REMEMBER THAT ANCIENT Wendy’s TV commercial when a pugnacious senior loudly screeched ‘Where’s The Beef’ at a rival hamburger? You might just get a similar reaction from some Hogtowners and visitors consulting this year’s Toronto Jazz Festival program, one celebrating its 25th anniversary.
Even though there’s excellent jazz to be heard at this festival, there could be shrieks of ‘Where’s The Jazz?’ if they’re just looking at the lineup in what’s always been Festival HQ, the big tent.
This year it’s moving from Nathan Phillips Square to a new site in Metro Square on the south side of King St. between Roy Thomson Hall and Metro Hall. (Recently the area was renamed David Pecaut Square for the late urban visionary. His jazz preferences are not publicly known.)
Venues with lots of seats such as Koerner Hall, Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre and the Glenn Gould Studio, plus the square’s open stage and many of the city’s clubs and venues such as the reliable Rex, Gate 403, Chalkers, Dominion on Queen, Reservoir Lounge, Shops at Don Mills and many more will provide music that has a clear relationship to mainstream jazz, although the Music Gallery (in St. George the Martyr Church at the north end of John St.) caters for crazies and seers of the avant-garde who in time might become members of a new jazz mainstream.
It was that awe-inspiring avant-garde maestro Ornette Coleman who gave one of the smartest definitions of jazz. “It is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time,” he said. Now his music is in every serious jazz fan’s collection.
Perhaps you can find real jazz in the David Pecaut/Metro Square lineup June 24 through July 3, certainly with the late addition of singer Nikki Yanovsky. Soul diva Aretha Franklin at 69 will bring out the thousands to show r.e.s.p.e.c.t on opening night because local citizens appreciate talent and a free concert in equal measure.
Then, nightly in sequence, it’s the Average White Band, whose funk and R&B earned big hits in the 1970s, Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, bluesman Robert Cray, Chicano rock band Los Lobos, our bluesy songstress Molly Johnson and the Count Basie Orchestra (the Count died in 1984 and this ghost outfit is now directed by fusion drummer Dennis Mackrel). Then come banjomeister Bela Fleck specializing in contemporary bluegrass, hip hop soul band The Roots and on July 2 funk bassist and singer Bootsy Collins. He’ll be battling for an audience with the stars of the Black Creek festival that night, Diana Krall and Tony Bennett.
(This is a lot of complaining for an anniversary article but I’ve always felt that the best of jazz should be front and centre, which means the mainstage. It must be noted, though, that other festivals like Ottawa’s and especially the big one in Montreal, have the same approach to booking as Toronto.)
Here’s what festival artistic director Josh Grossman, who took over the post last year, says: “I’m pretty excited about this year’s lineup. It was harder booking acts since many strong names were unavailable or were too familiar in Toronto or fees were too high or they were committed far ahead. The pool of big names is getting smaller and besides, in the past some major acts didn’t draw as well as expected.”
What Grossman is suggesting is that in today’s festivals it’s crucial to aim to put bums in seats. Making music nowadays is entirely separate from the business of music.
“Aretha Franklin is the biggest thing we’ve ever done. We looked hard for A-plus artists and Tourism Ontario sponsorship has become a factor. We recalled the success last year of R&B and soul singer star Macy Gray last year in Yonge-Dundas Square.
“I think that many of our mainstage artists were influenced by jazz in some way and we do need to get revenue from the marquee with its around 1,200 seats,” he said.
“It’s been really fun this year putting the festival together. I listened to more than 400 submissions and I think we feature a good cross-section of today’s jazz. I must admit some of my personal beliefs were challenged but I have learned that a festival must have wide appeal while remaining true to the music,” Grossman said.
The open stage in the Square will have free shows daily at noon and 5:30 and there’ll be 5pm and late shows (10:30 to 1:30) on the north side of King at Quotes Bar and Grill.
