The subs of Sonny-fest

The greatest living jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins' 95th birthday was this past Sunday, September 7th. That date was the last of five consecutive days across which 11 Sonny-themed shows took place, together presented by Infidels Jazz as Vancouver Celebrates Sonny Rollins.

The first show was at La Fabrique St-George last week on September 3. For Fabrique's weekly Wednesday evening gig, tenor saxophonist Jon Bentley played the music of Rollins' 1962 album The Bridge, which featured guitarist Jim Hall in a quartet. Joining Bentley were David Sikula subbing for Bill Coon on guitar, Conrad Good on bass, and Joe Poole on drums. With Coon on guitar, they had presented this theme at Hero's Welcome back on May 18th.

I've heard plenty of straight-ahead Jon Bentley, including his own organ quartet music. But it was fun to hear him lean even further old-school on the classic Rollins repertoire. His high-pitched, often high-powered sound mellowed out just a bit. Good and Poole are an ideal rhythm section for the occasion, and indeed, they anchored other gigs throughout the mini-fest. Good also played in Steve Kaldestad's Sonny Rollins on Impulse! show at Frankie's on the Friday, while Poole played twice more: in Dave Say's Way Out West chordless trio at Frankie's the next night, and in Brent Mah's Newk's Time band at Tyrant on the Friday.

Fabrique demands three (or really two-and-a-half) sets of music, so after Bentley's band covered The Bridge's tracklist, they turned to a Jim Hall record as a secondary theme. Hall's influence on the Canadian scene is enduring. For one, guitarists like Bill Coon who learned directly from Hall have been important educators on the scene. (Sikula has quite a different sound than Coon. To me he's broader and more amped-up, far closer to Ed Bickert than to Hall.) Additionally, since guitarists are overrepresented among students versus how many there have been in the music's century-plus history, educators need go-to records to show guitar students how it's done. And notwithstanding all of that, These Rooms, recorded 1962 by the Jim Hall Trio and Tom Harrell, is just really good.

"With a Song in My Heart" from These Rooms is probably the canon version of the standard today.

Bentley and the band also played "Where or When" from this album. (Now that this song came up, I'll nod in Mathieu Soucy and Caity Gyorgy's direction.) In the more general spirit of Sonny-fest, they went on to play Rollins' tune "Oleo" and what is probably the least-famous track from Sonny's most-famous album Saxophone Colossus: "Strode Rode".

"Strode Rode" has a weird form to improvise over, but everyone kept moving unencumbered except with a couple smiles when the quartet traded fours and eights.

Sharon Minemoto's curated gig series at Fabrique will have been running for three years this October as the successor to her work at Jazz at the Pat, which used to happen on Saturday afternoons in the bar of East Hastings' Patricia Hotel. Tenor saxophonist Ardeshir Pourkermati piqued my interest when he said on the podcast last weekend that the Sundays at Hero's Welcome series, not Fabrique, is the de facto successor to the Pat's Pub vibe. Based on my quoting Tim Reinert when that Infidels series launched in 2023, he's right. Ardeshir, for his part, played Saxophone Colossus at Frankie's last Saturday, September 6th.

Fabrique faces the same chronic challenges that many jazz rooms face: a lower-than-ideal average spend per patron, or tension around the volume of chit-chat. But it's our only commercial venue that presents multiple times per week with no cover charge, so no complaints.

As it happens, I attended another Sonny-fest show with musicians who ended up getting sub calls. On Friday, September 5th at Apollo's, saxophonist Ru Ha covered the billed bandleader Erika Chow, while drummer Karl DeJong subbed for Jordy McIntosh. Bassist Francis Naluz was the only member of the original trio who made it.

I hadn't gone back to Apollo's too many times since my fall 2024 piece here that several of you remember as a pan. Most of my bullet points from back then are a bit better these days: it wasn't as dark inside, the servers were a bit less in our faces, and no one on the restaurant payroll showed obvious disdain for the performers. Our scene's booker for the venue, Mackenzie Tran, recently added Fridays to reach three nights a week, so rumours from last year of musicians balking at low pay are seemingly exaggerated.

I enjoyed hearing Naluz on upright bass, where he takes clear cues from Scott LaFaro and fearlessly climbs the fingerboard to play his solos. I know his electric bass and guitar playing better.

Ha and DeJong play frequently together in a tight-knit group of talented friends, so their connection on short notice to fill this gig makes sense. In June they kicked off Infidels' run of jazzfest shows at Zameen Art House as the Ru and Harmeet Quintet, co-led by bassist Harmeet Kaur Virdee with violinist Parmela Attariwala and pianist Noah Franche-Nolan. And as the Ha Siblings, Ru and Paco Ha played the music of Alice Coltrane with Franche-Nolan, Virdee, and DeJong at Jazz at the Bolt earlier this year.

Briefly comparing Ha to Bentley is fun. I find both to be all-around artists who will find excitement on pretty much any bandstand from straight-ahead casual to DIY improv. Their saxophone sounds diverge, though, with Bentley having that high metallic thing and Ha playing lower and woodier. At Apollo's they also played a tune from The Bridge: the signature opening track, "Without a Song".

Erika Chow's theme-album was going to be a Blue Note compilation, Ballads, but this band didn't set one. So they continued with standard repertoire associated with Sonny like "There is No Greater Love", which Rollins recorded on Way Out West and surely appeared on Dave Say's setlist the night before:

And "In a Sentimental Mood" and "Almost Like Being in Love", which both appear on Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet – the theme for Tamas Balai's set at Frankie's After Dark on the Saturday.

This mini-fest probably won't be the only one of its kind. Miles Davis' centenary is May 26th, 2026; John Coltrane's will follow on September 23rd. (Max Roach already went great, of course.) Who will convene to celebrate Miles and Trane in style, transcending the often mundane tribute show trope? When I went out for a couple of these shows, I didn't see an attendance-juicing veneer of a theme. I saw a channel for excess capacity in our scene, a time for talented folks to work out together amid the joy – okay fine, sometimes also the enormity and tumult – of just being here in interesting times.