Jean Papineau-Couture: La Vie, la carrière, l'oeuvre by Louise Bail Milot (review)

214 LETTERS IN CANADA 19B7 interest in the player as character is implied by the space devoted to each: VicVogel, Paul Bley, Phil Nimmons, Oscar Peterson, and Rob McConnell get the most attention. The inclusion of Bley, long an expatriate, reflects Miller's obvious affection for those working on the outer edges of the music's evolving tradition, as does his interest in the alphabet soup of 'new music' formations (ACMA, CCMC, NOW), including the Quebecois musicians of ENIM/Plateau Mont Royal. Another stylistic extreme is examined in a short piece on Kid Bastien - not, as might be expected, a New Orleans creole but a British immigrant who plays rudimentary Dixieland in Toronto. Canadian jazz musicians have amazingly diverse geographic origins, and Miller gives a brief outline of activity in communities from coast to coast; however, playing jazz is essentially a collaborative endeavour and those who would grow artistically must seek out ever more accomplished collaborators who will both support and challenge them. Not surprisingly , almost thirty of the musicians profiled are located in either Toronto or Montreal. Seven are associated with Vancouver while most of the rest are expatriates. Mark Miller is probably the only writer who makes most of his living covering the Canadian jazz scene. A writer-photographer for the Globe and Mail, he has had the rare opportunity to hear the music as it is performed in night clubs and on concert stages across the country. Fortunately he is also one of the most knowledgeable and literate writers on the subject in Canada. Miller's book of profiles and photographs and his first volume of jazz biographies are important documents of Canada's cultural life. Other works such as John Gilmore's soon-to-be-published history of jazz in Montreal (Vehicule Press) will have to take Miller's work into account and be measured by the high standard he has set. (DOUGLAS ROLLINS) Louise Bail Milot. Jean Papineau-Couture: La Vie, la carriere, l'oeuvre Cahiers.du Quebec. Collection Musique, 87. Editions Hurtubise HMH 1986. xix, 319. $33.50 This book is a first in at least two respects. It is the first book-length study of the Canadian composer Jean Papineau-Couture, and the first volume in the Collection Musique of the series Cahiers du Quebec. Because its appearance under this imprint will cause some confusion among future cataloguers and users of this volume, it is necessary to recount, at least briefly, its pre-publication history. In the early 1970s, this volume was one of a small number commissioned by the Canadian Music Centre to initiate a Canadian Composers series. The first volume of the projected series was published in 1975, and HUMANITIES 215 several years passed before any others appeared. As recently as 1983 the present study was still being announced in the later volumes as part of this series. That it has now appeared in another, quite unrelated series, is a puzzle to those associated with Canadian Composers, though as a result, and to the consternationofall present and future librarians, it must now be regarded as belonging to both series. In a field as sparsely populated as that of Canadian musical biography, we must be grateful to have the present volume, whatever its imprint. I recount the foregoing only to clear the bibliographical air, so to speak, and not to question the integrity or the motives of anyone involved. It must be admitted that it is singularly appropriate that this volume appears in a series devoted to Quebecstudies, as its subject not onlybears a name brimming with Canadian and, particularly, Quebec history but is also undoubtedly the most important musician and composer of his generation in that province. First of all, the famous double-barrelled name: the composer's grandmother, Mercedes Papineau, was the granddaughter of Denis-Benjamin, brother of Louis-Joseph Papineau. Mercedes became the second wife of Guillaume (ne William) Couture, the most famous and respected Canadian composer of the nineteenth century. The name 'Papineau-Couture' was adopted in the next generation . Even the composer's first name is part of his heritage, and that in two ways. Ofcourse, it is the name of the province's patron saint, but...