By Alidë Kohlhaas

Something very fine is happening out there on the airwaves, on  theatre stages and on television. The music is making a comeback that pleased the ears and suited the sentiments of generations long before rock-and-roll—and its various derivations—came on the scene. It is not old timers like myself, who are behind this revival, but a generation now growing up. It seems, this present generation wants something more challenging to the ear, something more engaging to the mind than what today's music has to offer.

Hence, it comes as no surprise that in Toronto we have seen in the past year two musicals that featured big band swing music. Now a new play is offering the more personal jazz of the small groups that grew up on the West Coast with its cool, hip and laid-back sound. Shortly after Time After Time: the Chet Baker Project opened, popularity forced an extension to the three-week run to a fourth, to April 22. And, most of all, it isn't just my generation that is coming to see and hear Time After Time: the Chet Baker Project, it is those youngsters I spoke of above.

The play, by playwright/actor James O'Reilly, attempts to capture what may have been the spirit behind the enigmatic, tragic figure of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. It does so in words and with music. While it exposes nothing new about the man, it does capture for that brief moment on stage the period out of which his particular style of jazz grew.

One of Baker's many albums was titled, You can't go home again. Most of us have discovered that. Yet, here, on the stage of Theatre Passe Muraille some of us did go home again, found it different, but oh, so familiar. For someone like myself, who grew up with the West Coast jazz scene, it was like stepping back in time. All the old haunts from Vancouver to San Francisco came alive again in ones mind. And also the time in Paris, where we danced to that music in the city's jazz caves, and listened in London at Ronnie Scott's place.

O'Reilly and director Jim Millan's creation is an imperfect gem, but still, a gem. The cast is well chosen, and so are the musicians. On the latter's shoulders falls the task of recreating the sound for which Chet Baker and the various quartets and quintets he played with became known. They do extremely well. There is, first of all, Danny De Poe, who performs the role of Chet Baker. This young trumpeter, who has a music degree from Boston's Berklee College, does a remarkable job in recreating the sound of Baker's trumpet. He also captures the laid-back style, the cool, but also introverted image of the man who came alive most when he played his horn. He even walks a bit like Baker did in his early years. Yet, one is grateful that neither he nor the director stooped to an outright imitation of Baker. De Poe has a pleasant voice and he gives us clean and touchingly innocent renditions of the songs so closely associated with Baker's sweet, tender sound. It is needless to imitate the voice to the nth degree, for then one is only given the kind of hokum that is associated with the Elvis impersonators. Thank God, this show spares us from such travesty.

The trio backing De Poe consists of equally fine musicians, all of them highly experienced. They are Kevin Dempsey on drums, Duncan Hopkins on bass, and Logan Medland on piano. They manage to evoke an era of music with their fine playing by sounding as fresh as if they were improvising, although they are reading the score of the songs that made Chet Baker famous. These musicians, including De Poe, are the central core of the play as they present the audience with such songs as My Funny Valentine, Time After Time, I fall in love too easily, and You don't know what love is.

Music, alone, does not make a play. Here is where O'Reilly comes in. He takes to the stage as a writer in pursuit of Baker. He wants to know what motivated this intuitive genius from Oklahoma, who had taught himself to play trumpet at 13, and never learned to read a note of music. In 1946, not yet 17, Baker began to play in an army band and five years later became a full-time musician in California. Over the years he played with such greats as Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Lee Konitz and Toots Tielemans among many others.

He lived to play his horn, and when that wasn't enough any more, he sought solace in drugs. Thus he rose like a meteor and then plunged, literally, to the ground. Baker died in Amsterdam, high on heroin and cocaine, when he fell face first from a hotel balcony in 1988, not yet 59 years old. What demons drove him we will never know. Like his original mentor, Charlie Parker, he had a strong self-destructive streak. He landed in jail both in the US and Italy for possession of drugs, and he refused all help with his habit.

The play hints at these facts, but does not develop them. We get snatches of his love life, if one wants to call his involvement with women by such a term. They are Joyce and Halema, whom he married, and Carol and Ruth, whom he did not. They are all played by Philippa Domville with the appropriate nuances for each character. We meet a few of the men who gathered around him, influenced him, or suffered him, such as Russ Freeman, the photographer Bill Claxton and the son of Mussolini, Romano, who was a piano player. Martin Julien takes on the task to interpret them, which he does extremely well. These characters give us a sketch of the man, but not a whole picture. O'Reilly knew from the start that there is no clear image of Baker, and so he does not try to give us

The minor downbeat of Time After Time: The Chet Baker Projectis the opening scene. O'Reilly explains too much what motivated the 'writer', who is called Ted in the play, to pursue Baker. It is a bit hokey. Once this is over, though, the slightly blemished gem begins to sparkle in all its facets. One hopes, some day, it will re-appear on other stages, with a modified opening.

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