Great City, a Great City’s Music: The Vancouver International Jazz Festival

Vancouver shoots into the waters of the Northwest, both bold and carefully protected. Vancouver Island, to the west, is a massive shield from the Pacific. Yet Downtown Vancouver—a small peninsula that leaks northwest from the bulk of Burrard Penninsula—has a hint of impudence about it. The heart of the city, a place of palm trees in the southeast corner of Canada, is surrounded by waves lapping against the shores of Stanley Park.

This mixture of comfort and adventure, protection and daring, is coded into the DNA of the TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival. For ten days in late June and early July, the city hosts a music party that runs from mild to fiery, peaceful to mad, careful to reckless, terrific to purely sublime. For jazz lovers, it’s bliss. But it’s hard to imagine any music fan coming away less than dazzled.

Stunning Local Views, Breathtaking Local Music

Take a lazy afternoon walk down to Granville Island, for example, which sits just across False Creek from downtown. To get there I walked from my hotel (where most of the festival musicians were also staying) down Granville Street, dubbed for the original name of the city. The stroll takes you past the old vaudeville house, the Orpheum (1927) with its vintage vertical neon sign, the Vogue (to host The Decemberists and Neko Case later in the summer) and the Yale Hotel, with its deco awning and massive neon saxophone, then over the Granville Street Bridge. From the bridge, the marinas and beaches to the northwest along English Bay sparkle.

In no time you’re curling under the bridge to enter a small preserve that used to house various factories and machine shops but today hosts restaurants, galleries, an art school, a public market, a tiny brewery (and pub)—and several performance spaces. If you wandered down on the Monday afternoon of the festival, the outdoor Market Stage was featuring a bouquet of bouncy sambas, perfect for a gossamer summer day. The quartet is led by guitarist Yujiro Nakajima, originally from Nagano, Japan, and in Vancouver for four years, playing at the festival for the first time. Grab something to eat and pull up a chair in the sunshine. It is pleasantly crowded and loose.

Two days later, on Canada Day (July 1st), the Market Stage is humming again, this time with an even better group you’ve never heard of. The Quaint Hearted consist of three local guys from the city’s public Capilano University, and—incredibly—this is their first-ever gig. Which is almost impossible to believe because they sound like they utterly know what they are about, making “jazz” that strikes more like rock but bends like Miles Davis. “We started writing this music just a few months ago for this gig”, the drummer, Alexander Klassen, explains. Challenging, distorted, angular—yet the music has no trouble holding the interest of a large crowd.

Slide along the island to Ron Basford Park and a hillside of folks, many waving the Canadian flag, are enjoying a multicultural trio of Vancouverians: Ron Samworth on guitar, Lan Tung on erhu (a two-stringed Chinese violin), and Neelamjit Dhillon on tablas and alto saxophone. Their uncategorizable sound gives way to straight up blues several blocks away in Railspur Park, where Dalannah Gail Bowen is putting decades of experience into her bent tones and minor thirds.

The killer thing is: all this music is free. The Canadian dollar is currently worth less than the U.S. dollar, but free is a whole ‘nother kind of exchange rate.

Walking back toward the bridge at the close of one afternoon of this music, I was arrested by the skill and touch of one of the buskers that populate Granville Island. This is a lone jazz guitarist playing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” at a shady spot right along the water. But he is no ordinary street musician. He is playing the melody with easy swing while interspersing accompanying chords like the legendary Joe Pass. (Hearing him from a distance, I half-expected Ella Fitzgerald’s voice to surge into my ears.) Like so many other folks in this truly international city, he turns out to be from another country—in this case, Germany. And he’s not just any guitarist but he is Guenter Schulz, formerly the primary guitarist and songwriter for the industrial rock band KMFDM. Known for crunching sound and all-out assaults, who would have imagined his Telecaster to be a delicate vehicle? “But, sure, I love to play jazz”, he says, handing me his card.

Vancouver and the jazz festival it hosts are full of surprises even during the daytime.

Big Names in Big Venues

Enrico Rava

Big Names in Big Venues

Vancouver is a wonderfully local city—a place with a keen identity as Canadian, as being in British Columbia, and as being coastal and on the Pacific rim—but it is also a place that quickly reaches for the Big Time. The diversity of the people on the streets reminds you, in every moment, that Vancouver has global attraction, yet it is also true that I was able to spend a full week in the city attending the complete breadth of festival events without once setting foot in a motor vehicle after arriving from the airport.

