The sudden but inevitable rise of the Ghibli Jazz Orchestra

Of all the movements within the Vancouver jazz scene, one is the fastest-rising. It's far from mainstream jazz – or is it? On August 11, 2024 at the Pearl downtown, it took a traditional form: a big band. Across two shows, over 600 people heard the Ghibli Jazz Orchestra play the music of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animated film studio best known for the works of director Hayao Miyazaki and the music of composer Joe Hisaishi.

"From what I can tell, this was the biggest jazz show of 2024 that featured Vancouver talent," said presenter Tim Reinert at Infidels Jazz. The Ghibli Jazz Orchestra, founded by Isabel Leong, finds itself in the city among several concept acts related to anime and video games: the Cowboy Bebop Bebop Band, Piyotr's Game Lobby, and more. These acts grew together over the past two years and have more on the way, building in tandem with Infidels.

"Everything leading up to it, I don't know if I could describe that as smooth," Leong said of the Pearl. The day after the show, she wrote on Instagram Stories, "Seriously guys, how did we get here?" This story is my view of how they did, and of where they're headed.

I met Leong when she played guitar at the 2022 Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival in the Leading Ladies Little Big Band, an ensemble directed by Casey Thomas-Burns – who plays trombone in the Ghibli band under Leong’s direction. The idea for the band came to Leong one night at Capilano University among friends in the jazz program. Our first interview happened in advance of her first show: August 19, 2022 at Brentwood Presbyterian Church.

"One day we were all stuck – it was me, Robin Comeau, and Jamal Foster who were just stuck – at Cap, really late, for whatever reason," Leong said. "We were all sitting on the bench, and I said – I think Robin was wearing a Howl's Moving Castle sweater – oh my God, I love Ghibli! Then I was telling her, if I ever had the chance to just sit and play Studio Ghibli music with people, I would do it."

The trumpeter Comeau and saxophonist Foster, both of whom were original members of the band, encouraged her right away. Leong acted fast: "I reached out on Facebook to some people, and immediately I got enough messages to have a full big band."

The Brentwood church emerged in 2022 as a key space for the next generation of big bands, from Christopher Berner's to Dean Thiessen's. "We were running on a very small, almost non-existent budget," Leong said about this period. "I thought, okay, we have all these bands already rehearsing at Brentwood, so that's a good option.

"I reached out to a couple of high schools to see if we could just rehearse in their band rooms, but we quickly realized that that wouldn't be possible once it hits summer. And we can't do this during school: it has to be during summer, because we have too many commitments. So we ended up going for Brentwood, which worked out really well." They would perform there again on August 10, 2023, a year after their debut and a year before the Pearl.

Before that, however, came pandemonium: the band's first Infidels show on June 9, 2023 at Frankie's After Dark. The turnover from the 8:00 PM show to After Dark is challenging; in thirty minutes or less, the acts load in and out through the same single door as all patrons. If it's hard for trios, try a big band and a standby queue of 30 to 50 people – like band members' families – whom Tim Reinert had to turn away once Frankie's reached capacity.

At the time, Reinert described the After Dark as "literally the biggest show [Infidels has] ever presented". Leong earned that title twice in consecutive years; the lineup that snaked down Beatty Street came to Granville Street the following year.

The band played another Infidels show on December 10, 2023 at the VIFF Centre, a small soft-seat theatre. "By the time we got to that one, we got a good sense of how we were gonna run the next show," Leong said. "We were like, okay, I think we know how we're gonna run this band now from here on out.

"And then Tim proposed the Pearl to me in maybe January, it was early 2024."

Leong, midway through her final year at CapU jazz, focused her schedule. "I took a step back from Leading Ladies. I think the last show I played with them was the Nutcracker Suite during Christmas, just because graduating my courses overlapped with rehearsal time and everything like that [...] Luckily, [guitarist] Dom Hallberg stepped in. She's been great. I don't know when I'm gonna be back to playing with them."

