Fall 2023 Previews: Toronto Calling

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With its July Downtown Jazz Fest and its August Markham counterpart now in the rearview mirror, the Toronto jazz scene motors along throughout the year thanks to a number of venues with regular programming.

Toronto Live: Where to Go

Two of the best know hang outs are the Jazz Bistro (251 Victoria St.) and the Tranzac (292 Brunswick Ave.), the latter presenting a wide-array of musics from the more mainstream to the more experimental. Several hotels also have jazz on. a regular basis, starting with The Rex Jazz & Blues Bar at 194 Queen Street W., the One King West Hotel (1 King St. W.) and the Saint Regis (325 Bay St.) One last haunt to mention is Drom Taberna at 458 Queen St. W. If anyone reading these lines knows of other good addresses to bolster this list, drop us a line.

Toronto Off the Record

For those more inclined to sit back and enjoy music in the comfort of their homes, here are four local products to keep an eye on throughout the fall. Jocelyn Gould, Canada’s ubiquitous guitarist who has appeared at nearly every festival in the land over the last two years, will be launching Sonic Bouquet in the weeks to come, her third album as a leader. Her new quintet includes a second guitarist and clarinetist, backed by a bassist and drummer. To promote it, Gould will be on the road this fall, not with this band but stringing a tour of solo performances, though with no apparent Toronto date at this writing.

Yet another active Toronto jazzer is altoist Allison Au, whose new offering Migrations is slated for release on Oct. 27. In itself revealing, the title refers to the story of her ancestors coming from China to Canada to pursue a new life, and what has been passed on to further generations. The core group, a quartet of standard instrumentation, is joined on several tracks by a string quartet, a vibraphonist and, on one track, vocalist Laila Biali.

From that new batch of Toronto releases, the most ambitious one will be that of vocalist Sarah Jerrom. Entitled Magpie, the album documents a sprawling 90-minute work for a 21-piece orchestra bringing together the city’s who’s-who of jazz, a section of classical players, a conductor and four singers, including Jerrom, who takes credit for all of the music. Late Breaking news: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Ms Jerrom is forced to postpose issuing her double album until after the New Year, most likely late winter-early spring.

Peripheral Vision, meanwhile, is a contemporary foursome of established players: bassist Michael Herring, guitarist Don Scott, tenorman Trevor Hogg and stalwart drummer Nick Fraser. As is common nowadays, a series of five singles, filmed live during their residence at the Tranzac Club, will be posted on YouTube as teasers toward the eventual release of their sixth album entitled We’ve Got Nothing.

Guelph Jazz Festival: Almost 30

Billed as its 29^th edition, this year actually marks the Guelph Jazz Festival’s 30^th, as notes its artistic director,Scott Thomson, who will step down after this year’s edition to take over the FIMAV festival of new music in Victoriaville, Qc. next year, for its 40th edition. Having taken over the mantle from its founder Ajay Heble in 2017, Thomson, a trombonist by trade, now considers to have put his own touch on the four-day event, which kicks off on Sept. 14. “I have shifted the focus a bit,” Thomson says, “by lessening the component of Black music stemming from the free jazz scene favoured by my predecessor, yet remaining faithful to its focus on experimental musics, the festival’s raison d’être since Day 1, in 1994.”

Another defining trait of the Guelph festival is its two-day colloquium, a public forum enabling journalists, scholars and musicians to discuss issues relating to the broad subject of improvisation and its implications in culture and society. Previously, this activity and the festival were closely intertwined, but today they are at arm’s length from each other, with Heble still co-ordinating the former, and Thomson involved exclusively in the latter. All told, 22 groups are on the bill this year, with one slate of free performances on Friday evening and a second complete day and evening marathon of outdoor shows in the city’s main square on Saturday. While its program offers more challenging fare, especially for the paying events, Guelph is a most congenial setting, and the festival’s very listener-friendly outdoor events are sure to appeal to a wide array of tastes.

Ahmed

Of this year’s scheduled performances, Thomson is particularly keen on a European quartet called Ahmed. “I met Seymour Wright (the band’s saxophonist) many years ago,” Thomson explains. “Around 2017, he joined a trio that resulted in this group, whose music draws on that of bass player Ahmed Abdul-Malik (a Monk sideman of the 1950s), who also played the oud and was a proponent of world-music in jazz, ages before the term was ever coined.” Thomson expands: “This is not a repertory band that simply covers the originals, but creates its own thing out of it in a very open way, which I find quite exciting. They’ve been on my radar for a while, and I’m glad to finally bring them over.”

Among other highlights: the Genera Sextet, led by clarinetist François Houle, once from Montreal but long established in Vancouver, performs his tribute to the late artistic director and founder of that city’s jazz festival,Ken Pickering; the Ratchet Orchestra, spearheaded by bassist Nicolas Caloia, corals the who’s-who of improvising musicians in Montreal; pianist Cory Smythe is slated for an intriguing solo outing that will purportedly deconstruct the old Cole Porter evergreen Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; the Lina Allemano Four, led by this Toronto trumpeter and part-time Berliner, and the Jesse Zubot String Ensemble from Vanvouver are two more bands to watch out for.

With the COVID-19 pandemic fading into memory, the Guelph fest has made it through relatively unscathed, and now finds itself at the cusp of a new decade. For those who cannot make it during the festival’s run, or who just want a foretaste, there will be a pre-event on Sept. 9 and 10 which will offer up a sample of shows, performed by festival participants.