After politely _displaying her dislike of shutterbugs, Betty Carter swung the
Commodore with her unparalleled vocal dexterity. Charles Campbell photo.

Jazz Fest Wraps with
Impressive Figures
THE EIGHTH annual du Maurier International Jazz Festival folded its tents on Sunday (July 4), and while the accountants are still
figuring out whether or not the event was a
financial success, Coastal Jazz and Blues Society marketing and promotions director John
Orysik was exuberant, if fatigued, when he
announced that jazz fest attendance figures
were up an estimated 12 percent from 1992
totals. Approximately 190,000 people heard
jazz during the 10-day event. Orysik cited
record-breaking crowds at the Saturday (June
26) Gastown Jazz open-air event as helping to
swell the numbers, which have grown substantially in each of the past seven
year5 ... FURTHER PROOF that Vancouverites

QiT,l.J
are finding the annual jazz bash to their liking
came in the final weekend's free Jazz at the
Plaza concerts. Audiences were hushed and
attentive during sets by such off-the-wall units
as the Clusone Trio and Jean Derome & Les
Dangereux Zhoms. In years past, some of
the more innovative ensembles playing the
Plaza have been greeted by a steady stream of
part-time jazzers leaving their performances;
this year, audiences seemed primed to hear
out just about anything. "This could not happen in the United States," said Downbeat correspondent John Corbett, -remarking on local
listeners' appetite for the unusual. And Clusone Trio percussionist Han Bennink, who
wowed many with his blend of intense imagination, technical facility, and vaudeville showmanship, compared his ensemble's Montreal
Jazz Festival appearances to playing in a beer
tent, but praised Vancouver audiences' tolerance and intelligent curiosity ... FINDING about
1Otoo many photographers huddled along
the lip of the Commodore stage on Canada
Day, wildcat scatter Betty Carter chastised
the clutch of clickers with a graceful and
funny bebop lament. "It don't matter so
much on the louder songs, but see ... this is ja-a-a-a-z, we don't have a list," she crooned
to the squirming snappers. "You never know
when I'm going to do a quiet s-0-0-0-ng."
Soft moments dominated her set; still, with
her stellar trio sparking behind her, she
romped on-stage as her voice plunged and
arced in astonishing waves over well-known
waters like "I Should Care" and "In the Still of
the Night" ... SHE WAS the first to admit it. "I
don't have anything to do with the jazz.
Sorry," declared writer, singer, and performance artist Genevieve Letarte, appearing
at the Western Front on Canada Day. She
does have to do with technology, the shape
of sound, and the exigencies (and neuroses)
of modern urban life. Unfortunately, the Montrealer hasn't really found a suitable format in
which to shape her bilingual wordplay,
detached observations, and minimalist songs.
And she isn't aided in any way by Don Ritter's utterly flat computer visuals. For the first
half of the program, his video-projected
images-blurry colours combined with trite
Laurie Anderson-type aphorisms, like "Words
Have a Smell" -sat dully behind Letarte, who
at one point even advised the crowd, "Close

your eyes, because there isn't much to look
at." This was especially true during the final,
supposedly "interactive" performance-Letarte singing into a heavily filtered microphone as computer images echoed her
electronic vibrations in the 1993 equivalent of
those lights people used to hook up to their
speaker5. After about two minutes of this
awkward novelty, listeners started streaming
down the stairs, presumably in search of
something to do with jazz... WHICH THEY
might not have found at the Commodore the
following day. World music fans were excited
about Khaled's Vancouver debut, but much
of the former rai king's new sound is alarmingly Vegas-like. Khaled's jagged beats and
wailing break sections have been smoothed
out, and during the Commodore show his
large band routinely drowned out the leader's
vocals. Only the jam-packed front rows, filled
t..V;th_Norlh ..Alrjc;,n ,o.:uti~ns .:a,nd ~\AJC>jty vic-

tims of circumstance, were showered with the
nuances of Khaled's throaty tenor-an instrument that, in a more beneficent setting, can
be as transporting as Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan's ... MORE THAN a few sparks flew from
pianist Myra Melford at Saturday's freebie at
the Plaza. Playing with local saxophone and
clarinet virtuoso Fran~ois Houle and his band
Et Cetera, Melford offered some of the high
points of the entire festival. With hair swirling,
legs pumping, and hands flying up and off the
keyboard, she showed a pure, unwavering
focus and the astonishing ability to pull a
tremor of melody right through her own wall
of dissonance ...THE AFOREMENTIONED
multi-instrumentalist Fran~ois Houle set
some kind of record, playing clarinet and
soprano sax in at least 10 different festival
configurations. Just before he helped the
funny-but-obnoxious Bugs Inside drive family
types and once-happy tourists out of the ·
sunny Plaza of Nations on Sunday (July 4),
Houle made an especially strong showing with
the Stellar Saxophone Quartet in a sparsely
attended early-afternoon gig at Yuk-Yuk's.
The group, which features tenor-man Coat
Cooke's arrangements and compositions,
Bob Walker's bluesy alto, and Daniel
Kane's amazingly well-controlled baritone,
came out running, like a horn-tooting Marx
Brothers, but soon settled into a very
thoughtful and varied repertoire of originals,
bebop, and new music experiments ...TOM
ZE's festival-closing set at the Commodore on
Sunday (July 4) was not without its challenges. When the show began, the house
was only about a third full, but loneliness
didn't seem to daunt solo opener Celso
Machado. The Brazilian expatriate won over
restless bar-hounds and table-hoppers with
his peripatetic instrument-switching, rain-forest impressions, and good-humoured samba.
strumming. Ze's ideas can be highly fragmented, and his five-piece band was notably
ragged, but when his artful little songs
clicked, they were audaciously delightful. Ze
doesn't have much of a voice, but his music
combines subtle spirituality with intense surrealism. Although he speaks little English, Ze's
frequently bizarre body movements illustrated
some of his quirky tributes to decay, pinball,
and letters of the alphabet.
• KEN EISNER, JILLIAN HULL, AND
ALEXANDER VARTY