Jazz singer Alex Pangman celebrates her new lungs
breathe & live & sing
Last Updated: April 28, 2010 11:22pm
- Alex Pangman has had both lungs replaced. She continues to advocate for organ donation and awareness. "If I need to be the poster child for that, to catch their attention, then so be it," she says.
There are lots of reasons to be excited about Toronto jazz singer Alex Pangman's Aeolian Hall gig on Saturday.
They include her zestful way with swing era classics, the fine band called the Alleycats who join her and her merry laugh.
They're all good as ever -- but not in the same league as the best ones, when you think about it.
The best ones? Her new lungs and the renewed life they've given her.
"It's a miracle and gift," Pangman said of 2008's replacement surgery of both her dying lungs. In the fall of that year, Pangman was in the fight of her life at a Toronto hospital. Born with cystic fibrosis, Pangman knew her lungs were failing. Her lung expert and surgeon was Toronto General Hospital's Shaf Keshavjee.
"He is one of my heroes. I have several -- namely whoever it is whose lungs I have and that of their family for having the generosity to donate them," Pangman said.
"Before it was like breathing through a straw when I sang and now it's like using a megaphone," she said last year, looking back on the change.
These days, Pangman is able to sing a new and happy song.
"It's the little things, like spring coming again. It really is a spring when you talk about Easter and things coming back to life," she says.
"It means a lot to me . . . I can walk through the woods, I can smell all the blossoms bursting because I don't have an oxygen tube my nose any more."
Pangman has family ties to London. Her husband, Owen Sound-raised musician Tom Parker, is a UWO grad. She is a great-niece of Phil Sawyer, a drummer who played with dance band leader and London Music Hall of Famer Alf Tibbs for years.
Saturday's concert comes at a time when Pangman and Her Alleycats are completing a new album. Its magic number is 33, Pangman's age. "We'll be releasing it on a 33 (vinyl LP), and I'm 33. The project is going to be mostly songs that were popular in 1933," she says.
It's the latest creative burst from the singer billed as "Canada's sweetheart of swing." Pangman was a teen when she discovered jazz titans Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden and singers such as Mildred Bailey, Julia Lee and Maxine Sullivan. She began to work with the late bluesrock guitar great Jeff Healey, who also loved the music of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Healey produced Pangman's 1999 debut They Say and 2001's You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming.
Pangman went on to win national awards. She took a break from performing to battle cystic fibrosis and came back to develop a Toronto country and bluegrass project, Lickin' Good Fried.
On Saturday, it's the swing era Pangman who will take the stage with her loyal allies in sound.
"The Alleycats are just that. They're cats. They come and go in and out of the alley depending on who's available what night," she says of the trumpet plus rhythm section quartet joining her on Saturday.
Among the fine old songs coming out of Tin Pan Alley on Pangman's new album is Shine, recorded by Armstrong, Ry Cooder and Bing Crosby with the Mills Brothers among others.
Like so much else in her life, Shine has a new and deeper meaning for Pangman now.
"There's one line in Shine -- 'just because I'm glad I'm living' -- I really mean that when I sing it."
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IF YOU GO
What: Concert by Toronto jazz singer Alex Pangman and Her Alleycats.
When: Saturday, 8 p.m.
Where: Aeolian Hall, 795 Dundas St. (at Rectory)
Details: $20 in advance, $22 at the door, plus applicable charges. Visit aeolianhall.ca or call 519-672-7950
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Organ donation awareness
1 COMMENTS:
I think Alex is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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