GTA Rhythm Section

GTA Rhythm Section

"He’s the chancellor of Trent University, an Order of Canada member, a former top entertainment attorney to the stars and has served as executive producer for most of the run of the “Degrassi” TV franchise.

And at 76, Stephen Stohn just added a new accomplishment to his impressive résumé: recording artist."
— Nick Krewen, Toronto Star

It started as just an ordinary couple of days in the recording studio. Albeit, the musicians were standout Toronto professionals, reminiscent of better-known ensembles such as The Wrecking Crew, The Funk Brothers, or The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. They hailed from different backgrounds, and a variety of different music groups, but when together they became the GTA Rhythm Section, or simply (as their fans call them) the Section.

And the studio was the fabled Orange Lounge, a small, nondescript oasis on the third floor of a busy downtown Toronto street, with no signage or indication to the outside world that artists from Amy Winehouse to Drake, from Katy Perry to Imagine Dragons, from Nelly Furtado to Justin Bieber to Tragically Hip, and hundreds of others had recorded there.

But on those bitter days in February 2024, the Section had gathered together with the simple, ordinary task of helping to record material from a virtually unknown songwriter. This writer had enjoyed some success back in 1976 with the Spark of Desire album recorded by Christopher Ward for Warner Brothers and produced by Jack Richardson. After then, he seemingly became a recluse. But in fact Stephen Stohn was hiding in plain sight, carefully moving in circles that kept him near songwriting, allowing him to become a leader in music, film, and television. He kept his songs to himself though until, nearly five decades after Spark of Desire, he experienced a series of vivid dreams, each of which contained different melodies. He had scribbled the melodies down as he awoke, and over time assembled the individual fragments into an ungainly whole. Teaching himself the music program Ableton, he painstakingly, note by note, stitched the melodies together into an early, rudimentary form of what we now know as "Opus 42 Ode to Summer."

At one of our famous secret breakfast meetings he told me the story of the Opus. He explained that this song should never be recorded or released, but we found ourselves talking about recording it anyway. Which led us to February 2024, when the Section’s task was to create a demonstration recording of the Opus, along with two other songs ("Falling All Over Again" and "Once in a Longtime"). But something out-of-the-ordinary happened, and those supposedly mere demonstration recordings transformed over the next few months into The Orange Sessions.

First Matthew Jardine — best known for his work as a vocalist and percussionist for the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson — heard the rough tracks of the Opus and agreed to add not just his trademark haunting lead vocals, but also full-blown harmonies. (He is the son of original Beach Boy Al Jardine).

Then legendary Toronto performer Will Bowes added supporting vocals on the Opus and powerful lead vocals on both "Falling All Over Again" and "Once in a Longtime."

Finally, ace orchestrator Jim McGrath, known primarily for his work on film and television scores (including hundreds of episodes of Canada’s Degrassi series) channelled his inner George Martin and Paul Buckmaster to create extraordinary string and horn arrangements for all the songs.

It was a hot, humid week in August, when Scott Harding (a.k.a. Scotty Hard, who has worked with a varied assortment of artists including Wu-Tang Clan, Medeski Martin &Wood, and Chris Rock) heard the tracks and agreed to work on them in his Brooklyn studio, to mix all the disparate parts into the seamless whole you have before you.

We completed the process by having acclaimed photographer and designer Rodney Bowes make photos that matched the feeling of the Opus and pull them together in a cohesive design that is itself an Ode to Summer.

When he first heard the mixed tracks, Stephen’s reaction was, “It seemed so simple at first. Just some song fragments reminding us that summer comes and goes, but always comes back. And if we’re lucky, love is the same.”

But really in the case of "Opus 42 Ode to Summer," simple it never was. Its various fragments disregard the rules of pop song structure, not only in length (nine minutes long) but also by interweaving different tempos, different keys, and different time signatures, all in the absence of those repeating hook choruses which are such a staple of pop songs. The result is a unique work that is unabashedly, authentically itself.

— Jeff Rogers

Releases

GTA Rhythm Section
The Orange Sessions

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