Musical first dates with chemistry | 10 Things, May 2025
Norma, Astoria, Kingsway Club, Infidels records, Bruno Mars with cymbals, and several pointers toward the coming jazzfest
Here's a 10 Things that's all about shows and venues from May or items related to the jazzfest to come.
1
What a great pleasure it was to hear Norma Winstone sing, and to meet her after our advance interview, at the BlueShore on May 10th. Sorry to the more offline contingent who somehow missed news of the show, I regret not doing even more to tell you about it in advance! A lot of VIPs and vocalists did come out, but it wasn't sold-out. I went up to her and shook her hand right after the set. I thanked her for the great show and for doing an interview with me; she said, "Oh yeah, I recognize you! Thank you!" That was it. I shuffled out with the house and we moved on.
2
The new venue on the gig list has been the historic hotel bar of the Astoria, 769 East Hastings. It may have had an unflattering nickname in the early 2010s, but it hosts jazz-adjacent stuff on Tuesdays now. It's a DIY affair: none of our more active presenters have gone into this room.
One that I did notice and tell you about was back on April 1st, where names emerged of young musicians who are now the series' regulars: saxophonist Brad Vitick, keyboardist Winston Matsushita, bassist-cellist Emilio Suarez, to name a couple. These happen to be some of the same folks who run an artist space on Main not far from the venue.
I've tracked some other shows on the list since then. Los Duendes played late into the night on Good Friday, Suarez led a triple bill plus a jam hosted by Vitick on April 29th, a band called Beat Spirit played May 20th with pianist Clara Lin's trio, and Matsushita brought his Keyboard Grinder project there this past Tuesday. I still have yet to attend for the first time and will be watching.
3
The night before Norma, on May 9th, I heard Ottawa pianist Peter Hum lead a quartet at Frankie's with his old McGill friends, Steve Holy and Dave Robbins, plus the younger but also McGill-trained Steve Kaldestad. Hum is a writer, so of course I've long admired him. He used his writer's wit to describe the gig with Kaldestad as a "musical first date". I was emceeing, so I joined him in carrying the bit through the evening. And in musical terms, Hum writes a mean jazz waltz.
My favourite number the band played was "Yeah!" by Kaldestad, a track from his record New York Afternoon. He recorded that one in March 2014 on a New York with Weeds trip, featuring a hard-to-beat band of Renee Rosnes on piano, Peter Washington on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums. "Yeah!" is like a spun-off mix of "Tricotism" and "Stompin' at the Savoy". I want to play this tune now.
4
On May 17th, I went to the Fox for an Infidels double-bill free jazz album release party: KneeJerk as well as Kenton Loewen and JP Carter released new albums on vinyl. KneeJerk began as a trio but now includes Cole Schmidt on guitar; dig the surprisingly straight-ahead "Old Rookie" linked above.
Loewen and Carter's duo launched the Infidels label back in 2021, as Tim Reinert and I discussed on the podcast way back when...
Likewise, I found their duo set two weeks ago the most accessible performance I'd heard from them yet (I'm saying this as a good thing, at least from how I was feeling); I was talking with Alvaro Rojas on the floor about how they were dancing over a bossa-like groove, and we discussed how cool it was to hear the two improvisers basically play tunes. They end their nevertheless unstructured new album Cucumber with a version of Albert Ayler's "Ghosts".
5
I went to the Kingsway Club, an Infidels Jazz venue and one of many things you'll find around the 395 Kingsway address, for the first time last week to hear Gordon Grdina's Haram. The venue is an old ballroom tucked behind Foy's Irish Bar, which you enter through. (Go to the right.)
It was hot and sweaty inside! I wonder how it'll be for the missingNo. video game music band's show there on June 13 and for future summerish shows. Attendance was strong. Early-comers sat in the booths that line the ballroom's perimeter; many of us then picked up our own folding chairs from the corner by the stage steps and brought them out to whichever floor space we wanted to occupy.
Haram were brilliant, boasting the multi-horn front of saxophonist Chris Kelly and clarinetist Francois Houle, between Jesse Zubot (more about where you can hear him below) on violin and Emad Armoush on vocals. Electric bassist Karlis Silins looked like he came straight from a gig at the Biltmore, on the building's opposite side, with his fresh fade haircut and Alt-J band tee. It was loud as heck, and it was beautiful. They play the Vancouver Folk Music Festival on the Friday evening, July 18.