Grossman’s personal choices are hard-core jazz – brilliant bassist Dave Holland’s Quintet (Enwave June 25), fab contemporary vocalist Kurt Elling (Enwave June 27), spectacular pianists Jacky Terrasson and innovative Vijay Iyer (Glenn Gould June 27 and 28 respectively), the trio Bad Plus (Enwave June 28) and the fiery avant-garde Trio M (pianist Myra Melford, drummer Matt Wilson and violinist Marc Dresser) at the Music Gallery July 2. I applaud enthusiastically, save for loud neo-rockers Bad Plus, always a minus to my ears.
Fortunately the mainstream fan’s quest is easily achieved with jazz legend Dave Brubeck, almost an annual visitor, bringing his long-running quartet to Koerner Hall June 24. After six sterling decades and 91 years old in December he’ll surely play the durable “Take Five” hit.
Pianist Randy Weston, 85, brings his African rhythms to Glenn Gould June 26 for a solo show, the same night droll pianist-singer Mose Allison entertains with blues-based fare at Enwave. Seasoned vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater does a tribute to late, great Billie Holiday with songs from her newest album Eleanora Fagan accompanied by the Festival Orchestra June 27 at Koerner Hall. Guitarist Paco de Lucia charms the Sony Centre that evening.
On June 28 famed jazz-rock fusioneers Return To Forever reunite for a Sony Centre concert, with Chick Corea, Lenny White, Jean-Luc Ponty, Frank Gambale and Stanley Clarke performing music from the group’s Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy.
Elite pianists Eliane Elias (Enwave) and veteran Kenny Barron (Glenn Gould) are in action June 29, the same night Koerner Hall is the venue for a world premiere stage performance of music from the CD Songs of Mirth and Melancholy, a delightful duet recording by saxophonist Branford Marsalis (Wynton’s elder brother) and old comrade pianist Joey Calderazzo. They penned seven of the nine cuts, adding one song each by Wayne Shorter and Johannes Brahms.
Two curious choices caught my eye. Classical dramatic soprano Jessye Norman, she of the rich, lustrous voice, is at Koerner Hall on June 28 but don’t expect arias from popular works. Norman released her first jazz CD I Was Born In Love With You in 2000 and her newest entry, from 2010, is superb, Roots: My Life, My Song which she describes as “a journey from the drums of Africa to the New World.” Not to be missed.
(But back to my beef: a comedian is also on the festival books, one Reggie Watts, at Yuk-Yuks June 29. That’s really widening the jazz umbrella to impossible boundaries unless you think stand-up comic improv is really like improvising a jazz solo. What’s next? A Charlie Sheen rant? A Lindsay Lohan confession?)
A host of local stars and visiting celebs among the 1,500 musicians will perform at the festival’s 350 concerts and at more than 40 locations. Details at www.torontojazz.com under “calendar.”
I’ll be searching the lists for the whereabouts of my favourites, including saxman Greg Osby, pianists Uri Caine and Francois Bourassa, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, the Heavyweight Brass Band and more. And how can you not want to know about Mike Essoudry’s Mash Potato Mashers?!
And take note: no fewer than four Toronto high school bands will perform at The Rex on Queen St. on weekday afternoons.
The festival has come a long way since 1987, when jazz took place at just three locations – Thomson Hall, the CN Tower and the John Bassett Theatre in the Metro Convention Centre. It’s now the biggest music festival in Toronto, attracting more than 500,000 people annually. Over the years it has hosted more than 24,000 artists, welcomed more than 8 million people, presented more than 1,800 free public concerts – and it’s estimated that the result has been more than $380 million pumped into the local economy.
Says festival CEO, executive producer and co-founder Patrick Taylor: “The Entertainment District is where it all started. What better way to celebrate 25 years of jazz in this great city than at the heart of the Entertainment District. To move forward in jazz, respect must be paid to the traditions of the past and that is exactly what we are doing in 2011.”
Co-founder and saxophonist Jim Galloway, who retired last year as artistic director, recalls that in the beginning there was “something of a cloud hanging over jazz festivals due to money problems. The Toronto festival was difficult to start and it was a very trying time. The CN site wasn’t ideal, since it was hard to get to. Musicians had to play at the top!