So, for every hip local show I attended, there was a matching show in a larger venue that would draw fans from any city on name recognition alone. The TD Canada Trust Vancouver Jazz Festival did not lack for stars.

Sonny Rollins

The glorious Orpheum Theater, normally host to the city’s Symphony Orchestra, was home to the most legendary living jazz musician. The hall itself seemed to reflect the majesty of the Saxophone Colossus: ornate, guilded in gold, well-maintained, and resonant. Sonny Rollins will be 80 in a year, and his aches and pains were clear as he moved around the Orpheum stage, but he still worked the tenor saxophone with fluid aplomb. In the first of his patented cadenzas—on “My One and Only Love”—Rollins quoted generously from the old tune “The Man on the Flying Trapeze”, a good notion of how the master sees himself despite the years.

Sonny appeared with his guitar trio (Bobby Broom on guitar, Bob Cranshaw still on electric bass, Cole Watkins on drums) plus percussion (Sammy Figueroa) and trombone (Clifton Anderson). As is so often noted by other critics, the band seemed a couple levels less wonderful than the leader. On the evening’s obligatory calypso, only Rollins who ventured beyond the chords, breaking the dynamic sameness of the performance. Still, the man’s sound seems less gruff than in recent years, more limber. He slays you. The entire audience gave him a standing ovation—before he even played one note.

Jimmy Cobb and the Kind of Blue Band

At the beautiful Center for the Performing Arts, several shows blew the roof off things. Jimmy Cobb has been leading an all-star group recreating the music of Miles Davis’s classic Kind of Blue upon its 50th anniversary. This would seem to be the kind of thing that only sounds good on paper—after all, how could this long-revered music ever sound fresh again?

But after a couple of tunes it became clear that, as good as the classic solos of the 1959 record are, the masterpiece quality to KoB is its wide-open modal conception. And having these musicians—Wallace Roney on trumpet, Javon Jackson on tenor, Vincent Herring on alto, Larry Willis on piano, and John Webb on bass—allowed the music to reinvent itself. Roney always sounds somewhat like he is channeling Miles, but his solos in the Center were tart and puckish rather than just brooding. It made you want to hear more of his own music. And when Willis—amidst his “All Blues” solo—quoted from “Norwegian Wood, well, the music seemed more than fresh enough.

Pairing this band with the Canadian pianist (now based in New York) John Stetch was a fine choice. Stetch and his trio played generously from his recent collection of TV theme songs, TV Trio, reharmonizing classics like “Star Trek” and “Love Boat” in such a way that they seem to hold newly imagined gold. Kinda schticky, but fun.

The Monterey Quartet

The Monterey Quartet (Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Erik Harland) and The October Trio

This festival-born super-group was making a fresh tour of festivals, and their music came off as an exhibition of sorts—dramatic, polyrhythmic, explosive. While Holland handles the microphone and is the putative leader, the composing duties are fully shared, and it never feels like one of Holland’s usual groups; it is more polyrhythmic and plain. Chris Potter’s sound gets more Michael Brecker-ish every time I hear him: explosive and notey with a metallic wail in the upper register. But his tune, “Minotaur”, was complex and rhapsodic. Rubalcaba played snake-like solos at every turn, feeding the complex play of Harland’s feet. And while the grooving bass lines of Dave Holland anchored it all, it was the two polyrhymists who ultimately dominated.

Opening for Holland et al. was another Canadian group with a strong reach into the U.S. Last year The October Trio released a brilliant album on Songlines, adding the Vancouver trumpet player Brad Turner to their arrangements. At the Center, the quartet inhabited a place deliciously between the overt near-rock modernism of The Bad Plus or Medeski, Martin & Wood and the harmonic modernism of artists like Holland. Tune to tune, it was a brainy kind of pleasure—never obvious, but rocking enough that the whole hall was in these young guys’ hands. And it couldn’t have hurt that the Vancouver audience felt they hearing some hometown (or home-area) heroes.