Leong matched Reinert's high confidence about the next Ghibli band show. "We debated between the Pearl and the Fox [Cabaret]. I felt like we could do the Pearl. I trusted that we could sell 220 tickets no problem, sure." They announced on May 21 and sold out two months later. Reinert added tickets to reach 300 capacity at each show, then announced an additional early show on July 26. That show also sold out, bringing the tally to 600 sales.

The prominent venue led to a rare situation for jazz. "Kayla [Ferguson], our flute player, posted in a chat a screenshot from the StubHub Instagram page," Leong said, "because they have promoted ads [...] I was like, that's weird. We're not selling our tickets on StubHub! All of us moved on, we're like, that's kind of goofy. And then I think my dad searched up our band [...] And he goes, why am I seeing a link to it on StubHub? And I go, oh, that's weird. So I look on there, and our tickets are being sold for upwards of a hundred dollars!"

Ferguson, who also worked with Leong in the Leading Ladies, sent me that screenshot. The caption read, "Get tickets to Ghibli Jazz Orchestra and more!"

"Scrolling through my Instagram feed and seeing not just the band I'm in, but the jazz band I'm in, featured in a StubHub ad was not on my 2024 bingo card," Ferguson said.

On show day, Leong found simple pleasures. "[I]t was a really fun time hanging out with the band in the green room. Getting an hour just to sit there with the band, and play crosswords, and have Julian [Jayme] ask me if I would ever get a 'reverse mohawk' was probably one of the best hours of my life."

Jayme is the band's fun-loving guitarist. "I think the biggest thing for me was how cool it was to play back-to-back packed houses for a big band show," he said.

"My favourite piece is 'Fantasia', arranged by Isabel Leong, which contains themes from Nausicaä [of the Valley of the Wind]," bassist Bella Fedrigo said. "I think the arrangement really captures the beauty and enchantment of Ghibli films, and it was a joy to play."

Tenor saxophonist Gordy Li observed that the audience was "underrepresented in vancouver jazz [...] didn't see too many of that crowd show up this time [...] i welcome that changing if they r so inclined." [All of Li's words are rendered verbatim as he typed them.]

Given a sold-out crowd, that's hardly a negative. "The audiences seemed to really enjoy everything and cheered energetically for every solo," Jayme said.

Li took the idea in another positive direction with an intriguing comment on the pressure that his bandmates might feel. "cool 2see ppl in the band who r v young v insecure get more confident about their place in this knowing that music enjoyers aren't gonna show up judgey like they may b taught to fear," he said. The band has a school's-out-for-summer energy, both due to its schedule and metaphorically for the freedom it offers its musicians.

"It feels like I'm flexing or bragging," Leong said. "but we're not unfamiliar with selling out. Every time we've done a show with Tim, or even independently at Brentwood, we've sold out [...] It's not the selling out part that freaks me out anymore. It's like, who are these people that are showing up to watch this now?

"Tim was mentioning on the day-of, as people were coming in and doors were open, he was like, I don't recognize any of these people, and it's great. Because now there's just people showing up to jazz shows without actually being... I wouldn't call jazz their primary interest. But here they are, so now they're all aware of us as a community."

Leong described the audience as "a brand-new market of people" and expressed gratitude that they didn't demand note-for-note matches of the films' scores; they were happy to follow the band's arrangement choices.

"I'm looking forward to figuring out how to keep those audiences coming out to similar shows," Reinert said.

Among contemporaries of Leong’s band, the Cowboy Bebop Bebop Band has had the highest profile. Steven Zhu is their drummer and leader. "I very much admire her and her band," Zhu said of Leong. "Huge congratulations on their success at the Pearl. It's actually funny, I subbed as the drummer for one of Isabel's rehearsals a while ago, got to see the inner workings of her band. Really neat stuff there. I think her Ghibli band planted a seed in my subconscious that this is something that can be done and is indeed a very good idea." They have a band member in common: Gordy Li.

The band's latest show, with Infidels on August 26 at the VIFF Centre – paired with a screening of the 2001 animated film Cowboy Bebop: The Movie – sold out within a couple days of its announcement in early July.

"There's some crossover between the audiences in my shows and the Cowboy Bebop Bebop Band," Leong observed.

