Debashish Bhattacharya at CBC Studio 700 on Thursday
Posted on | July 24, 2010 | No Comments
by Brian Nation
The world of Indian classical music is filled with many remarkable performers but even among these masters Debashish Bhattacharya stands out for having adapted the Hawaiian slide guitar to the Indian raga and becoming its master, since he started performing professionally at age 4. Henry Kaiser has written, “Using the centuries-old raga tradition, Bhattacharya takes the listener to a place of deep emotional expression beyond the boundaries of time.”
Being also an improvised form of music, it seems natural for classical Indian and jazz musicians to play together and there have been many successful ventures in this direction. Bhattacharya himself, for example, has participated in a number of multicultural projects, most notably with John McLaughlin’s Shakti and a number of projects with slide guitar master Bob Brozman.
In a rare Vancouver appearance, Debashish Bhattacharya will perform next Thursday with his brother Subashis Bhattacharya on tablas and Vancouver residents, Bob Murphy on piano and Tom Keenlyside on saxes and flutes.
Murphy wrote in his media release, Ever since I first heard Ravi Shankar back in the early 1960s I have been a big fan of Indian classical music. I have often hoped for an opportunity to play with some Indian classical musicians and that opportunity has presented itself. Next Thursday July 29th I will have the privilege and honour of playing a concert with two great Indian musicians: Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya on Indian slide guitar, Subhasis Bhattacharya on tablas, along with my old pal, the phenomenal Tom Keenlyside on saxes and flutes. I will be playing piano. Indian classical music features improvisation very much like jazz so the crossover is a natural. If the rehearsal was any indication, we’re in for a beautiful night. Please join us.
Thursday, July 29 @ 8pm
CBC Studio 700, 700 Hamilton Street
For more information visit http://www.roguefolk.bc.ca/concerts/debashishbhattacharya.html
Debashish Bhattacharya’s web site
South Delta Jazz Festival and Jazz Workshop finishes seventh year
Posted on | July 16, 2010 | 1 Comment
by Jared Burrows
I’m finally cooling down, both literally and figuratively, after a very intense week of making music and teaching at the South Delta Jazz Workshop and Jazz Festival. The Workshop is a summer jazz camp with thirty-five students, six full-time faculty members, and two TAs. The Festival comprises seven concerts during the week of the workshop and the concerts feature faculty musicians and guest artists. This year was our seventh annual event. My friend, Stephen Robb, and I started this event back in 2003 with the idea of providing ourselves with some summer teaching work and a chance to get together and play music with our friends. Since then it has grown to be the most significant arts event in Delta. 
The workshop takes place at Delta Community Music School which is situated in a very cool old heritage house in the Ladner Village. This year we held concerts at Ladner Community Centre, Diefenbaker Park, Kinsmen House, All Saints Anglican Church and our grand finale student show at the Delta Hospital grounds. The weather cooperated beautifully once again and community support and attendance at concerts was better than ever.
As usual, our jazz jam at Petra’s Arts Café was a great success, with kids and adults from the Workshop getting up to play tunes with faculty and musicians from the community. 
It is truly magical to see people, many of whom just learned what a blues is that very morning, get up and play a few choruses with a band they haven’t met before. Some of our more advanced students organized some surprise tunes and personnel combinations including a massive ten-saxophone jam on “The Chicken”. Our genial host, Petra Tetrault, kept the lemonade flowing and made all the musicians and listeners feel right at home as always.
A really wonderful addition to the workshop this year was the Infinitus String Trio. Infinitus is a professional group with an interest in playing jazz. They signed on as students (some of the best students I have ever worked with!) but as we got to know them during the week it became apparent that we needed to get them involved with the faculty concerts. Our bass faculty member, Rob Kohler, quickly wrote some arrangements for his noon-hour show on July 8 and the string trio was featured with various combinations of saxophone, guitar and rhythm section. Look out for the Infinitus Trio. These guys can play anything with gorgeous sound and great time and I’m definitely planning to collaborate with them in the near future. 
Here’s a candid shot of the Infinitus String trio (John Littlejohn, Alex and Anthony Cheung) with faculty members Rob Kohler (bass), Len Aruliah (sax), Stan Taylor (drums) and on of our TAs, Chris Peterson (guitar).
The next day brought more musical delights in the form of a visit from my good friend, Alan Matheson. Alan has been a guest artist and teacher at the Workshop and Festival before, but it has been a couple of years since the last time. As always, Alan brought in a fantastic book of original tunes and standards all cunningly arranged for cornet, alto, trombone and rhythm section. The faculty band had a great time playing these arrangements and listening to Al’s beautiful cornet and flugelhorn playing. Alan is a great musician and a true gentleman in every sense of the word.
