10 things to check out & continue to enjoy post-festival

This is a real grab bag of news, events, and recordings... hope you've been enjoying yourself out there!

1)

Fan of improvisers? Tomorrow, Saturday, July 8th is the fifth anniversary bash for the artist space 8EAST, featuring as big a collection of improvising music as you'll find in the 'year-round' fare. See the gig list for that.

8EAST also has music tonight (Mili Hong, John Gross, Lisa Cay Miller, and James Meger) and Sunday night (Kenton Loewen, Swedish drummer Konrad Agnas, Feven Kidane, Lisa, and Matthew Ariaratnam).

I heard Mili and John play at the Tangent recently in that context, and to my great surprise I had the fun opportunity to jam with Konrad and other musicians at the New Thing series at Tyrant Studios on Monday. I had never played free improv before.

2)

One of the highest-demand local jazz shows I've ever seen relative to number of seats available was Laura Crema & Bill Coon's free-admission gig at Ocean Art Works last Saturday, July 1st; enough people lined up that afternoon to easily double the capacity. Laura and Bill have also sold out their upcoming July 15th West Vancouver show at the Silk Purse Arts Centre. But you can hear their album StringSongs on streaming or buy it from them directly!

3)

The Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival, which I'll cover in Tuesday's free weekly email, appropriately doesn't have much overlap with what Coastal presented. But Caity Gyorgy is coming back on the Saturday, July 22, in case you missed her at Performance Works or at Frankie's After Dark. So is indigenous pop singer-songwriter Hayley Wallis on the Sunday, July 23rd.

4)

Witch Prophet, who played on the Georgia Street stage and whom I happened upon with respect to the 2022 Vancouver Folk Fest – describing her as "the sum of a multi-decade crossover lineage from hip-hop and The Low End Theory to Lauryn Hill to neo-soul to retro-soul" – is longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize with her album Gateway Experience. A wild prediction: she not only makes the short-list but will win the thing.

Experimental metal band BIG| BRAVE nature morte are also longlisted; Coastal presented them with another heavy band, Liturgy, and with Farida Amadou at the Fox in a genre and venue changeup on the festival opening weekend. To double down, I don't think they make the short-list to be published Thursday, July 13th.

5)

Saxophonist Caroline Davis, who was a star of the festival's closing weekend, is releasing a new project called Alula: Captivity on October 13th. I'll be anticipating! Her Alula group at the Revue Stage included Chris Tordini and Kate Gentile; Captivity will have more and different musicians. The most recent Alula project is a Bandcamp release but someone uploaded it to YouTube as well.

6)

My boss Dave Douglas is working on multiple new groups (as he does) featuring saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who crushed the Revue Stage on July 1st with his own trio. Check out JBL's album Eye of I.

Dave and JBL are joined by Marta Warelis, Nick Dunston, and Joey Baron in some European dates this summer; another band next year called the 'GIFTS Quintet' will feature them with Tomeka Reid, Rafiq Bhatia, and Ian Chang.

In working for Dave I would love to try and book either of these groups at an upcoming Vancouver International Jazz Festival, so any tips on that are welcome.

7)

One quiet winner of the festival week was Tyrant Studios, who didn't sign-up to be an official Club Series venue – and thereby avoided paying the marketing fee for that – while still presenting successfully each night. The fact that Tyrant didn't need to join the Club Series but Osita, a venue with a mixed reputation among the core jazz fans in our community, did is an interesting outcome.

I attended a night there featuring Lucas Dubovik and Daniel Green leading a chordless quartet and jam with great energy. An upcoming Tyrant gig that might have similar youthful vibes is on July 14th: the Juno Hamilton Sextet with Skye Harding, Clayton Poon, Gordy Li, Justin Juan, & Karl DeJong.

8)

There are many Cellar albums coming up that I'm excited to hear. I missed the Cory Weeds - David Hazeltine - Atley King connection at Frankie's, but Atley has a record out this fall on Cellar. Cory will have one of his own too.

9)

Ron Samworth's The Etiquette of Dying project, which happened as an audiovisual-narrated presentation at the Revue Stage, is due out on Tim Reinert's The Infidels label this fall. I stayed too long at something else and didn't get in to this one, so I'm relying on this Instagram clip from Tim.

10)

I'm very proud of several close friends who made a festival debut including Jonny Tobin (played an Ocean Artworks evening of jazztronica), Will Clements (previewed his upcoming album COMPASS, out August 11th, at Ocean Artworks for an afternoon and sold through a bucket of CDs) and Madeleine Elkins (subbed in the touring ensemble of Mali Obomsawin here and in Victoria). And more!

Jonny has his album Together, Will has some singles out on streaming ahead of COMPASS, and Madeleine is playing widely as a side musician this summer.

11)

Now just some of my personal notes:

• I was happy to chill on the content and just enjoy going to some shows. There's no way I could compete with the promotional content that Coastal itself published during the festival: an email every day, countless social media posts, guest blogs written by Tim, Nou Dadoun, and Jeff Brocklebank, and who knows what else I missed. As some of you know, Coastal has contacted me before about my perceived clashing with their festival marketing, so I'll keep my thinking cap on about what my Rhythm Changes plan for the 2024 festival will be. 99% sure I won't be applying for media credentials.
• I noticed multiple occasions of electric bass in trios with a horn and drums, kind of as a guitar-like chordal instrument – that would include Caroline Davis and James Brandon Lewis' sets mentioned above. This inspires me to do something similar on the electric bass. But who is my horn player, and do I go to a different drummer?
• There's no doubt that I was raised in the straight-ahead faction of the scene. However, this year, did I finally break open my mind to freer things? Looking at much of what I just wrote, it feels that way. I think that'll be my lasting memory of this year's festival: I followed people into territory that was new to me and just tried to keep my mind open. Maybe at some point I'll have another phase where I revert to what I've liked for a long time. We'll see.
• I'm playing tomorrow at Khatsahlano festival in Kits, on the free Maple Street Stage at noon.

That's today's Update. Thank you, and have a great day!