Opposite postures | 10 Things, April 2025

It's good to be back after Easter weekend! I have a feeling that 10 Things will become a monthly segment here, rounding up shows and other news. This one does the trick for April:

1

At Hero's Welcome back on April 9th, I heard Gordon Grdina and drummer Christian Lillinger play duo in a one-off Infidels Jazz presentation. This show capped off a one-week American tour they did, joined along the way by guests like Tim Berne, Tim Lefebvre, and Myra Melford.

Grdina and Lillinger played one long improv set, which meant we went home earlier than we usually would from an evening show at Hero's. It was satisfying regardless. The music was less rock-and-roll, and more glitchy and spacious, than their album Duo Work. Grdina went from guitar to oud then back to guitar; Lillinger had a foot pedal to trigger electronic sounds as he used his immense technique to match Grdina's energy.

I've never seen a duo who have such opposite postures. Grdina leans forward and downward, excavating (or burying) noise, but the younger Lillinger sits straight upright like he's riding a horse and makes wide arm movements.

2

At Mariner Brewing the next day on April 10th, I caught a casual set by Amanda Cabralda, who sang alongside keyboardist Marta Kalmar. This taproom series, booked primarily by fellow CapU student Nolan Crooks (who has worked at the brewery for a while), is one of the few things in my home city of Coquitlam that makes the gig list. I sat at a table of students who were eager to unwind on the last day of a jazz-school semester. Cabralda drew from a Samara Joy sort of bag, like I heard her do at Presentation House recently. The Mariner series happens roughly once a month, but I don't know yet when the next one will be.

3

On the Saturday that week, April 12th, I heard my close friend Gabriel Dubreuil lead his current band called Collage Trad at the Rogue Folk Club. It'd feel weird to write about Gabriel's music. (Similarly, there's a handful of my dearest people whom I avoided hosting in my time on the Rhythm Changes Podcast, and there's at least one high-potential episode that we could've done this month but the current host and guest turned down for the same reason.) Shout-out to Brent Gubbels for subbing for Wynston Minckler and playing great bass on short notice and part-reading.

I still recognized a bunch of Gabriel's material from our former band together, Early Spirit, and from the North Shore Celtic Ensemble that the violinist now leads. He did invite guests and present a closing number with the touring band who played the first set: Hildaland, the duo of Scottish fiddler Louise Bichan and American mandolinist Ethan Setiawan. Hildaland has vocals and instrument switches (banjo and octave mandolin, respectively) by both members. The duo played neo-traditional fare with an exciting mutual timefeel. When I listen to trad-folk, that's one of the first things I tune into: how the musicians feel the movement of rhythm and time across the static melodies. Hildaland's latest album, Sule Skerry, came out in 2023.

4

At 8EAST this past Tuesday, April 22nd, I heard improv by two cellists, two reedists, and a guitarist: Matthew Ariaratnam who has been studying cello with Marina Hasselberg, Haley Bird and Aidan Edwards on oboe and clarinet respectively, and Madeleine Elkins on guitar. You could call it a recital for Ariaratnam, but the mood was much more casual than that, and the vibes were good. The improv ended up patient and atmospheric instead of noisy and aggressive. Ariaratnam played a set of solo cello up-front where he explored extended techniques, like using both sides of the bow all over the instrument and plucking with his left hand while holding down other bowed notes. Sometimes the cellists sounded like good bass players, plucking low notes through their amps.

I mused with a friend about which new instrument I'd arrange lessons for, and who my teacher would be, given grant funding to pursue the studies. Drums with Kenton Loewen?

5

I also went to something this month that will appear in a future free weekly, but you heard it from me here first...

At the Fox on April 15th, I heard Julia Úlehla and her band Dálava play at the Fox with their new album Understories, out May 2 on the celebrated avant-label Pi Recordings. Music on Main presented this show as part of their springtime Tuesday series, A Month of Tuesdays. The CDs were in the building pre-release, so I had to go get one and give myself a head start on my piece about the album.

Úlehla will join me for an interview next week. I'm sure it'll be chiller than the stressful-starting but salvaged Coastal Jazz board episode I did with her and Meredith Bates on the podcast three years ago. Dálava on this album (like their jazzfest set last year) consists of Peggy Lee and Josh Zubot accompanying Úlehla and her husband Aram Bajakian. Bajakian at the show played an electric guitar with a grossly detuned bottom string, all the way down to a low A pitch, plus an oud, acoustic guitar, and small electric bass. Only Zubot, not Lee, was there on strings last week.

6

Tomorrow, I'm going to hear the band Mimosa in my local Inlet Theatre of Port Moody, thanks to the efforts of that team which includes Bill Sample and Darlene Cooper. Mimosa's latest album Bien ensemble came out on Cellar last year. From everything I've learned about the series and the editions I've attended in the last couple years, Mimosa seem like the perfect band for it: accessible, vocal and even bilingual, entertainers. I hope the house fills up and that another series relatively close to my home can maintain its mojo for more years to come. I did a longform interview piece for Cellar with Mimosa bandleader Anna Lumière back in the fall.