Zhu also credits Tyrant Studios booker Daniel Deorksen for putting on shows in this movement and mentions his band's bassist Piyotr Kao, who is himself a key player. In Piyotr's Game Lobby, a series at Tyrant, Kao's repertoire has covered games like Pokémon, MapleStory, and Persona 5 while he runs gameplay sessions in the set breaks.

"The Game Lobby shows are really an excuse for me to share my love for the video game music I grew up listening to," Kao said. "I try to keep it as silly and lighthearted as possible while also showing a bit of a deeper side with what some songs mean to me." He offered the analogy of each event being like "a Discord call with your homies".

Kao's next Game Lobby features Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, a 2004 Nintendo title for the Game Boy Advance, on September 7. As with Cowboy Bebop, Li is on saxophone.

Another related band is Chen Baker, led by guitarist Jeffery Chen. On September 19 at Hero's Welcome, the seven-piece will play city pop: a sort of Japanese disco-soft-rock. The event's promotional text, in describing the late-70s era of the music, matches a mood around this city: "the memories of a nation basking at the height of economic boom, blissfully unaware of the bright future that will never materialize."

Chen met Zhu and Kao, who play in his band, at UBC. He also wasn't shy about giving credit to Reinert and Deorksen. "I haven't been in the scene for long enough to say how it started, but as far as I know, [these] anime video game themed jazz shows are booked exclusively by Infidels and Tyrant," he said. "I think once Tim and Dan saw how much money could be made by appealing to that demographic, they became more eager to book shows like these."

Even though Chen doesn't identify personally with the anime and gaming themed-show movement, he acknowledges that the rising tide has lifted his boat. "Funnily enough," Chen said, "I do not enjoy Studio Ghibli, Cowboy Bebop, nor most video games, but I do have to thank them for blazing the trail so that Dan and Tim didn't have to think twice to book my city pop show. City pop is just something I have enjoyed for a long time and was one of my gateways into jazz, so I am very grateful for the opportunity to share the passion with others."

As for what's next, Reinert dropped a hint toward an even bigger spectacle. "I'm looking for someone who really knows otaku/anime culture in Vancouver, but also knows the business side," he wrote on Facebook a few days after the show. "[I] don't need fans...need someone who has contacts in the scene here....companies, possible sponsors etc." Additionally, the Cowboy Bebop Bebop Band will ride again at the Fox Cabaret on December 7.

"The Game Lobby shows have done surprisingly well given that giga-nerds like me never leave the house," Kao said; the joke speaks to the unique momentum behind all of these shows.

"We're planning a whole bunch of stuff with Tim, regarding anime shows and all that," Leong said. She described her current frame of mind as "really happy, also really tired, but also kind of bored" and will soon begin the teacher program at UBC, a common destination for CapU grads around which they have shared a wealth of mutual support.

Leong further detailed her late-summer state. "[I have] not much else in terms of music going on right now, mostly just teaching piano out of my own house. I'd like to get into playing some smaller ensemble stuff, but I have two weeks until school, and I don't think I want to do that during school.

"I'm simultaneously pushing myself harder than I probably should be, because at the moment – and I was telling this to my friends and I was saying, man – I am really bored right now, because for the past few weeks, and months actually, I've been so focused on getting this show, rehearsing for it and planning for it and everything.

"And now that it's done, I'm like, wow, there’s not a whole lot for me to do. And all my friends are like, that's probably a good thing, because you're about to have the most hellish 11 months of your life. And I'm like no, but I need to be doing something. Something’s missing! I'm well aware that I should be grateful for the downtime, but here I am, I'm still like, I need something to do."

A success like the Ghibli band never gets built without this ambition.

Leong stood by the three Ghibli movies that she had named for me two years ago as favourites: Nausicaä, Princess Mononoke, and Kiki's Delivery Service. She still needs to go see The Boy and the Heron – the English dub, because Robert Pattinson voice-acts in it – and looks forward to experiencing that latest Miyazaki film after all the hype.

"i think this will go v far while we r having fun w it," Gordy Li said. While many fortunate winds had to align for the movement to crest at the Pearl, the fun made it inevitable.