Friday night featured theLen Aruliah Quartet in concert at All Saints Anglican Church with Stan Taylor on drums, Rob Kohler on bass and yours truly on guitar. Len is a wonderful saxophonist who lived in Vancouver for a while in the 1980s and early 1990s, but has been based in London for a long while now. We presented two sets of Len’s original music, plus a few of my tunes and one each from the books of Kenny Wheeler and Dave Holland. I had a great time playing this show and the audience gave us a standing ovation. The church turned out to be a great venue for listening and playing and we’ll surely be presenting more shows there in the future.
Saturday afternoon was our grand finale concert. This is the moment for student combos to present the material they work on during the week at a big outdoor show and picnic at the Delta Hospital grounds. Residents from long-term care centre are brought out in their wheelchairs and get to groove along with all the parents and friends and folks from the community. The students played wonderfully as always. The highlight for me had to be our youngest combo of 12- and 13-year old kids playing a latin version of Justin Bieber’s “Baby” in a set with Mr. PC, Sonny Moon for Two, and C Jam Blues. I overheard a very elderly lady in a wheelchair say “I like that Baby song! Why don’t they play that again?”.
Here’s a shot of our advanced students playing at Diefenbaker Park in Tsawwassen.
After seven years of doing this, one of the most satisfying things for me is seeing the audience for jazz grow in this little suburban community and building a family of ‘jazz people’. I have been doing this long enough now that most people think I live in Ladner rather than East Van and indeed, in many ways I feel like a Ladner native. Folks like Willie Germann (our honourary patron saint), Roland Selby, Don Burkett, Bob Miller, Betty Tanney and so many others come back as students and audience members year after year and make me and our teachers and musicians feel so welcome. We have watched kids who started with us as 7th graders go on and graduate from high school. Some go on to study music in college and some don’t, but all are lifelong jazz fans. The adult students really look forward to taking a week off work to make music. Many of our faculty members come back year after year and musical relationships grow and deepen. At the end of each year I feel so exhausted from the organizing, promoting, recruiting, playing and teaching that I often wonder aloud whether there will be another year. In the end it is this community of music lovers that keeps making it happen. Many thanks to all the students, faculty, and audience members who support this event!
Hot Air Highlights
Posted on | July 16, 2010 | No Comments
by Margaret Gallagher
This Saturday on Hot Air, we tap into the archives for some of our favourite moments of the past season. You’ll hear Paul Grant’s musical Gods and Goddesses, great live tracks from Adam Thomas and Phil Dwyer, Paolo Pietropaulo’s visit with Eleanor Collins on her 90th birthday, a highlight from the Jelly Roll Morton tribute, and more. Hope you can join us.
Hot Air on CBC Radio One
Saturdays, 5:05, 6:05 mountain
88.1 FM, 690 AM in Vancouver
Paper Star and Rising Stars on Hot Air
Posted on | July 10, 2010 | No Comments
by Margaret Gallagher
Today on Hot Air, Vancouver trumpet player, composer and bandleader Malcolm Aiken is our featured guest. The classically-trained artist has been a professional musician since he was 15 years old. He’ll share tracks from his debut solo release, Paper Star, and tell us why he waited so long. Plus tunes from a couple of Galaxie Rising Stars, and a brand new track from Cat Toren. Hope you can join us!
Hot Air on CBC Radio One
Saturdays at 5:05 pm, 6:05 mountain
www.cbc.ca/hotair
The Pugs and Crows Band and Very Good win Galaxie awards
Posted on | July 4, 2010 | 2 Comments
by admin
The TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival and Galaxie have announced the Pugs and Crows Band and Very Good as the winners of the 8th annual Galaxie Rising Stars Awards. Chosen from the artists competing for the Award as the new artist of the year, the winners will each receive a $2500 grant.
Bria Skonberg Jazz Fest Concert on Hot Air
Posted on | July 3, 2010 | No Comments
by Margaret Gallagher
Today on Hot Air, catch a fresh recording of the multi-talented Bria Skonberg. Bria and her excellent quartet played a sold-out show in CBC Studio One last Sunday as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. It was a fabulous show and we’ll broadcast the whole concert this afternoon at 5:05 pm. With Solomon Douglas on piano, Sean Cronin on bass, Jesse Cahill on drums and Bria Skonberg on trumpet and vocals.