7

In early March, we covered the budget story in Surrey schools where elementary-school band programs were on the cutting block. CBC News reported last week that the cut happened, despite a petition, and 12 teachers will no longer teach band to grade 7 students in Surrey. Here is also Karin Larsen's latest CBC News piece about the situation.

Over the past week, advocacy came together against the same type of proposed cuts in the Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge school district, S.D. 42, as well as in Burnaby. As with Surrey, we have readers and subscribers here with us right now who are teachers in these districts and have shared their personal stories around the issue. Some other people whom I saw take part in the advocacy are Feven Kidane, Mike WT Allen, Kyler Young of the UBC scene, and the storied choral director Carrie Tennant.

Here's a petition for Burnaby and a Facebook event with S.D. 42 information. People rallied in Maple Ridge yesterday, and a Burnaby rally will happen on Tuesday.

For me, elementary-school band class wasn't important to my career nor my personal musical life, both of which began in high school after informal jamming with teenage garage-rock bands. Of course I understand how it could have been important, though, and that these cuts represent job losses for our interest group. I wish the advocates all the best.

8

Back on March 31, the Instagram influencer account Curiocity Vancouver promoted a DIY show at the Astoria the next night featuring saxophonist and CapU alum Brad Vitick. Likewise, a week ago, the all-genres gig list account This Week in Van promoted VIM House's show featuring Steph Wall and Leo D.E. Johnson, which took place last night.

Both posts made some waves in terms of word-of-mouth, but when I messaged with musicians who played at these shows, they seemed under the impression that Curiocity and This Week in Van just woke up one day and decided to post about our people. (Like I do!) When I mused about wanting to know how much the influencers charged for the posts, some of them directly admitted surprise that any money would have changed hands.

To be clear, yes, Curiocity and This Week in Van earned flat fees per-post, paid by the Astoria's promoter and by VIM respectively. I wouldn't advise my clients to buy a post like this, though I was able to find out that these promotions are fairly priced, meaning they won't drive much in sales but are quite cheap.

What makes promoters turn to this tactic? I'd guess it's frustration with the results of their own posts, plus limited experience with Meta ads, plus a lack of a liquid, easily legible market in paying people like me or other proprietors of local email products. All of us could in theory guarantee better results with email than with a social post, but we don't have a vibrant market of buying and selling small sponsorships, so it's easier for these influencers to swoop in with a seemingly good offer.

9

There's a Cory Weeds quartet record that isn't coming out on Cellar: Dig Weeds on Cohearent, the label venture of California-based mastering engineer Kevin Gray. Cory plays with pianist David Hazeltine (who was on 2020's Day by Day among other Weeds/Cellar projects), bassist Neal Miner who I don't think has recorded with Cory as a leader before, and drummer Byron Landham who was on the album that introduced me to Cory, The Many Deeds. Dig Weeds is available for pre-order on LP with an indeterminate release date. Cory, Gray, the producer Joe Harley, and the hosts of the Jazz Bums channel discuss all that and more on this fun YouTube discussion:

10

Jazzfest watch is red-hot right now with many show announcements. (It still seems like we don't know who the returning 2011 artist is though.) I'm working on my personal coverage wishlist, and I'm wondering if anyone feels like introducing me to Torsten Müller. We've never met or spoken, but I'd love to interview him. His main role at this year's festival will be the improv-after-dark series Time Flies. The series "is a nod to the early history of Coastal Jazz," the festival writes. "Co-founder and founding artistic director, Ken Pickering created the series in 1988 and began co-curating with bassist Torsten Müller in 2001 as a 'summit meeting' exploring improvisational practices." It'll take place into the final weekend on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the 26th to the 28th, at 11:30pm each night. Also if I interview Müller I'll have that much more incentive to stay out that late.

11

Quite a story on the 2200 block of East Hastings near Nanaimo: musicians Elliot C. Way and Bob Sumner launched a DIY venue called the North Country Club, a self-described "Listening Room & Rock ‘N’ Roll Honky Tonk Tavern", with a "soft opening weekend" over the Easter weekend. They then announced that the venue would be a going concern as of the official opening weekend starting May 1st. The venue seems a bit weird to me, and I don't know the founder(s), though I admire the gusto of the intention.

But just two days ago, and just over 48 hours after their reportedly successful soft opening weekend, flood and fire damage wrecked the space due to a fire in the surrounding units. A GoFundMe is active; a show this weekend at the Pearl has become a benefit concert for the project. Again, I don't know enough to say I'd endorse donating the project versus other worthy causes, but it's a wild story.