CBC launches new video-on-demand initiative

A new initiative at CBC to provide video of some of this country’s most respected musicians has been launched. In this case the focus is on a set of new jazz videos recorded in CBC Studio One during the TD Vancouver International Jazz Fest. The Phil Dwyer Septet featuring Laila Biali videos are now online. [...]

Vancouver International Jazz Festival Diary – Day 10 / Sunday, July 3, 2011

The end… No matter how much you deny it, this day always comes. I always wake up on Day 10 with a heavy, sad heart. Heavy both with its fullness from the extravaganza of the previous nine days’ packed full with music and great hangs, and, of course, sadness that all the rest of the [...]

Vancouver International Jazz Festival Diary – Day 9 / Saturday, July 2, 2011

Magnus Broo & Paal Nilssen-Love @ Roundhouse – Performance Centre Paal Nilssen-Love listens awfully closely to Magnus Broo Bummed bummed bummed to have missed this. Came into Performance Centre during last piece; very quiet, very spare, very not what I expected, but with no idea what [...]

Vancouver International Jazz Festival – Diary Day 8 / Friday, July 1, 2011

Granville Island/Nation’s Birthday There is absolutely nothing that could get me to leave the mainland and take a boat to a small island so overcrowded it felt like half the country was on it and it might actually sink, with virtually no means of escaping quickly when one needed to. Except jazz. And the birthday [...]

Vancouver International Jazz Festival Day 4 / Monday, June 27, 2011

Day 4 – Monday, June 28, 2011 Jonas Kulhammar Quartet @ Roundhouse – Performance Works (7pm) I’m really gonna hafta lay some of the blame for this Euro fixation on the programming of this Festival. I go to a show by an amazing Euro group like Sweden’s Jonas Kulhammer Quartet and I immediately want to [...]

Vancouver International Jazz Festival 2011 Diary – DAY 1 / Friday, June 25, 2011

Day 1 – Friday, June 25, 2011 If the Festival ended now, I would be hungrily satisfied with that. Hungrily, of course because when you find musical bliss, you can’t help but want more more more… all the time, more. Satisfied because, the amazing music that filled these ears, mind and soul (unexpectedly, though there [...]

Vancouver International Jazz Festival: 20 Questions for… AMANDA TOSOFF

Ok, so it’s only 10 questions. But to some busy Vancouver -and Vancouver-connected- musicians about to embark on Jazz Festival season, it might have felt like 20. So, here, for your informational pleasure, a little history, a little observation, some reminiscences about Vancouver International Jazz Festivals past, and maybe just a thing or two you [...]