insideOUT newsletter (Nov 18, 2009)
Welcome to the first issue of our bi-annual enewsletter, insideOUT. We look forward to sharing a little bit of what gets us excited about Coastal Jazz—people, projects, music. Consider it an opportunity to take a sneak peek behind the scenes. We hope you enjoy it!
Link to each article by clicking on the hyperlink (blue highlighted text) below.
>> In This Issue
Highlight on Bonnie Mah: Coastal Jazz Supporter
Artistic Director Reveals Programming Secrets
Title Sponsor Continues to Support Jazz in Vancouver
Coastal Jazz Sets its Eyes on Downtown Vancouver
Coastal Jazz Supporters Make it Happen
Over the last 25 years, Coastal Jazz has received tremendous support from numerous individuals and organizations in the community. Musicians, sponsors, staff, and volunteers have all made significant contributions in helping us realize our vision of bringing extraordinary music to the city.
Financial donors have been particularly noteworthy in these efforts. Bonnie Mah, a Pension and Benefits consultant and a long time contributor to Coastal Jazz, loves our strong, exciting programming and community outreach projects. “I get a lot of enjoyment from attending the Jazz Festival and other Coastal Jazz concerts,” says Bonnie, “and I feel it's important to support these things, especially in times of reduced government funding.”
Besides her support of Coastal Jazz, Bonnie’s philanthropic interests include other arts organizations like the Arts Club, Writers Festival, Applause! Musicals Society, Vancouver Art Gallery and health groups like the Canadian Cancer Society. She feels the arts are important and provide a balance to her professional life. “I work with numbers all day,” informs Mah, “the arts allow for another perspective of life.”
Asked about some of her favourite artists from the Jazz Festival, Bonnie cites vocalists Diana Krall and Holly Cole. “At the festival you get exposed to a lot of great talent,” she declares, “and I loved Pink Martini—the band was a new discovery; the festival opens up new horizons and you can discover artists you may not otherwise discover on your own.”
Clearly not an autograph hound or celebrity watcher, Bonnie nonetheless thoroughly loved the backstage scene at a Naturally 7 concert her Jazz Lovers membership rendered her recently. She relishes the personal, intimate atmosphere such a vantage point provides a listener. And experiencing the creative process from such close quarters certainly brings a new appreciation for what an artist does.
Mah also recognizes the importance of what Coastal Jazz does in the way of community access—the free programming in Gastown, Granville Island, and David Lam Park, the educational artist workshops, and the support of young, aspiring musicians through the High School Jazz Intensive program. “I want to do my little bit to support these initiatives,” she says. “There’s a sense of payback in all of this, like supporting youth for instance, and seeing the progress as they build exciting careers in music. There’s definitely a gratification in giving.”
Artistic Director, Ken Pickering, Takes Us Behind the Scenes
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The story is interesting. Being a lifelong major fan of Mr. Braxton’s music, sadly the opportunities to present the maestro in Vancouver have been rare, primarily due to the economic reality. Previous appearances have been at the Western Front (solo), Oil Can Harry’s (quartet) in the mid 70’s and a Jazz Festival appearance in 1989 in duet with the wonderful pianist, Marilyn Crispell. I was at all of the previous Vancouver appearances. I’ve also been fortunate to hear various Braxton ensembles in Chicago, Victoriaville and most recently at Molde Jazz, Norway in 2005 (with many of the musicians who will be coming to Vancouver in January).
After discussing this project with Robert Kerr (program director at the Cultural Olympiad), I was encouraged to pursue this project. My first two inquiries were to Mr. Braxton’s agent in Italy and Taylor Ho Bynum (Mr. Braxton’s trumpeter and lieutenant in the ensemble). As fate would have it, Mr. Bynum would be visiting Vancouver (on family matters) in May 2008 and we planned to meet on the 16th of that month. The date is memorable because the World Cup of Hockey was on and Canada played Sweden that day. I watched the game with Mats Gustafsson (one of the architects of the Canada vs. Sweden Ice Hockey music project which premiered at the 2009 Jazz Festival), and although he was in Sweden and I was in Vancouver, we trash-talked by SMS text throughout the game. But I digress, that’s another story entirely.
Meeting Mr. Bynum at a sports bar was very amusing. When he asked why we were meeting in such a strange location, I explained about the “Ice Hockey” project that was being developed with Mats and François Houle. I think that was the precise moment he realized he’d found the right presenters for the Braxton project!
The world premiere of Sonic Genome will be a historic event. A movable feast for eight hours (at the Roundhouse and free to the public), Sonic Genome is an interactive musical environment for over 50 musicians to explore this visionary’s compositions and improvisational languages to create a living sound world. The core ensemble 12 + 1tet will be joined by 10 of Vancouver’s finest professional improvisers and another 50 plus musicians drawn from the TD High School Jazz Intensive, Capilano University, Vancouver Community College, and other educational institutions.
