A mere six days after his guest slot with Sultans of Swing for their Nov. 13 Bravo Niagara! Festival performance, jazz pianist Robi Botos will be back on the First Ontario Performing Arts Centre stage with his own trio.
The two shows serve as a bit of a hometown debut for Botos, who moved with his family from Toronto to Niagara-on-the-Lake last December. Since the relocation, though, the pandemic has kept him from performing in front of live audiences in the region.
He has also had very few opportunities to actually get out and meet locals. Nevertheless, he feels fortunate to have left the big city rat race.
“I have to say it’s been tricky to try to get a sense of the community without really being able to visit people and have people over,” he laments. “But it’s been a relief to be in a much slower-paced place. I don’t miss traffic and I don’t miss the craziness of Toronto.”
The one-time Oscar Peterson protege has had a few live engagements in 2021 in front of limited audiences, so he is relishing the chance to play in front of a Bravo Niagara! crowd at the PAC.
“I am best at playing live, in the moment,” he tells The Local. “I can’t do what I normally do remotely. Playing is part of life for me, I put my life into the music. It’s like taking away your antidote for your mental health. It’s very critical for your soul.”
Botos calls live performance a two-way street, a silent connection with the audience.
“You need the audience, to get something from them,” Botos explains. “It’s not necessarily the cheers and the standing ovations. It’s also you putting those notes out there. I have some new music I am playing for this show. Once you have those gigs and you perform it live, that also creates something more, that’s very healing for a musician and a writer.”
Botos says the isolation that the world has felt through the pandemic has influenced his new compositions, making it some of the most meaningful music he has ever performed.
Born in Nyíregyháza to a Roma family, Botos grew up in Budapest, where he learned to play the drums before switching to piano at seven years old. Since his 1998 move to Toronto, he has become a well-known and prominent member of that city’s jazz scene.
Bravo Niagara! supporters will be familiar with the talented pianist. He has played a number of shows here through the years, mostly as a sideman in other bandleaders’ combos.
In 2020, Bravo Niagara! produced Robi Botos: Romani Experience as part of its Voices of Freedom Festival: Sounds of Hope program. The 40-minute video tribute to his fellow Roma people can be seen on Bravo Niagara!’s YouTube channel. It is a heartfelt, moving lament for a people who have been marginalized, ostracized and subjected to genocide.
His commitment to shedding light through his music on the plight of displaced peoples made him an obvious choice to collaborate with the Sultans of String on their two-CD refugee project.
“It’s always a pleasure to see Chris (McKhool, Sultans’ violinist) and the band bringing people together,” he says. “They put some light on how important it is to understand that we’re all just coming from somewhere, trying to get somewhere. We’re all refugees, we’re all immigrants.”
Botos continues, “we all bring different stuff to the table. The results are always unique. I’m not really a fusion or world music artist. But with them, it’s always an open concept. Why not mix up Hungarian folk music with some unique Persian instruments and some African beats? It’s a great way of looking at music. It’s great to experiment.”
He’s excited about sharing the PAC stage with Chris and his band, along with a multitude of special guests from around the world. And he’s equally excited to be joined Nov. 19 by drummer Larnell Lewis and bassist Mike Downes, along with special guest vocalist Joanna Majoko.
“After all this time it’s going to be that much more special to be able to go to that venue and make music,” he says. “I’m very blessed that I can have my trio with me for it. Though I don’t like to call them ‘my trio’ because we all play in a million different bands.”
Ever cerebral when conversing about music, Botos places a high value on how those outside experiences inform the working relationship he, Downes and Lewis have when they come together.
“If you have the right mindset, that means when Mike pulls out a chart and shows me a Serbian folk song, I’m going to be researching that,” he explains. “We don’t just play with each other on a regular basis, but we have learned how to make music for 15 to 20 years together. Regardless of age and background, it’s this student mentality.”
He relishes the human, personal connection that he has with Downes and Lewis, who are always there when they need each other.
It’s a concept he tries to pass on to the next generation of musicians through his role in Humber College’s music faculty. From his NOTL home, he has been able to continue teaching remotely, and marvels at the ability to offer private piano lessons to students as far away as France and Germany.
Botos says he’s not yet confident enough to head back to Humber for in-person teaching, and certainly is happy to avoid the clogged QEW and Gardiner Expressway.
But he knows the best way to learn is to play, and to play with better musicians. Experiencing failure and correcting mistakes is the best way for musicians to grow.
“They’re not getting enough opportunities to perform right now,” Botos says of his young charges. “They just keep practising at home, that doesn’t necessarily make them a better musician. The healthiest thing for students would be for them to play live and listen to their teachers play more often. They need to get out and hear great musicians.”
Those students would be well-served by seeing their inspiring instructors (Downes and Lewis also teach at Humber College) bouncing musical ideas off each other on Nov. 19.
Tickets for the Bravo Niagara! Festival performance, starting at 7:30 p.m., are $50, and available at bravoniagara.org.
