Category: Mainstream Jazz

Browsing: Mainstream Jazz

Promotional image from the Ottawa Chamberfest website

Summer 2022 Festival Highlights – Quebec, Ontario and Canada

By Zenith Wolfe on 3 June 2022 Classical Music, Mainstream Jazz

MARITIMES New Brunswick Summer Music Festival Aug. 2-13 https://nbsummermusicfestival.ca/ The New Brunswick Summer Music Festival was a small, three-day series of concerts when it was first established in 1994. In 2022, however, the festival’s concerts will be joined by some free events, educational components and lectures spread out across two weeks. The early-August festival will focus on the influence of Italian and Canadian-Italian artists, and although the program and schedule have not yet been released, the retrospective will include such widely known artists as Vivaldi and Verdi. A variety of works from different musical eras over the last few centuries…

Vernon Proms

By Jacqueline Vanasse on 3 June 2022 Classical, Mainstream Jazz

Over the past two years, despite pandemic and heavy forest fire activity, Natalia Polchenko and her Vernon Proms festival team have continued to present live music. “I hope that this year we will not encounter any disasters,” says Polchenko, who moved the festival to an earlier date this summer to avoid the fire season. Stronger After The Storm The festival is proud to commission new music; this year, they will première a work by Imant Raminsh, a noted Canadian composer who happens to live in Vernon. “The piece, O Language Where Language Ends, is a song cycle about arts and…

Historic St. Mary's Church, venue for the USMF (image courtesy of the USMF website)

Newswire | Indian River Festival Renamed to Under the Spire Music Festival for 27th Season

By Newswire on 28 May 2022 Classical Music, Mainstream Jazz, Newswire, World Music

Kataganek/Kensington, PEI (May 27, 2022) – After many years of wonderful performances in Historic St. Mary’s, Indian River Festival has announced their 27th season under a new name: Under the Spire Music Festival. With this change, the mandate and core ideals of the Festival will continue to build on a nearly three decade-long legacy of beautiful music set in an unparalleled venue. Since its founding in 1996, Under the Spire Music Festival (USMF) has hosted some of the best Canadian performers and strives to present musical excellence spanning multiple styles. No matter the artist or genre, beautiful music will always…

Cover of The Isabel's season brochure

Newswire | The Isabel Announces 2022-23 Power of Live Season

By Newswire on 27 May 2022 Baroque and Early, Classical Music, Mainstream Jazz, World Music

Kingston, ON (May 26, 2022) – Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts (“the Isabel”) at Queen’s University announces its 2022/23 Power of Live season that includes 25 Isabel debuts with classical, jazz, global, Indigenous, indie, and children’s artists and creators. The season also features the Bader & Overton Canadian Piano Competition with collaborations with CBC and the Kingston Symphony, the Isabel Human Rights Arts Festival, and the new Art for All visual arts event led by Kingston’s Catie Allan. Details on programming are contained in the Isabel’s 2022 23 season brochure: https://www.queensu.ca/theisabel/sites/default/files/uploads/content/ISABEL%2022.23%20SEASON%20SM.pdf. Most programming also will be streamed with high-fidelity sound on the Isabel Digital Concert Hall. Gryphon Trio and Sistema…

Off the Record – Twice Upon a Time (final instalment)

By Marc Chénard on 8 September 2021 Mainstream Jazz, Scena Jazz

In the first instalment of this feature, the issue of authenticity in a listening experience was raised in relation to historical recordings that document musics of the past for the first time. But what about subsequent recordings of those works? Are they less authentic when other musicians than those on the originals tackle them? Or do they stand a better chance of being truer to form if those participating in the remakes had played them when they were brand new? The items under review here are responses to these queries. The first recording belongs to a well-known category, the Reunion…

Carrefour Mondial de l’Accordéon: Thirty Years of Passion

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 7 June 2018 Folk, Mainstream Jazz, Popular Music, World Music

Well-established in Quebec’s cultural landscape for 30 years, the Carrefour mondial de l’accordéon invites musicians and music fans to gather in Montmagny and celebrate the rich heritage of the instrument. Although it’s often associated with the Parisian musette waltz, the accordion has spread across Europe and the Americas to become an integral part of many music traditions. Its 200-year history has seen several developments that have produced an extensive range of instruments with diverse characteristics. With the aim of preserving this heritage and inspiring the development of the practice, the Carrefour will gather more that 40 musicians from different geographic…

The Record Roundup

By Marc Chénard on 5 December 2017 Experimental Jazz, Mainstream Jazz, Scena Jazz, Vocal Jazz

Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal — Under the Influence Suite Justin Time JTR 8597-2 Two years after its debut release on the ATMA label, Montreal’s premiere jazz orchestra, the ONJ, has finally released its second effort, this one on Justin Time. Its move from a classical label to a jazz one certainly makes sense. The presence of saxophonist and composer Christine Jensen may explain this, because Justin Time has already produced two albums of her own big band. The title of this latest disc pretty well tells the story, as it is a programmatic work that pays tribute to five…

Photo: I. Nyikos

Guido Basso – The Homecoming

By Marc Chénard on 11 October 2017 Experimental Jazz, Mainstream Jazz

Eighty years young as of this last September, trumpeter Guido Basso returns to his native Montreal from his Toronto home for an evening dedicated to him. On November 4 he will perform in the neighbourhood of his youth, Little Italy, as an honoured guest of his cultural community. He will appear at the Casa d’Italia on Jean-Talon Street (see sidebar below) where he will be inducted into a newly created Hall of Fame for contributors of distinction and native sons of the city. The ceremonies — to take place in the recently refurbished concert hall — will include a concert…

Off Jazz Festival Montreal

By Marc Chénard on 11 October 2017 Experimental Jazz, Mainstream Jazz, Scena Jazz

For some, 18 is the age adulthood. Montreal’s Off Jazz Festivals reaches that milestone this month, even though it attained real maturity seven years ago when it switched its dates from summer to fall. What’s more, it achieved this without growing bigger every year. In the course of its nine-day run starting on October 5, there will be a manageable slate of 22 concerts, four of which are paired in double bills. True to form, the event showcases local acts and new project premieres. Of these, six groups will perform music from their CDs, four of them to be launched…

Illustration: Tommy Tallstig

The Long and Winding Jazz Solo

By Robert Lewis on 1 September 2017 Experimental Jazz, La Scena Spotlight, Mainstream Jazz, Popular Music

Once you play the music, it’s in the air. It’s gone. But when you record it, it comes back to haunt you. – Eric Dolphy What is it that attracts music lovers to jazz (improvised music)? Is it the loose structure, or the beat or the notes and melodies we have never heard before and will never hear again, unless the performance has been recorded; or is it the musician’s uncanny ability to spontaneously translate feelings that inform the notes into the language of music? Perhaps it is his audacity and courage — daring to play without a script; to…