David Clayton-Thomas

Lincoln Center, Madison Square Gardens, Royal Albert, Carnegie. All the great concert halls of the world, has played them. With one notable exception. And it’s playing that hall, this month, that has the singer-songwriter, whose name is synonymous with Blood Sweat & Tears, realizing a lifelong dream.

David Clayton-Thomas joins the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Massey Hall Feb. 12 and 13, he’ll on the historic stage of Massey Hall.

“It’s a wonderful hall to play. I’ve heard it called Toronto’s Carnegie Hall,” says Clayton-Thomas, describing it as “one of the acoustic wonders of the world.

“And, for a hometown boy (he grew up in Willowdale), I’ve seen my idols at Massey Hall over the years and I’ve always wanted to play (there).

“Going back to my Yonge Street days, when we played the bars, sitting at the top of Yonge Street was this kind of cathedral of music. It’s where Oscar Peterson played, where Jascha Heifetz played, and Dave Brubeck. It’s where all the giants played while we were flogging it out five shows a night in the bars and you looked up to that (and thought) maybe someday I’ll play Massey Hall. It took me 45 years but here we are.”

The symphony concert will feature classic BS&T hits – like Spinning Wheel, You’ve Made Me So Very Happy, And When I Die and his distinctive rendition of Billie Holiday’s God Bless The Child – as well as several songs from his new album The Evergreens, a compilation of 13 brand new songs ranging from blues to hard rock and jazz to samba.

Clayton-Thomas is no stranger to symphonic stages. He’s played with orchestras around the world, including the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic and – “one of the greatest experiences I ever had” – the Baton Rouge Symphony in New Orleans. “Half the guys in that symphony were playing jazz in the French Quarter at night. They swung. That orchestra really rocked. And culturally that orchestra understood our music.”

In fact, he says, the BS&T songbook is particularly suited to orchestral renderings, largely because of the talented musicians who originally played, and “brought a tremendous amount of sophistication,” to his songs, many written while he was still playing the Yorkville bars.

Says Clayton-Thomas: “I think what made that band stand out is that they were all conservatory graduates and that music had its roots in Duke Ellington and Count Basie. The guys who played in Blood Sweat & Tears also played in the New World Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. The guys who were writing those arrangements were masters graduates in Julliard.”

And many of the pieces were written as symphony scores by Steve Guttman, a trumpeter and musical director for a reformed Blood Sweat & Tears, led by Clayton-Thomas in the eighties and that brought the music storming back to concert stages, jazz festivals, and symphony halls.

“Now I’ve brought that symphony book back to life,” he says. “We pulled out thousands and thousands of pages of music, spread them all over my condo and took several weeks reorganizing them and (we) wrote a couple of new scores.”

He says there’s a certain thrill to fronting a full symphony orchestra – TSO has 66 musicians. “When I hear eight string basses start to go into the opening of God Bless The Child, well it makes my hair stand on end – to be surrounded by that kind of power. All those woodwinds and tympanis and percussionists, that just adds a whole other dimension to the music.”

While the symphony book has been played by around the world, this is the first time for a Canadian orchestra. “So this is wonderful and is actually going to open doors,” Clayton-Thomas says.

He’s already booked to play with the Ottawa Symphony in April and the Edmonton Symphony early in 2011. And there are offers on the table from a couple of American symphonies.

Aside from those engagements and some summer concerts across Canada and the northern U.S., Clayton-Thomas is sticking pretty close to his Toronto home these days, saying the appeal of touring has dimmed.

“I’m not really interested in doing that anymore. If I perform now, I want it to be something special. I think at this point in my life (he’s 69), I’ve earned the right that if I want to do a concert it’s going to be something special, something I really want to do. And, of course, Massey Hall and the TSO, that fall right into that category.”