The Vancouver International Jazz Festival is now one of the top ten jazz festivals in the world.
It is a beast of a music festival, open to everything from free-form experimental, to jazz-pop, to R&B. To Catch even just a few of the 300 live shows it offers is a mind-bending, transcendental experience.
The truly great thing about the Vancouver International Jazz Festival is that much of its musical ecstasy is offered for free, albeit while some of the heftier big ticket acts like this year’s headliners Erykah Badu and Chris Botti can drain the limited resources of starving students. That’s right: 150 of the live shows are free. There are also great deals like the three-show bundle for $36 at the Ironworks Innovation Series, which, hands down, was the place to witness the most enthralling jazz this year.
As I write this, the sprawling 14-day Vancouver International Jazz Festival is coming to a close on July 1, but I will let you in on a secret. Maybe because the festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary, or maybe because right now is an especially fertile period in the evolution of jazz, the Coastal Jazz Society, the non-profit behind the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, is planning a Christmas jazz festival, and they have returned to year-round programming.
I will give you budget-conscious students another heads up: if you join the Coastal Jazz e-mail list you can not only keep up with the massive jazz scene happening here in Vancouver, but also, from time to time, you can take advantage of the 30 percent off deals for jazz lovers under 30. These deals for select shows are a way to entice millennials into the hot world of jazz.
And it is so easy to be enticed. As I flip through my program booklet and think about all the unwanted decisions I had to make in choosing one stellar artist over another, I am reminded that my greatest surprise this year came, unexpectedly, with the Stanley Clarke Band.
Clarke became a legend in the jazz world for his skill and ingenuity with the electric bass in the great 1970’s rock-fusion quartet Return to Forever. But then he, as the saying goes, “sold out” to the commercial music industry and his jazz went from fiery and intense to lukewarm and flat. I stopped listening to him a long time ago.
I had a volunteer shift at the Vogue Theatre the night Clarke was playing (volunteering gets you free tickets to the big shows) and expected him to just dial out the music. Was I wrong! Clarke returned to his original instrument, the acoustic stand-up bass, several years ago, and he drew the impossible out of its five-strings all night long. I have never seen anything like it. It was a consciousness-raising experience.
He also brought along three super high octane young players (his drummer Mike Mitchell is only 20 years old) who ripped into everything he handed them with so much heart and heat that they brought the place down.
People talk about “art moments” that come as flashes of insight standing in front of some monumental work. The jazz moments I had at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival are exactly the same. They change your life, and you know they do, because you remember them for a lifetime.
Mark the last two weeks of June in your 2016 calendar. Go. Have a jazz moment at the next Vancouver International Jazz Festival. It will be the best thing you have ever done for yourself.
Visit coastaljazz.ca for more information.
Jazz Festival Lore
Tales of a great stand-off between the legends Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis at Vancouver’s International Jazz Festival in 1986 filled the Sutton Place Hotel Versailles Ballroom at the festival’s opening party. The story of their confrontation was picked up by the international media and it has forever marked Vancouver’s place in jazz history. Apparently, Marsalis had called Davis out in the media for diluting jazz just before both artists were scheduled to play at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. On a dare, Marsalis walked on stage during Davis’ performance at the Expo Theatre intending to play, but an angry Davis kicked him off.