The week following, our 22nd annual Time Flies Vancouver Improvised Music Festival will be a collaboration between four musicians from Mr. Braxton’s 12 + 1tet (Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, Jessica Pavone and Sara Schoenbeck), plus Chicago cellist, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Time Flies co-artistic director Torsten Müller along with stellar Vancouver heavyweights, Dylan van der Schyff and Mei Han. Time Flies is all about international community building in a non-idiomatic improvisational context. Always mind bending and provocative, this three-day event promises to stretch listeners’ ears in new exciting ways by presenting a varied program of different combinations of players each night. It will also be a rare opportunity to hear some of the most daring female improvisers on the contemporary music scene.
The third project that Coastal Jazz will present in the Cultural Olympiad is Winterruption, our unique twist on the Canadian winter festival concept. For 2010, Winterruption expands to nine days—a veritable feast of jazz, world, improvisation, songwriters, contemporary and classical music. Working closely with Granville Island, the Cultural Olympiad, Place de la Francophonie and our international network of contacts, we’ve developed a broad ranging and distinguished program with a distinctive Francophone flavour, without sacrificing any of the diversity (with artists from BC, Quebec, Ontario, Norway, Netherlands and France), that has been emblematic of past editions of Winterruption.
Club 2010 (at Performance Works) will be the late-night jazz hub of Winterruption and will serve as a showcase for many of the cities best jazz musicians, such as Brad Turner, Gordon Grdina and Jodi Proznick. Two wonderful musicians from Montreal, Rene Lussier and Marianne Trudel, will collaborate with Vancouver’s finest.
International highlights must surely include Norway’s extraordinary (and one of the 2009 Jazz Festival hits) Håvard Wiik Trio; Wiik is a fantastic pianist and composer and is not to be missed. Quebec City’s The Lost Fingers (a Djangoesque gypsy jazz trio) were another festival winner. Montreal’s Florence K will entrance with her vocal performances in four languages.
Please check out our website and Looking Ahead program guide for the complete rundown of Winterruption programming—Andy Milne/Benoit Delbecq, Quator Bozzini, Veda Hille, François Houle’s important project “Because She Hoped”, and more. The Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad has provided every one of us with a platform to experience some of the most significant theatre, dance and music on the planet and Coastal Jazz is thrilled to be a partner in one of the most extensive cultural events in Vancouver’s history.
TD Canada Trust Renewal
We’ve got great news for everyone who loves great music!
The stability and continuity that comes with this sponsorship commitment enables us to provide the outstanding festival programming and outreach projects that audiences have come to expect from British Columbia’s leading arts organization—Coastal Jazz.
We’re thrilled that TD has renewed its commitment to the Vancouver International Jazz Festival; it’s also an extraordinary commitment to the Canadian music scene as well as to the local music community.
From the beginning, the Jazz Festival has brought an enormous range of the world’s most innovative and accomplished artists to our city stages. A burgeoning and spectacular cultural event, the festival features over 1800 musicians and runs 10 days while drawing over 500,000 listeners to over 40 venues.
Here’s a toast to renewed sponsorship and to our upcoming 25th anniversary in 2010!
Envisioning a New Home For Coastal Jazz
Undeniably, the heart of Coastal Jazz is music—all those deep and rich, inspiring and transformational hues of jazz and its improvisational relatives.
Well, today, Coastal Jazz has an extraordinary opportunity to place its heart in the epicentre of Vancouver’s up-and-coming cultural precinct on Hamilton Street. We envision a new amenity, a new home, which will enable us to create a strong foundation on which to build on our burgeoning programs, contribute more resourcefully to the vitality of cultural life for listeners and performers, and furnish our community with even greater access to music and educational initiatives.
Over the course of our 25-year history, Coastal Jazz has developed an unprecedented level of quality programming. Think about the internationally acclaimed TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Winterruption Festival on Granville Island, and the greatest number of free concerts in the city; community initiatives such as jazz festival workshops, JazzStreet Vancouver, and the Creative Music Think Tank; education programs such as the TD High School Jazz Intensive. The engine driving them all is Coastal Jazz, the foundation of music in Vancouver and the organization of sound.
Now, here is what is so exciting…towards the end of 2010, the new facility located at the CBC Plaza on Hamilton Street will provide: 8500 square feet of community-use space in downtown Vancouver; a secure, below-market rate for 30 years; priority use of CBC’s new indoor 120-seat theatre and outdoor stage located just steps from our new home; an enhanced box office with state-of-the-art listening stations; a music education centre with resources and programs for youth; services for Vancouver festivals; and a focal point for the community.
It’s an ideal home for Coastal Jazz; a place where we can expand on what we do best–that is to inspire and produce new and bold artistic visions for this growing city and to bring more of our dynamic, ambitious programs to artists, youth and audiences.
We’re creating Vancouver’s soundtrack—from our heart to your ears.