Kurt Elling and Enrico Rava

The near-perfect sound at The Center was particularly well-suited to the elegant lyricism of both parts of this show. Enrico Rava, the impressionistic Italian trumpeter who also loves to play free, played in duet with his pianist Stefano Bollani. Bollani, if you don’t know him, is a playful athlete behind the keys: sneaker-clad, punching bass lines, shoulders levitating as he smiles. He plays like Keith Jarrett without the dour attitude, moving from stride to bop to rhapsodic indulgence, minute-to-minute. Rava stands to the side the piano, brooding and intense but ultimately synced with his partner. Rava is focused and intimate with the mic, but there is something antic about the pair as well, playing a fun “Cheek to Cheek” and going out dueling on Miles’s “The Theme”.

The second half featured the finest and most daring male vocalist in jazz, Kurt Elling. The evening was focused on Elling’s recreation—in partnership with his arranger and pianist Lawrence Hobgood—of the classic John Coltrane/Johnny Hartman session. The work succeeds because the pair has reconceived these classic tunes in critical ways, changing the harmonies and arrangements to make them more dynamic and modern but still capturing the sense of elegance and yearning that made the originals so compelling. To add saxophonic counterpoint, Elling has enlisted Ernie Watts to join the group, and his highwire act in the upper register on “You Are Too Beautiful” was smashing. The band played other tunes as well, opening with Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” and including an autobiographical variant on “Body and Soul” with words by Elling. As from the start of his career, Kurt Elling is a jazz singer who actually makes you realize that you must listen closely to the words.

Two Brilliant Pianists

The Center also featured a night of sterling pianism from Fred Hersch and Kenny Werner. Hersch’s trio was perfectly balanced, performing ballads that had intensity and swingers that were keen and smart. In one sequence, they started with an original, “The Black Dog Pays a Visit”, which featured a piano solo that combined lyricism and control in perfect balance. The band then segued into a reading of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”, brilliantly harmonized, which in turn segued into “Nardis”

But Werner’s set was even more impressive. Leading a quintet (Randy Brecker on trumpet, David Sanchez on tenor sax, Scott Colley on bass, and Antonio Sanchez on drums: wow), Werner played much material from his great Lawn Chair Society album. Werner was funny and warm on the stage, making jazz seem fun and relevant at every turn. His composition “Eternal Heart”, written for his daughter, was sublime. “Inaugural Balls” (ha) was off-kilter fun, funky and dissonant, and his arrangement, oddly enough, of “Hedwig’s Theme” from the Harry Potter movies demonstrated how jazz musicians have always been able to reach into the culture and find gold.

But Beyond the Mainstream Too

Taylor Ho Bynum

But Beyond the Mainstream Too

These evenings of straight-ahead pleasure would make for a fine jazz festival, but it would be a festival disinterested in bending the music forward. Vancouver’s festival, however, takes seriously the notion that it can contributes directly to the future health of jazz.

The progressive cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum was in residence at the festival, working with students and performing in various bands through the ten days. His trio with Toma Fujiwara on drums and Mary Holverson on guitar brought every element of the music forward—swing, classical counterpoint, avant shrieking, rock backbeat, tight unisons. Playing in the hip Roundhouse performance space, this trio did allot of exploring. Some of it meandered, but the mission was clear.

Before Ho Bynum, another free trio got out on the edge. Canadian pianist Chris Gestrin set up with Simon Fisk on bass and Jerry Granelli on drums. Gestrin looks like a young mountain-man at the keyboard, like he just split some wood. But his is playing is often impressionistic and cool, using silence as much as energy. Granelli, dressed like your crazy hippie uncle, plays with abandon even when he’s quiet. The concert was a lesson in listening closely, as the themes and connections were subtle and developed out of the blue.

Chris Gestrin

There were also literal lessons being taught. Trombonist Ray Anderson was one of many musicians who not only played but also taught a workshop, demonstrating his craft and discussing his career with Anthony Braxton and on his own. I asked him about the economics of playing “creative music” in 2009, and he replied, “Oh, why’d you have to ask that?” He said, “It’s hard,” and explained that jazz musicians no longer make money selling records and mostly do it themselves in this environment. On the other hand, he explained, “there is as much interest—or more—among people around the world than before. People come out to hear this music, and there is more interest and access to this music in colleges.” Anderson teaches at Stoneybrook.

Late night lessons, of a sort, were being held at the Ironworks, a very cool gallery and performance bar—formerly a warehouse—at the edge of the “Gastown” neighborhood. I caught Vancouver resident Gordon Grdina, who plays an amplified acoustic guitar and oud, with his trio and guest Mats Gustafsson. Gustafsson guarantees that the date will be hardcore, and he was wearing a Cramps T-shirt over his lean frame to prove it, his tenor and baritone saxophones at the ready. What we got was pure energy music, and a good part of the audience was thrilled, whooping along with the intricate unisons between bari and guitar. The overblown multiphonics were enough to cause little waves in your Granville Island Brewery I.P.A.

