Cape Breton Jazz Festival a hit
Cape Breton Jazz Festival steams up waterfront
SYDNEY — Steamy days and sultry nights proved to be the winning ticket for this year’s Cape Breton Jazz Festival.
“It turned out … it was the best in the last nine years weather-wise,” said festival founder and organizer Carl Getto, who has usually held the festival in late July/early August, until last year when it was held in September due to COVID-19 protocols.
“Anyone who had pushed something back to August, it turned out to be the best decision. Usually the end of August, things begin to cool off. But not at all this year.”
Getto has had to adjust the timing and scheduling of his event a lot over the past two years due to the pandemic. In addition to changing the festival’s timing, he’s also had to make the festival a more Nova Scotia-oriented event the past two years since pandemic restrictions has limited bringing in performers from other parts of the country and the world. But because of Cape Breton’s love of the genre, it hasn’t been as difficult finding skilled musicians as you might think.
“The Joe Waye show — Joe brought together a number of players that he played with and the special guest there would have been Malcolm MacNeil on guitar, a young standout guitar player from the well-known Barra MacNeils family of Celtic performers, Eric Burke and Matt Nicholson were on saxophone and Charlotte MacDonald was the vocalist … It was an outstanding show and it drew a lot of people out so it was a great way to kick off the festival with a sold-out show."
In between, there were several free shows showcasing Cape Breton and Nova Scotian musicians at Portside in the afternoons and Daniel’s in the early evenings, featuring Getto himself with his own jazz ensemble. But the week’s highlight may have been the Saturday night show at Portside with perennial festival favourite singer and pianist Bill Stevenson and his quartet.
“The show on Saturday night with Bill Stevenson … and Chris Mitchell on tenor sax, I thought was just fantastic and one of the highlights of that show were several local horn players … These horn players were James Munroe on trombone and Ian Aker on saxophone and Matt Nicholson on saxophone so it was a sort of celebration of the horns and this was a big highlight of that particular show. That capped off the festival.”
If running an annual festival wasn’t enough, Getto usually organizes a few events at other times of the year as well and the next six months will not be an exception. He’s working on a fall/winter series of concerts that could run into March.
“I am very encouraged and energized and am looking forward to doing jazz this fall actually — we’ll be getting some jazz happening in the fall and over the winter.”
More details on upcoming shows will be available at a later date.