Festival reflects evolution of jazz
As the 2015 TD Edmonton International Jazz Festival wound down this weekend, it was clear that younger crowds and a new generation of musicians are helping to draw the music forward.
Festival director Kent Sangster reported that the 10-day event met its financial targets despite challenges, offering a balance of new names and old favourites.
“I’m very happy in that people had lots of choices, especially at a time when money is tight,” he noted Saturday. “I’m proud of the fact that we didn’t raise ticket prices at all, and that enough people made the choice to come and experience the jazz festival and see some great music.”
It will be weeks before final figures are available but most of the smaller ticketed events at the Yardbird Suite and the Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre brought in good to frequently full crowds. The close proximity of the Old Strathcona venues encouraged music fans to see two or three shows in one night.
Two Winspear concerts with Lisa Fischer and The Bad Plus Joshua Redman each sold only about a third of that hall’s capacity but passed their budgeted sales targets, with additional giveaways to volunteers pushing attendance to about 800 for Fischer and 600 for The Bad Plus.
Sangster says fewer name acts on the level of Herbie Hancock are available now, making it hard to fill the hall. He’s considering using smaller halls more appropriate to the audience size for future festivals.
He was pleased to work with the new title sponsor TD Canada Trust, adding that the effects of that partnership may be more apparent next year. But both ticket sales, passes and merchandising continued to rise, aided in part by greater promotions through social media.
There’s nothing like a jazz festival to bring on all shades of opinion.
Within one minute Friday night, following an opening set from Kneebody, I heard one friend praise the Los Angeles quintet for their youthful, warrior spirit, while another summed them up simply as “awful.” I sit somewhere in between. The tunes were OK, but their energy felt a little unfocused — or was it the diffused sound mix?
The younger crowd at the Winspear was enthusiastic and the set that followed from The Bad Plus Joshua Redman drew a well-deserved standing ovation. Both the trio and the saxophonist have played here at least twice before on their own but together they brought out something new in each other, balancing the set between artful intensity and accessible musicality.
Now in their 40s and finding new heights of invention, the trio pushed Redman’s sentimental tendencies to something edgier, while the reedman tamed the trio’s hard, minimalist approach. Both Redman and drummer David King appeared to be taken over by their instruments but Ethan Iverson’s piano and bassist Reid Anderson made it a real team effort.
Lisa Fischer made no pretence of doing a jazz concert last Monday at the Winspear unless you consider Fever a jazz standard. Four Rolling Stones tunes reminded you of her career in rock and pop (my fave was a twist on Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll). But her performance often felt like a catalogue of backing vocal techniques, with too many wispy, ethereal phrases through her hand-held mic and wailing flashes of brilliant intensity through a stationary mic with added echo-reverb effects.
Make no mistake, Fischer is a great singer with a well-rehearsed band, but I yearned to hear her do just one song straight through without affectations. The crowd loved the show.
Various club dates found younger players acting to renew jazz, the way Manchester’s GoGo Penguin pulled aspects of electronica into their acoustic trio set for a packed audience, or Poland’s High Definition Quartet drew on minimalist rhythms and avant-garde jazz. Singer-trumpeter Bria Skonberg exhibited real charm in drawing her audience to an unusual mix of New Orleans grooves, standards and originals, suggesting she’s a name you’ll hear a lot more of.
More exotic ethno-jazz elements came through in Michael Occhipinti’s superb Sicilian Jazz Project with the addition of sublime guest singer Pilar and clarinetist Don Byron, and in the thrilling Afro-Cuban riffing of the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra.