are the yin and the yang of what it means to go for Baroque these days and, together, they will polish off this year's Cornwall Concert Series at Aultsville Theatre on May 22.

Curtain time is 8 p.m.

Although Few doesn't recall the occasion, according to Mackie Jackson, they first made eye contact on a plane a number of years ago when she noticed his horn case.

"He had this splashy hair and was incredibly charismatic," she said with a laugh. "I grinned at him, he smiled cautiously at me.

"When I got home my ex-husband said, 'Oh, that's Guy Few, he's the only cool trumpeter in Canada.”

As the musical fates would have it, the duo later met officially in Montreal when they were performing in an orchestra for a CBC Radio production, under the direction of Alain Trudel.

"I sat in front of trumpeters all my life, there was something very tactile about his playing," she says.

Apparently so.

According to Few -- which Mackie Jackson later confirms in her interview -"she decided to start a recording project with me, unbeknownst to me," he chuckles, adding that "she's a wonderful player."

That was their first recording, Bacchanale (2007), with the Toronto Chamber Orchestra, and they've subsequently also recorded Romanza (2008), both of which will be available for purchase at Aultsville Theatre, and which they will be happy to sign for eager listeners.
The duo also won the 2009 Just Plain Folks Best Classical Orchestral Album for , Bacchanale, with the Toronto Chamber Orchestra, where Mackie Jackson -- hair dyed bright blue -- played at a saloon in Nashville for the awards concert.
Appearances aside, it's really the music that makes this duo stand out, and they enjoy a symbiotic relationship with their approach to it and to performing.

"Baroque to me feels brand-new, and it's the inventiveness," states Few about how the genre appeals to him. "The opportunity to play something that has a life, that can go anywhere, is really exciting.
"It flows from period music to contemporary."

Few began learning trumpet when he was eight-and-a half years old, which is really too young, he admits. However, his dad played cornet in a big band and one of his cousins is Richard Stewart, a highly-touted trumpeter.

"It was almost understood I would go into music," said Few, who also plays corno, piano and sings.

Mackie Jackson grew up in northern British Columbia and grew up "remotely raised from music" until a "wonderful band teacher" came to town. There were no bassoons, however, then one day a bassoonist came to town and she fell in love with the instrument. At 16, she was accepted to into the prestigious music program at the University of British Columbia where she had her first lesson on the instrument.

Every moment was consumed with honing it, to the suffering of her other classes, she laughs.

"I spent two years at UBC, but I learned you can't actually go to university unless you go to class!" chuckles Mackie Jackson, who then pursued bassoon studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

The duo continue to enjoy sharing their musical passion with today's youth, perhaps encouraging that same seed within young tykes. They take as many opportunities to do this and often tag-team performance gigs with classroom visits.

"When we can take those opportunities, it's really wonderful," she said. "It opens the possibilities."

When they're not on the road or performing concerts, they can be found at the Grand River Baroque Festival in the southern Ontario communities of Ayr and Paris, where they now serve as the festival's co-artistic directors.

Their upcoming Cornwall show promises to be an equally special one, says the horn player.

"It's a lovely, lovely show. The thing I really like about our concerts is they are all events. It could be a tiny place of five people, or 600 people. In the concert world, we want to appeal to all people," Few stated.