6
Here's an amusing moment from last Saturday, May 24th when I emceed again at Frankie's, this time for the band Montuno West. Having flown in from Alberta, the band said in their banter that WestJet lost their cymbals; but apparently, someone was en route bringing drummer Luis Tovar's cymbal bag to them. In the meantime, Tovar had stood up two separate hihats on his cymbal stands. Sure enough, during one of the highest-energy percussion solos of the set, a skinny guy wearing sunglasses (at nearly 9 PM) and a sparkling gold jacket burst into the club and dropped a cymbal bag on stage to rapturous applause. He looked like Bruno Mars.
Montuno West were wonderfully entertaining. The band was founded by Edmontonians Chris Andrew and Rubim de Toledo, on piano and electric bass respectively, and also includes percussionist Raul Tabera and Tovar alongside Toto Berriel, the one local. Berriel was sort of a featured guest-leader who did most of the vocals and played claves on percussion throughout. You'll find him playing with Curtis Andrews in the weekend gigs section below.
7
Chris Wong
To begin the last few jazzfest-related things here, we need to shout out the recent story by Chris Wong in DownBeat. Chris writes about the festival's history as Cole Schmidt, Jeremy Page, Nina Horvath, Feven Kidane, and Tim Reinert give quotes. Go read it!
I have two main takeaways. First, I was fortunate enough to have attended one of the five artists' "memorable concerts" that Chris cites in the third paragraph: based on my age you'll know which one it is. Second, the Coastal team's quotes reveal not just how institutionally-minded they are – never again to be disruptors – but also how high their worry-o-meter has risen. Chris doesn't cover for, or gloss over that (just see the next thing below for some folks who do). Cole provides a worry release valve with his quote; check out what he says about "trying to balance in the mix" which means... maybe feeling competitive pressure from how much all-seasons local programming there is now? Well, that suggests the fans are winning, for sure.
8
I have no idea why they made this photo the thumbnail, certainly a choice
A YouTube channel called Our City Tonight, with Jim Gordon & Leeta Liepins, uploaded a newscaster-style short video about the festival. Apparently, the video is "brought to you by" Coastal. Several things about it are funny even notwithstanding the thumbnail. The focus on Tyrant as the definitive venue backdrop rules, I love it. Cole is as understated as ever, and it's awesome that they let Jeremy wear that T-shirt. It's also hilariously Coastal that something weird enough seems to have happened in the pre-interviews (with a society marketing person no doubt present off-camera) for Gordon to say, "We separated [Cole] and his colleague Jeremy, which we weren't supposed to do" and Liepins to say, "It was hard to get you guys in separate seats today." Oof!
The same channel also conducted interviews at Armoury Studios with Torsten Muller and Dawn Pemberton, which are much more straightforward and informative.
9
Percussionist Susie Ibarra, the artist-improviser in residence at this year's festival, has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Following the news, Ibarra launched a new three-album project called Parallels and Confluence, described at her website above as music "completed, premiered, and recorded during a special time of her 2024 DAAD [German acronym for "German Academic Exchange Service"] fellowship in music and sound in Berlin, Germany". She has two jazzfest performances alongside locals: a Revue Stage set with Cat Toren, Tommy Babin, and Jen Yakamovich on June 27 at 5pm, and a ticketed show for her Ecology of Rhythm project with Eve Risser plus Shruti Ramani, Alvaro Rojas, and James Meger on June 28. Ibarra also has two free afternoon engagements at Western Front: a talk in conversation with François Houle on June 26, and the recital of the New Improvisers Studio workshop initiative on June 28.
10
Jesse Zubot and his brother Josh scored a film called Inedia, directed by Liz Cairns; Jesse will play solo at the VIFF Centre before a screening of the film on June 28. (Find that on the gig list.) Inedia premiered at last year's VIFF. Its theatrical release in Canada happens on July 4, so this installment of the now-prolific Infidels/VIFF collaboration is billed as a preview screening. Here's the trailer on Instagram, I haven't found this trailer in other places online yet.