Local Music as Good as the Best from Around the World

Peggy Lee Band

Local Music as Good as the Best from Around the World

The ultimate lesson of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival was simply this: Don’t forsake the local.

The two most extraordinary musical experiences of my week took me by surprise. It was a huge festival. Coastal Jazz, the non-profit group that produces the festival (and many other musical opportunities in Vancouver throughout the year) will be happy to tell you how big the festival is: 400 shows, 150 of them free, across ten days in 40 venues, featuring 1,800 musicians playing for a half-million fans. But of all that music, the cream came from just down the street.

I’d gotten to know the local musicians naturally because they were everywhere I turned. One afternoon I headed down to Tom Lee Music to hear Saul Berson, an alto player with a creative approach to the mainstream. Nice set, nice arrangement of “Willow Weep for Me”. But who was this guitarist, killing every solo and imagining accompaniments that deserved a much more significant forum?

Two hours later I was down on Granville Island again to catch the 3pm show at “Performance Works” by the Peggy Lee Band. (No kidding: before the show a woman asked me, “Did you know that she is still alive?” I had to explain that this was not the singer but a “new music” cellist.) Lee could be Vancouver’s best known creative musician, having played recently on major releases by both Dave Douglas and Wayne Horwitz. Her group turned out to be an octet, entirely local. On trumpet and flugelhorn, there was Brad Turner, the great melodist I had seen with The October Trio. Tuning up on guitar? It was Ron Samworth, who I’d seen 24 hours earlier in the park. Wait, she’s got two guitar players? And the second was the stunner from earlier in the day, a guy named Tony Wilson.

Lee’s music was unique but firmly within the tradition, pushing forward but aware of the past. A rich, layered sound often ringing in open harmonies, her music could be comforting and challenging too. The second tune of her set started with a duet between Wilson and drummer (and Lee husband) Dylan van der Schyff, a major guitar freak-out that stunningly resolved into a pastoral pedal-point with chiming guitars and a trombone wail like slide guitar. On the next tune, Wilson and Samworth played as if they were with Miles Davis in 1975, keeping things edgy even though there is a kind of Copland-ish space to Lee’s compositions. Brad Turner’s playing throughout could only be called luscious, and more and more it seemed that Peggy Lee is Canada’s answer to Carla Bley — a composer of magnificent gifts who rarely takes a solo in her own band.

This was brilliant music, I thought. I won’t hear anything better all week.

Then on my last day at the festival, I heard something almost as fine. I was spending the whole afternoon — the Fourth of July — around David Lam Park along the water, catching a Latin band on the huge outdoor stage, grabbing lunch, then wandering back to the partially outdoor Festival Hall, which has massive doors that open onto a town square of sorts. Walking around the edges of the Hall were Peggy Lee and Dylan van der Schyff with their two kids — just a local family here to dig some music, right?

Tony Wilson

Up on the stage was guitarist Tony Wilson again, this time with his own group, a “5tet” made up of trumpet, violin and rhythm. Tony had devised his own solutions to the question of how to make modern jazz neither predictable nor forbidding. His tunes were atypical, melding into each other through various solo segues, and he was fruitfully shifting time signatures and textures. Free playing, ballads, swing, distortion and rock were all blended in arresting ways. Wah-wah trumpet and acoustic bass? Tony Wilson had five ways to have that make sense.

This kind of creativity is what passed for a Saturday afternoon’s free entertainment at the TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

I left the city marveling not just at all that I’d heard but also at the many shows I’d missed: King Sunny Adé and his band for dancing, Derek Trucks jamming at The Center, a blazing trio of Myra Melford, Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson, another Tony Wilson group at The Ironworks that was, no doubt, something new.

There’d been other great moments I enjoyed in the cracks: a great bottle of wine on a restaurant balcony, jam sessions in the bar at my hotel, a Vietnamese lunch of fresh salad rolls, and a long walk around Stanley Park with a friend. Because with this jazz festival you get not only the music but also a charming town under the soles of your well-used shoes.

Will I be going back? Hey, I’ll see you next Canada Day on Granville Island.