By Vanessa Tam
While improvisation exists in every genre of music to a degree, with Jazz, it goes much deeper.
Usually featuring a lead singer or instrumentalist, the ensembles compose melodies on the spot over a chord progression played by the rhythm section instruments. Built on their relationships as well as the countless hours they’ve spent practising and performing together, improvisation is the ultimate expression of empathy where bandmates silently read each other in the moment and respond in kind.
Here we’ve highlighted some performances at this year’s Vancouver International Jazz Festival that predominantly feature an improvisational and innovative spirit so the listener can sit back and let the artists take them on a sonic journey with the destination unknown.
Hand to Earth: The Crow
Led by vocalists Daniel Wilfred and Sunny Kim, Hand to Earth has quickly developed an international reputation as one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary ensembles. Daniel is a keeper of Yolngu Manikay, indigenous songs from North East Arnhem Land that can be traced back more than 40,000 years, making them the world’s oldest continuously practised music tradition. Sunny moves between English and Korean, intoning gestures that invoke the rawest of elemental forces.
Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Location: Revue Stage – 1601 Johnston St. Vancouver, BC
Time: 5:00PM
Tickets: Pay what you can
Sakina Abdou + Peter Knight & JP Carter
Based in Lille, France, saxophonist and flutist Sakina Abdou explores free improvisation and broadly experimental contemporary music with the likes of Eve Risser’s Red Desert Orchestra, Raymond Boni, Satoko Fujii, and the daring experimental collective, Muzzix. It’s true: Peter Knight and JP Carter both play the trumpet. But that fact is only part of the larger, weirder, more deliciously bewildering truth about two of contemporary creative music’s most envelope-pushing, distinctive sound-shapers.
Date: Friday, June 28, 2024
Location: Revue Stage – 1601 Johnston St. Vancouver, BC
Time: 5:00PM
Tickets: Pay what you can
Brian Horswill, Karlis Silins, Gard Nilsson
Oslo-based drummer, composer, producer and bandleader Gard Nilssen is one of the European jazz scene’s most active drummers, bringing an energetic, creative, musical, groovy, and fearless dynamic to his own groups Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity and Bushman´s Revenge, ongoing membership in Maciej Obara 4tet, Team Hegdal, and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, and work with the likes of Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, Joshua Redman, Ambrose Akinmusire, Bugge Wesseltoft, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Mike Stern, Jamie Saft and Ingebrigt Flaten.
Date: Friday, June 28, 2024
Location: Revue Stage – 1601 Johnston St. Vancouver, BC
Time: 11:30PM
Tickets: Free to attend
Earth Ball
Earth Ball has been embracing complete improvisation since 2019, with a collective sound enriched by its members’ work in experimental groups like Shearing Pinx, Kamikaze Nurse, Eschatons, Psychedelic Dirt, and CROTCH, as well as in collaborations with artists like Deerhoof, Chris Corsano, and William Hooker.
Date: Sunday, June 30, 2024
Location: Revue Stage – 1601 Johnston St. Vancouver, BC
Time: 11:30PM
Tickets: Free to attend
Horse Lords
With dizzyingly obsessive rhythmic energy, Andrew Bernstein saxophone, percussion, electronics, Max Eilbacher bass, electronics, Owen Gardner guitar, electronics, and drummerBooker Stardrum give frenetic gravity to an avant alloy of influences and approaches. The band’s palette includes the mantra-like repetition of minimalism and global traditional musics, complex counterpoint, the subtleties of microtonality, and a breadth of timbres and textures drawn from all across the avant-garde.
Date: Sunday, June 30, 2024
Location: Revue Stage – 1601 Johnston St. Vancouver, BC
Time: 9:30PM
Tickets: Available online for $27
