How Long We Wait Album Release Concert

Blackwood are playing the First Baptist Church on Friday 4 September, their first show in the city since their last record, Passages, came out two years ago. The night is an album release concert for How Long We Wait, the new full-length from the Halifax trio.

The band is led by bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly, with cellist India Gailey and composer Peter-Anthony Togni. The title comes from Thomas Merton's poem How Long We Wait, With Minds as Quiet as Time, in which the Trappist monk and mystic philosopher encourages letting go of the ego's demand for instant answers and aligning the mind with the unhurried, eternal rhythm of existence. Blackwood say the record reflects on patience, surrender and our place within the slow, enduring rhythms of nature.

Reilly is a Halifax native who works as a composer, conductor, producer and radio documentary maker. He's put out albums on ECM, Warner Classics UK — with his trio Sanctuary — and ATMA Classique, so this is a local return for him. The concert is at the First Baptist Church, 1300 Oxford Street in the South End, and starts at 7:30 pm. Tickets are C$25.00.