The second one already?

Here is the second edition of 10 Things, merely a week after the first – lots happening! I have some shows to attend coming up that I can't wait to tell you about, too. Appreciate you being on the path with me.

1. East Van's central DIY venue Red Gate posted this update to Instagram last week:

After 20 incredible years of offering a "Pay What You Can" model, we're making some necessary changes to ensure the sustainability of our beloved venue.

We believe deeply in the accessibility of art, but the reality is that the rising cost of rent and our commitment to fairly compensating our staff and performers have made it impossible to continue our open "Pay What You Can" policy […]

Starting now, we'll be offering "Pay What You Can" in advance only. To request this option, please email us in advance at redgateartssociety@gmail.com or send us a DM here on Instagram.

We understand this is a shift, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. This decision wasn't made lightly; it's a matter of ensuring Red Gate can keep its doors open and continue to be a home for artists and art lovers alike[.]

In a nutshell, the venue will end their flexible at-the-door pricing in favour of tickets at a fixed price both in advance and at the door, plus an option to request a cheaper admission.

This comment under Red Gate's original post was the smartest one I read:

"Are shows really selling out that often that you’d rather have folks turned away and not pay anything than get in and pay $5..? Theres [sic] more than enough half-filled shows that will suffer from this unnecessary [sic]."

My takeaway: our presenters have room to be more aggressive with early-bird discounting when they want to prioritize filling rooms.

Red Gate has long been in the DIY-venue funding struggle; you can find coverage of fundraisers for the cause going back more than a decade. "We’ve managed to keep pace with exponentially increasing rents, but now we need to come up with an extra $9116 by the end of the month or face eviction," they said via CITR/Discorder in January 2020, before covid. In October 2021, they also took the step of adding pay-what-you-can membership dues to attendance costs, partly to bolster a register of members for the society. The Red Gate Arts Society received $35,000 from Creative BC's Amplify BC Live Music | Business Development 2023-24 program for an application titled "Restructuring Management and Governance Practices".

2. The Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival released news about their road to the July 26-27 weekend. Instead of running their youth concert series weekly over several months, they'll run it in June and July and also wrap it into the festival weekend. The new schedule will allow both better weather and more time to book the performers. Shout-out to New Westminster Secondary School's own saxophonist Luka MacInnes-Cann for being the cover boy on one of the graphics.
3. Tyrant Studios went unmentioned in any coverage of, or responses to, the Penthouse / X "neighbours" sign thing that I saw. Darn!
4. Fabrique last Saturday: I expected to hear Jodi Proznick's classic trio with Tilden Webb and Jesse Cahill, which she also brought to venue around the new year last year, but Jon Bentley made it a whole quartet show. They played mostly Jodi's Foundations and Sun Songs repertoire. My favourite moment might have been the first tune, the simple minor blues "Equinox", which Jon didn't seem to have played much before but nevertheless played authoritatively from the first note, a consummate pro. Jesse was extra dialed, being between back-to-back Frankie's shows with Nick Hempton and Cory Weeds' two-tenor quartet.
5. Speaking of Jon and Fabrique, now would be a fun time to revisit the Subscriber Friday from last May about the Jon Bentley Quartet show that I heard there. Jon has an album called Go Ahead! coming March 21st on Cellar; he and the band cut the record immediately after this gig. The album's first single, "Balcony Jogger" – one of the tunes I heard and wrote about – is out today.

Existential, but stoked to be here: Jon Bentley Quartet

With Chris Gestrin on organ, Tristan Paxton on guitar, and Joe Poole on drums at La Fabrique

Rhythm ChangesWill Chernoff

6. The latest Saturday Night Jazz with Laila Biali had very little of us, unless you count Tim Tamashiro's Drinky, truly one of the Cellar albums of all time. One of the few spins from our vicinity was Katherine Penfold's "Far Away", a soul track from her 2019 album Sweetest Thing. My random crossover experience to cite: Penfold, who is also a freelance videographer, was a guest singer with the North Shore Celtic Ensemble at their big 2024 Christmas theatre show.
7. This week's artist I wouldn't know but not for Tim Reinert's Infidels Jazz Show: the guitarist Monnette Sudler. Tim also spun alto saxophonist Steve Lehman's "Ih Calam and Ynnus" from Lehman's 2019 Pi Recordings album The People I Love, with Craig Taborn on piano, Matt Brewer on bass, and Damion Reid on drums. I love this listener review on the album page from Bandcamp user Glen Stohr: "You've heard be-bop and hard bop and post bop. Welcome to hyperbop." Tragically, I know from WRTI that Lehman lost his house in the fires.
8. Speaking of radio, I made a radio show! The motivation was to put together the soundtrack to my now-complete twenties; you can listen to that here. I wanted to make an episode rooted in only intrinsic motivation, which is to say that if no one listened to it, I'd still be happy. Lo and behold, according to Mixcloud stats, not a single individual listened to it all the way through yet: the total streaming time racked up by the episode is currently less than the 120-minute runtime. (It's funny how you still get plenty of kudos for making something that virtually no one consumes – it's like how so few people listen to the Rhythm Changes Podcast vs. read the free weekly email, yet the podcast gets outsize scuttlebutt.) To reiterate, I expected this outcome and enjoyed doing it, but I doubt I'll do it again until I find another 100%-intrinsic episode theme.
9. Here's a super-under-the-radar cut that features our people: a singer named Hanju Kim, who studies at Berklee in Boston with pianist Rick Son and bassist Harold Cui, just released an R&B-ish song called "neverfallinloveagain" with Rick and Harold on acoustic instruments in a vocal-jazz arrangement. No out-and-out solos, but yes to walking waltz basslines and piano comping. Never underestimate the propensity of jazz students to make pop music for some relief.
10. The Wednesday nights at Frankie's will begin this coming week. Cory is billed to play with pianist Jimi James Fraser, bassist Brad Pearson, and drummer Arvind Ramdas, almost like he's coming through a 2:00 AM jam at the former Jazz House. If you get down to this Wednesdays/Wine/Weeds series before I do, please let me know how your time was.
11. A couple of days after I attended the show that launched both a band and the first-ever free weekly, on February 15, 2022, a Canadian music website called Dominionated featured my music. I bet that's one of the only times Dominionated ever featured our little scene. The website just announced – weirdly integrating the announcement with a review – that they're shutting down after 10 years and have made their "last-ever post" per co-founder Jim Di Gioia. Here's a theme I'm sensing for 2025: the fall of existing outlets and institutions doesn't discourage those of us on the rise. In fact, we're ready to fill any void and have fun doing it. "Please do what you can to keep Canadian music conversations going," Di Gioia wrote as a sign-off. We will.
12. Vancouver-born renowned saxophonist Ben Wendel grew up in "the 310" of southern California and posted on Tuesday that his parents lost their home in the fires. He shared a sadly long and growing list of musicians and their families who've been impacted. Here's the list he shared.

Coastal Jazz were set to make the first jazzfest lineup announcements by now, but they punted, so stay tuned for next time.

Go Texans!