Hot Air on CBC Radio One
Saturdays, 5:05 pm, 6:05 mountain
www.cbc.ca/hotair
Jazz Journalists Association honours Bill Smith at jazz fest opening gala
Posted on | June 25, 2010 | 1 Comment
by Brian Nation
On behalf of the Jazz Journalists Association, the Vancouver Jazz Festival’s artistic director, Ken Pickering, presented Bill Smith with the JJA’s “A Team” Award for lifetime achievement at the jazz fest’s opening gala at the Vancouver Art Gallery last night.
Almost from the day he arrived in Toronto in 1963 from his birthplace in Bristol, England at age 26, Bill Smith has been one of Canada’s most powerful and intelligent forces for the advancement of jazz and improvised music here and around the world — as a musician, journalist, photographer, record producer, film producer, record store owner, and more. Teamed up with John Norris, who had founded CODA Magazine just a few years earlier, and in whose honour he shares the award, Smith was art director and, later, an editor of CODA. He co-founded the Jazz & Blues Record Centre in Toronto, wrote perceptive and illuminating essays about, and conducted interviews with, many of the luminaries of jazz and improvised music of the second half of the twentieth century. Steve Lacy remarked that Smith’s interview with Cecil Taylor, published in CODA, was the best interview with a jazz musician he’d ever read. Smith also produced a book of his photos of musicians, “Imagine the Sound” and a film documentary by the same name. As a soprano saxophonist and drummer, Smith has performed and recorded with Michael Snow, Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Vinny Golia, and many others.
Bill’s been contributing timeless reviews, interviews, and articles from his archive to this site.
See: http://vancouverjazz.com/billsmith and http://vancouverjazz.com/bsmith
Smith moved to British Columbia about twenty years ago and is a resident of the Gulf Islands.
I “interviewed” Bill before the ceremony last night:
Icons Among Us – A Meditation
Posted on | June 22, 2010 | 1 Comment
by Nou Dadoun
In 1955 Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff produced a remarkable book which documented the “Golden Age” of the early days in Jazz up to the heyday of 52nd Street. Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya! The Story of Jazz As Told By The Men Who Made It was (as the subtitle implies) completely constructed from the artists’ own words edited and sequenced to construct a fascinating narrative.
Back in 1955 Jazz was about to enter another “Golden Age” – one which Nat Hentoff was well-positioned to document in other ways as one of the proponents of Candid Records. But things were not all rosy, there were disagreements between the traditionalists, the swingers and the beboppers about what jazz actually was (and who got to define it), economics and the advent of TV were wiping out the big bands like dinosaurs, Charlie Parker would be dead within the year and Rock n’ Roll was just around the corner.
Fast forward to 2010 and quietly over the last couple of decades, a new golden age has emerged. The technology has changed but the approach is the same – let the musicians express themselves through interviews, take that raw material and use it to build a coherent narrative. The resulting film Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense does not try to tell a historical story as Hear Me... did. Rather it uses interviews with contemporary artists with some select mentors and commentators to provide a snapshot of the state of Jazz along with the dilemmas and challenges facing its practitioners and its supporting community. And perhaps not surprisingly, the contemporary issues have many similarities to the ones that the music has faced and dealt with in the past. (And as an improvement over the book, you get to hear the music too!) Read more
Hot Picks on Hot Air: John Orysik Previews the Jazz Fest
Posted on | June 19, 2010 | No Comments
by Margaret Gallagher
The TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival opens in just a few days. With hundreds of shows to choose from, where do you start? How about with Hot Air this weekend? John Orysik from Coastal Jazz and Blues is our special guest. He’s bringing in some of his picks for the festival, from the brightest stars to hidden gems. Tune in Saturday June 19, right after the 5 pm news, for an hour of great jazz from John.
Hot Air, Saturdays at 5:05 pm (6:05 mountain)
CBC Radio One, 88.1 FM/690 AM in Vancouver
www.cbc.ca/hotair
“Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense” screening at VanCity Theatre June 19
Posted on | June 15, 2010 | No Comments
by admin
There will be a special screening this Saturday of the theatrical feature version of the acclaimed, four-part TV documentary series. Looking at jazz as a modern art form that continues to evolve and expand, the film highlights what Terence Blanchard calls “the quiet revolution” going on today, including big names like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Bill Frisell and Wynton Marsalis and numerous emerging artists like Aaron Parks, Tineke Postma and Robert Glasper. Not just a who’s who of modern jazz, the film insists that music is a living, breathing thing, a way of life constantly seeking reinvention.
ICONS AMONG US: JAZZ IN THE PRESENT TENSE
(U.S.A., 2009, 93 mins)
Directed By: Lars Larson, Peter J Vogt, Michael Rivoira
Filmmakers in attendance.
VanCity Theatre
Sat June 19, 7:30pm
Presented in association with TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival
