Quinn Bachand is a name to watch. He’s an electrifying acoustic guitar player and fiddler from Victoria, British Columbia, who leads a worldly gypsy jazz ensemble called Brishen. The band warmed up an icy January night with a supremely entertaining house concert at the Canaan Institute, an intimate private venue outside Ithaca, New York, where four unicycles, a fiddle, and an oud hang from ceiling hooks.
The mercurial Bachand, a recent Berklee College of Music grad still in his early twenties, is already well-known as a Celtic musician. He tours with the Cape Breton stars Ashley MacIsaac and Natalie McMaster and has won two Irish Music Awards for his duet act with older sister Qristina. Brishen—a word from the Romany language, meaning “bringer of the storm”—is anchored in Django Reinhardt’s Parisian jazz tradition but sketches in a wide palette of musical influences, from schmaltzy pop to polka to western swing and bluegrass. One of the group’s imaginative medleys illustrates its range and buoyant spirit. Beginning with Django’s lovely composition “Blue Drag,” it took off into the lush saxophone atmospherics of Bernard Herrmann’s plaintive score from Taxi Driver, then veered into a rousing traditional Romanian tune Bachand calls “Coreagasca.”
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