Big Band sound comes to Royal Botanical Gardens this Sunday

The Royal Botanical Gardens will welcome the first act of the 2023 Music in the Gardens season Sunday, July 2 with The Loretta Hale Big Band, featuring special guest vocalists André Bisson and Aubrey Wilson.

Music lovers are invited to bring their own chairs, grab a refreshment and enjoy music in Hendrie Park every Sunday evening throughout the summer from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The series will feature a diverse group of musical acts from around the country, showcasing a mix of jazz and blues with influences from other genres.

The Loretta Hale Big Band was founded by Loretta Hale in 2005 and it now comprises 18-20 local musicians from the Burlington and Hamilton area. Having started her first big band at her Oshawa high school, the group came to fruition after she graduated from Mohawk and has been performing ever since.

“The summer after I graduated, I was hoping to join a local big band but didn’t know where to start being new to the city, and thought, 'Why not start one?' So I grabbed a couple of people that I knew from school and a couple of people that I knew played horns, and we started rehearsals that September,” said Hale. 

“We found a free local space to get our rehearsals going, and we were really lucky to have enough people that wanted to do some charts," she added. "I had about five charts that were given to me by my older brother who was running a band out of Shelburne. So we started with those five charts for quite a while and then started to build up our music repertoire. The band just kept going.”

The band performs a collection of classic big band songs by Glenn Miller, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Big Bad Voo Doo Daddy, Brian Setzer, Ella Fitzgerald, Herb Alpert, Sammy Nestico and Stan Kenton, as well as pieces by local arrangers and songwriters such as Buddy Aquilina and André Bisson.

The band will be joined by Aubrey Wilson of The Aubrey Wilson Quartet and Bisson. Wilson released her debut album, Honeysuckle Rose, in 2020. Bisson won the 2022 International Song Contest for Blues and Roots Radio and is nominated for a 2023 Hamilton Arts Award. He recently released the second single "Dusty Albums" from his upcoming album Latchford. 

Hale works as a freelance multi-instrumentalist, performing, recording and teaching music. In addition to directing The Loretta Hale Big Band, she performs with The André Bisson Band and is a cellist for Rosetta Strings. You can also find her featured on many albums with local bands and singer-songwriters. She was recently nominated for the 2022 Maple Blues Award in Toronto for Horn Player of the Year.

As for the band itself, its members boast many local graduates from Mohawk, Humber and McMaster’s music programs.

“They are the most dedicated group of local musicians that you can tell really love playing music,” said Hale. “They make it a pleasure to keep the band going and I am so fortunate to get to play music amongst these talented musicians. It brings me a lot of joy to see that we can all continue to keep Big Band alive and well while having a great music community.”

Tickets to Music in the Gardens include access to the RBG Centre, Hendrie Park, Rock Garden, and Laking Garden for the day and can be purchased through the RBG website. Admission is free with Garden Admission and for RBG Members. The RBG is located at 680 Plains Road West and can be contacted at 905-527-1158 for further information.