Inside the Inlet Theatre Music Series with Darlene & Bill

The Inlet Theatre Music Series in Port Moody completed its first season of concerts on May 6, 2023, featuring the Vince Mai Quintet with Miles Black, Daryl Jahnke, Laurence Mollerup, & Bernie Arai. PoMo residents and musicians Darlene Cooper and Bill Sample are the co-producers of the series.

Darlene and Bill joined me for an interview about the series, but first, I'll discuss my experience at the concert two weeks ago and set the scene just a little.

My most recent non-music day gig was an office job at a manufacturing company. That was 2018, when I used the paycheques to fund the launch of my former band.

For reasons that I can't fully flesh out here, part of the job took me into the boiler room of Port Moody municipal politics around the 2018 election, including visits to city council meetings. Those meetings were, and are, held on the same city-hall site as the Inlet Theatre.

So I hadn't been to this venue in five years. The concert experience was excellent, from the warm chatter beforehand to the superb live sound to the thoughtful presence of Vince Mai as a bandleader. On top of assembling his formidable band, he even brought out his son Thad Bailey-Mai for some two-trumpet features.

About half of the set list came from Vince's 2016 album, Music for Rehearsal – as in the soundtrack to a film called Rehearsal. These tunes are straight-ahead vignettes of particular things from the popular jazz canon: for example one of them evoked "Billie's Bounce" by Charlie Parker, another one the Miles Davis muted trumpet ballads.

I had two favourite numbers, one from each set. The first one was "Butterfly" by Herbie Hancock, which really threw me for a loop because if you dare, click here to hear my (attempt at a) performance of it with Thad Bailey-Mai when we were 18 years old. Thad's dad's version in Port Moody was deservingly, delicately crafted.

The other was "Why Didn't You Tell Me", a post-bop Vince original that he recorded on a 2000 album of his called For All We Know. When I found out that not only was this album not on streaming, but that it was available on CD at the Inlet Theatre merch table, I bought an old-fashioned copy for myself.

The band were in great form from Vince's frequent collaborator Daryl Jahnke playing Metheny-esque guitar solos, across the stage to Miles Black being masterful about saving his piano comping for exactly when the arrangements needed it. Laurence Mollerup played both upright and electric bass to a high standard as he always does; he got plenty of solo time, too. And apparently Bernie Arai hadn't played drums much with Vince before, though you wouldn't have known it.

Overall, I'm happy to have seen and heard this event from season one of the series. I look forward to season two, which is why I talked to Darlene and Bill briefly about how they got here and where they're going next with it:

How the Inlet Theatre Music Series began

DARLENE COOPER: "We moved into the Port Moody area and it has that nice tagline, City of the Arts, there was the Gallery Bistro; we were part of that series, and then it burned down.

"Somewhere along the way, I go into the Inlet Theatre, but I don't know of anything really happening there as far as the community goes. There's private functions and people are renting it, but there isn't anything that the City of the Arts was sort of promoting there.

"I had that in my mind for a few years. I guess in 2021, I just felt like we needed to start a music series, get something going in this beautiful theatre. We've got this space, Port Moody's a great place., people are coming here all the time: they've got Brewery Row, all these things, and it's just a place people come to.

"I wasn't sure how to go about it, and someone said, 'You just have to make an appointment or go to the city council, go to one of the meetings.' The two of us went to a meeting in October 2021, and when we presented that we wanted to do a music series for the community and to emphasize the whole thing of City of the Arts, they loved the idea."

In February of 2022, Darlene and Bill got the go-ahead from the city for two years of the music series; they just had to cover the technical production costs. The other key team members were Port Moody Manager of Cultural Services Devin Jain, former Gallery Bistro owner Helen Daniels, and Nancy Nikolai. "We also had someone donate some money towards the series to get it going, get it off the ground and give us a bit of a cushion," Darlene said.

The series had a successful launch in September 2022 with Diane Lines' Jump. The second performer was Shari Ulrich:

BILL SAMPLE: "We had to have a good second show, and it was very simple from a technical point of view: just piano and guitar and two singers. Dead simple mix. Shari is fantastic to work with as an artist. The audience was a little bit smaller than they are now. It took a while for the word to spread that this was going to be consistently good quality. And I think that's been our brand: this is not like a small town concert. this is big-city. So we're trying to keep it top-notch with the choice of talent and also with how they look and sound in the theatre."

Bill and Darlene emphasized to me a couple times that Vince's concert was the only jazz presentation so far, with most of the others being roughly folk acts. They wanted to gauge how well jazz could draw before leaning more into it for season two; based on what I saw, I imagine they're happy but would be curious to hear a follow-up.

Earlier in season one, though, the next several concerts went well. One of them even required the opening of more seats than the usual number. "[Van Django] sold out. Marcus [Mosely] sold out. Dawn [Pemberton] sold out like 200 seats, completely sold out," Darlene said.

Bill's advice to anyone wanting to present a new concert series? "Make sure the sound is good, because if the musicians on stage are happy and the audience can hear most of the words and everything, then it's a recipe for success, and the opposite is also true."

Artists scheduled for the upcoming Inlet Theatre Music Series season will include Cayla Brooke, Laila Biali, Blue Moon Marquee, and Norm Foote.

The Vince Mai Quintet also played at Frankie's a week ago on Friday, May 12, 2023.