How is the Zameen Art House? Bruce Freedman, free improv
The Granville Island venue now hosts Infidels Jazz’s New Thing series and other intimate shows
Alto saxophonist Bruce Freedman played two sets of clever, furious free improv at the Zameen Art House on Granville Island last Friday, October 25, 2024 with Josh Zubot on violin, James Meger on bass, and Cesar Chew on drums.
I wrote about Bruce Freedman's Collage album when it came out on the Infidels Jazz label:
Will Chernoff
Zubot was typically creative and energetic, as he is from Sick Boss to his own Josh Zubot Strings. Meger never misses as one of the hardest-working folks in free jazz business; he shows up everywhere and rips. I had heard Chew, who also goes by Chacal del Tamborazo, a few times at 8EAST before but enjoyed his vigorous drumming here as a highlight of the ensemble and got to chat with him about his move from Mexico City around 2017. Apparently there's a big improv scene there.
Zameen Art House is an intimate venue; only about 35 chairs dotted the clean, modern-ish rectangular room. Once you see the sign along the road quite early into entering Granville Island, you go up a tall flight of stairs. A thin black curtain (and the door person) separates you from the house once you're on the upper floor.
A room toward the back has a bar and washrooms, as well as low chairs near a bookshelf, kind of like a nerdier Tyrant Studios back room. I didn't get a chance to patronize the bar, but I imagine they have drinks and light refreshments, again like Tyrant.
Zameen sounds great – unlike what I now know thanks to you about Apollo's, it's a listening room for sure. It's a no-nonsense venue, and again I emphasize that it's clean, meaning I guess that it's not 8EAST on any axis: not neighbourhood nor vibe nor temperature.
The venue has more than free jazz. When I received my first correspondence from them about the gig list, two names signed the bottom of their emails: Farhad Ebnejalal and Yasaman Rafiei. Ebnejalal is a native of Tehran; he plays the dulcimer instrument santour. As for Rafiei, I don't know anything about her yet – I'll have to interview them in the future.
I added Zameen to the gig list for the first time on August 2nd and August 3rd, when it played host to violinist Lache Cercel and to young onetime Winnipeg transplants Anna Blackmore and Tristan Martinuson's Pacific Prairie Jazz Quintet. In Cercel's band back in August was Ehab Guitarrista. Ehab's shows range into cross-cultural folk music; he tells me that he's friends with the Zameen proprietors and does well to keep me abridged of his gigs with them.
Infidels Jazz presented for the first time at Zameen on August 31: the Gordon Grdina Trio with Tommy Babin and Kenton Loewen. Freedman's show last week was an edition of New Thing, an improvisers' series co-presented by Infidels and the NOW Society. I've tracked this series all the way through many locations. In March 2022, it began at Kevin Romain's pop-up cafe called General Strike Coffee within the Red Gate Gallery space:
Will Chernoff
And in February 2023, it moved to Tyrant Studios:
Will Chernoff
It stayed at Tyrant until earlier this year, then took a hiatus, then arrived at Zameen last month for a show featuring Aram Bajakian, Peggy Lee, and JP Carter under the band name Handmade Blade.
Remember how I told you about the 35 chairs? Less than half of them were full. This type of music isn't designed to draw big numbers, of course, and the no-letter-E "improvisors" I know are all wonderfully self-aware about that. Freedman (and any other person in the band) was no exception, playing joyfully and striking up conversations with pretty much all of us who were there.
I bet pre-sales for this show were in the single digits. Is that a function of location? Maybe not: I certainly went to intimate New Thing shows at Tyrant. Like anything west of Main that isn't downtown, Zameen presents many of us with the challenge of long treks to get there and back. Fortunately, this space still feels right even when it only has a few people. Consider it next time you're feeling improv-frisky.