“In the early years lots of the greats were still alive. Everybody wanted to play, but that became a bit of a two-edged sword. We couldn’t please everyone. We got the big names but we were also able to bring in jazzmen who were just under the radar, like pianist Phineas Newborn Jr., the World’s Greatest Jazz Band and the guys who played in the trenches, week in and week out. The after-hours sessions were always fun. I remember (trumpeter) Roy Hargrove coming into Traders Bar at the Sheraton and then singing.”
The first year featured concerts by Miles Davis, Tony Bennett, Dizzy Gillespie, John Scofield and Michael Brecker plus jazz at long-gone haunts such as Meyer’s Deli, Garbo’s, the Bamboo and George’s Spaghetti House.
Thereafter came a procession of greats and up-and-comers – Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Harry Connick, Rob McConnell’s Boss Brass, Ernestine Anderson, Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Griffin, Dick Hyman, Doc Cheatham, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Betty Carter, Jay McShann, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Garrett, Shirley Horn, Ray Bryant, Elvin Jones, Terence Blanchard, Dr. John, Joshua Redman, Maynard Ferguson, Ray Charles, Michel Camilo, Sonny Rollins, Etta James, Keith Jarrett, Charles Lloyd, Pat Metheny and hordes more.
The venues changed – the Top O The Senator, the Montreal Bistro, Berczy Park, the Diamond, the City-TV parking lot among them. And one shouldn’t forget the black days in 2000 when the festival was cancelled due to legislation banning tobacco sponsorship, which meant chief sponsor du Maurier was out. Within 24 hours then-mayor Mel Lastman twisted arms and the big show was saved and went ahead at its new base, Nathan Phillips Square. Now the chief sponsor is TD Canada Trust, and no one fools with the banks.
I have a million memories of the festival years, including roasting on the concrete slabs outside City Hall, nearly drowning in a Yorkville tent awash with turbulent water torrents (Jackie Richardson kept going on the stage), missing Diana Krall’s 1988 two-night debut at George’s Spaghetti House, Sun Ra’s Arkestra prancing through Jane Mallett Theatre chanting ‘hi ho hi ho it’s off to work we go’, Tony Williams’ riveting drumming, Archie Shepp’s revolutionary harangues at Berczy Park, Gerry Mulligan, Vincent Herring, the Thomson Hall “tea dance” by its pool with the ghost Artie Shaw orchestra, stunning pianist Michel Petrucciani being carried onto the stage, wailing sax monster Johnny Griffin, alto Bernie McGann at the ROM, Irakere, Geoff Keezer, seeing 48 bands in 1995 (56 two festivals later), Jackie McLean, trumpeter Enrico Rava playing a Carmen jazz suite, bass giant William Parker, the brilliant Jazz Superband (Bob Berg, Joey deFrancesco, Randy Brecker, Adam Nussbaum) at the ill-titled Comfort Zone, Chris Potter, Phil Woods Joe Zawinul, Slide Hampton, scorching Arturo Sandoval and so many more thrills.
It’s important to bear in mind that jazz is now an international language, although the word jazz has been used, abused and misused throughout its 100-year history. As an art form it developed primarily south of the border, its chameleon sounds, shapes and colours going through wrenching changes, so it’s hard to recognize the close relationships between New Orleans marching bands, the tearaway virtuosity of post-bebop (which today is dubbed mainstream), thundering funk grooves, contemporary hip hop and the avant-garde of every musical generation.
After all, a principal charm of jazz is its similarity to spoken language and it has survived critical onslaughts, rocky economies and rival musical passions by constantly reinventing itself while remaining fragmented into myriad parts.
For the middle years of last century pop music and jazz shared the same language and the same base of musicians and the Great American Songbook was prized both by pop singers and jazz musicians. With bebop jazz knowledge became separated from pop repertoire, which instead of appealing to adult love became over-conscious of teenage infatuation. Still is. That may explain my loving adherence to bebop and its later forms.
Something we can all agree on is this thought from the estimable Duke Ellington – “There’s only two kinds of music, good and bad.”
Geoff Chapman is a leading Toronto music writer.
