This week’s flashback takes us to 1994, a year that goes down in the annals of history as a pretty darn eventful one. It was the year NAFTA was established. The year a massive earthquake shook parts of Los Angeles to the ground. Woodstock turned 25 and the World Series was cancelled. In June 1994, O.J. Simpson surrendered to police after a televised freeway chase that captivated the world, while Jeff Bezos was only weeks away from launching a little website he would call Amazon.
By the time the 9th annual du Maurier International Jazz Festival began on June 24, 1994, the city was still reeling from the riots that broke out after Vancouver’s Stanley Cup defeat to the New York Rangers. The riots wreaked havoc across downtown causing over a $1 million in damages.
It was a wild year.
Meanwhile, the “Big Daddy of West Coast Festivals” was on top of the world, according to Downbeat Magazine, “Having grown quickly since 1985 into one of North America’s most ambitious and exciting events (arguably the continent’s best all-purpose fest), Vancouver offers something for everyone.”
The Globe and Mail wrote at the time, “The du Maurier International Jazz Festival in Vancouver has won a reputation for pushing the limits by devoting as much attention to the music’s adventurous, experimental side as it does to jazz’s more traditional practitioners.”
In less than a decade the jazz fest had grown to feature a dizzying number of musicians (800!) and pull an annual attendance of 200,000. The event had spread to 22 venues across the city. In addition to theatres, clubs, the Plaza of Nations and the streets of Gastown, programming expanded to tourist attractions like the Vancouver Aquarium and Grouse Mountain. All of this was possible thanks to a lot of investment in the festival. In 1994 Coastal Jazz was working with an annual budget of $1.4 million or $3 million in today’s money. Ask anyone who works in events – those kinds of dollars are enviable even in 2024.
As always the Festival calendar held an array of genres and talents, from mainstream acts like Shirley Horn to experimental jazz like Bill Frisell and Paul Plimley, not to mention Oliver Jones Trio, guitarist Ronny Jordan, pianist Oliver Jones, John McLoughlin’s Free Spirits and a 24-year old Joshua Redman with his quartet.
Marcus Roberts opened at Orpheum. The blind pianist had made a name for himself during his six years with the Wynton Marsalis Group. Diana Krall was back with her trio, this time to play Performance Works. The Festival also included favourites Abdullah Ibrahim, Youssou N’Dour and Malian singer-songwriter Salif Keita.
As opportunities for jazz musicians to play continued to dwindle in the 90s, Vancouver’s festival played a bigger role in platforming artists. The 1994 guidebook noted, “the Canadian jazz festival circuit provides most of the public opportunities for hearing Europe’s best. Unfortunately, there are few chances to play south of the border. In fact, outside of Europe and Japan, many of America’s leading-edge artists also look forth for employment. You’ll hear many of them at this year’s festival.”
Catch up on all our festival flashbacks. Did you attend one of our early jazz festivals? Share your story with us! Join the conversation on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter X @coastaljazz.
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