J.J. JOHNSON • RED RODNEY • TANIA MARIA

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0 60908

8TH ANNUAL DU
MAURIER LTD. INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL
Vancouver,Canada

If the mission of a jazz
festival is to build an enthusiastic, committed audience
for adventurous music, the
International Jazz Festival
Vancouver is enormously
successful. The Festival's
adroit programmers,
the
Coastal Jazz And Blues
Society, know the fine art
of integrating cutting edge
artists from around the
world with such well
loved festival circuit fixtures as Sonny Rollins and
Betty Carter, and excel at
showcasing the vigorous
Vancouver scene to its
best advantage.
This year's festival had
several fascinating currents. The flamekeepers of
the Ellington-Monk piano
tradition were well-represented
by
Abdullah
Ibrahim, Randy Weston,
and Mulgrew Miller.
Prominent among the
numerous international
iconoclasts were the
riotous Dutch drummer
Han Bennink (who, in
three days, performed
three Clusone Trio concerts with reedist Michael
Moore and cellist Ernst
Reijseger, and had separate face-offs with pianists
Myra Melford and Vancouver-based Paul Plimley),
the
seemingly
posssessed Australian alto
legend Bernie McGann,
and British vocalist Phil
Minton, who sang (an
approximate term for his
inventory of gasps, grunts,
and
screeches)
with
German pianist Georg
Grawe's
GrubenKlang
Orchestra. There was also a healthy
representation of the Cornerstore Syndicate-Knitting Factory axis by, among
others, Joint Venture, 4 Horns And
What?, Ned Rothenberg's Double Band,
and the Thomas Chapin Trio.
There was also a trio of concerts
built around the force that is Steve
Lacy. His moving song cycle Vespers
was presented in the hushed calm of
St. Andrew's-Wesley Church. For this
hour-plus work, Lacy's long-standing
sextet was augmented by Ricky Ford's
Gonsalves-tinged tenor and Tom
JazzTimes

December 1993

Varner's ringing French horn. The
soprano saxophonist also performed
striking duets with legendary L.A.
pianist Horace Tapscott at the Western
Front; the pianist's animated postMonkian compositions were tailormade for Lacy's sinewy lyricism. And
while he didn't perform at Steve Potts'
trio gig with fellow Sextet members J.J.
Avenel and John Betsch at the Pitt
Gallery, it was impossible to listen to
their fluid interaction without refer-

late-night launching pad for such
prime exponents of the Vancouver
scene as the gregarious N.O.W. Orchestra, guitarist Tony Wilson's scrappy
sextet with drum phenom Dylan van
der Schyff, the extended folk forms of
Tribal Dynamics, one of several bands
featuring reedist Francois Houle, and a
Plimley-lep. session including terrorist
Coat Cook and bassist Lisle Ellis, who
now resides in San Francisco.
So, how good are these guys?
Plimley ran with Bennink, Houle was hot
with Melford's quintet,
and Ellis was acutely
attuned to Joe McPhee's
unique voice in a trio
rounded out by drummer Donald Robinson.
That says a lot about
what's been nurtured in
Vancouver.-Bill Shoemaker

CLASSIC JAZZ FESTIVAL
Los Angeles, CA

How do you review
an event involving 300
musicians,
whose
names alone take up 600
words? It's not easy. The
Tenth Annual Classic
Jazz Festival, staged by
producer Chuck Conklin over the Labor Day
Weekend at two hotels
near the Los Angeles
Airport, was no doubt
the biggest yet, attracting 4,000 to 5,000 fans
daily.
Originally a strictly
traditionalist affair, it
has moved slightly
toward
the
center
Thomas Chapin photo by Laurence M. Svirchev
through the inclusion
of, for example, Ken
Peplowski,
Howard
Alden, the fantastic
bassist
John
Leitham and, most
encing their roles within the sextet.
remarkably, Ann Patterson's Maiden
While the festival presented some of Voyage. The 15-piece all-female
Canada's more internationally known
orchestra delivered two knockout sets
mainstream musicians, ranging from
with superb solos by trumpeter Stacy
Rowles, Betty O'Hara (on valve tromP.J. Perry, the bop-steeped Edmonton
altoist, to Lorraine Desmarais, the
bone, various trumpets and double bell
Evanish Montreal pianist, it was the
euphonium), Patterson herself on saxes
impressive
pool
of
off-center
and Kathy Rubbicco on piano.
Nevertheless, the heaviest accent
Vancouver-based musicians, regroupwas on older musicians and styles.
ing on a daily, occasionally hourly
basis, into consistently distinctive
There was a partial reunion of The
ensembles, that provided the most
World's Greatest Jazz Band, with Yank
Lawson, 82, and Bob Haggart, 79, and a
rewarding domestic content. The
newly relocated Glass Slipper was the
group of compatible companions. Milt

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