30 years of jazz

TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival celebrates its rich history of bringing toplevel marquee names to the city

Miles Davis. Wynton Marsalis. Diana Krall. Esperanza Spalding. The late Ornette Coleman. These jazz powerhouses have all graced the Vancouver stage thanks to the Coastal Jazz Society and the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Thirty years on, the list of toplevel marquee names continues to roll in: In 2015, it’s Buddy Guy, Erykah Badu, Pink Martini, Snarky Puppy, Stanley Clarke, The Roots, and many more, who will step onto the stages of various venues around Vancouver’s core for 14 days of music. John Orysik, the festival’s media director and Coastal Jazz cofounder, remembers the early days of the fest quite well. “We wanted to elevate the music scene in Vancouver by presenting jazz concerts on a regular basis,” he said in an interview just a few days before the 30th edition of the festival was set to launch. “The way to do that was to form a society, the vehicle that would make all this happen. Slowly but surely, in March of 1985, we presented our first two concerts, back-to-back sold-out shows with late French pianist Michel Petrucciani.” The first festival in 1985 was meant to be a small, regional one. It was deemed a modest success and started attracting corporate sponsorships for what was to be the jazz festival’s Big Bang year: 1986, the year of the Expo. From presenting 25 to 30 concerts in 1985, the jazz fest boasted 150 in ’86, including performances by Davis, Coleman, Marsalis, and guitarist Bill Frisell. “It was a huge leap,” Orysik said. The festival now features 300 performances, half of them available for free to the public. It also has a popular downtown jazz compo- nent, expanded to four days this year — starting today at noon until Sunday evening around the Vancouver Art Gallery. It still features the popular David Lam Park weekend jazz event during its second week and the Canada Day celebrations taking place on July 1 at Granville Island to close the proceedings. “Inextricably tied to the community,” as Orysik described it, the festival is still a big booster of Vancouver-made music, having helped buoy the works of artists like Krall, who first performed in the streets of Gastown back when the fest had its free performances there, and avant-garde players like cellist Peggy Lee and pianist Francois Houle, who have become Vancouver jazz fest regulars. To ask Orysik to pick a highlight concert from the past 30 years is to hear him audibly scratch his head. “Each artist touches you in a unique way,” he said, before hon- ing in on Coleman’s 1986 performance (“now considered his ‘late years,’” Orysik said) and pointing out a particularly memorable concert by Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Caetano Veloso in 1997. (Note: Coleman’s last Vancouver appearance, in 2007 at the Chan Centre, was organized by Coastal Jazz.) But there are too many great memories to count, and Orysik hopes there are 30 more years to come. “It would really be great to be here in my 90s, directing traffic,” he said with a chuckle. “The future is really exciting for Coastal Jazz: We’re expanding to 14 days, expanding the downtown component, our education and outreach opportunities, and we’re featuring more co-productions (with the Vogue Theatre and Cory Weeds’ Cellar Jazz at Pyatt Hall, for example) and partnerships year-round.”