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JazzEast Invites You to Jazz Appreciation Month

Across the world, music fans are celebrating one of the most innovative art forms--jazz!--and JazzEast is proud to include Halifax in this international celebration, Jazz Appreciation Month.

"Every April, we add Halifax to the international jazz map with our community programming in various libraries across town," says Laura 'Lulu' Healy. "This year, we have four excellent jazz groups performing in Lower Sackville, Dartmouth, Spryfield and downtown Halifax."

In 2001, the Smithsonian Museum launched Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) as an annual event that pays tribute to jazz both as a historic and living American art form. Its theme and slogan-- Jazz. Spontaneous. Never ordinary. Completely genuine.--grabbed the attention of many arts organizations resulting in participation over the years from 50 states (USA) and 40 countries. JazzEast and the Halifax Public Libraries are proud to place Halifax on this ever expanding map.

Taking part in JAM 2012 for Halifax is:

*a mix of classical and jazz with Brian McConnell Quintet, Spring Garden Road Memorial Public Library, Tuesday, April 3, 7 p.m.*

*rock tinged jazz with Paul Vienneau Trio at Alderney Gate Public Library, Monday, April 16, 7 p.m.*

*high-energy groove centric jazz with Martin Davidson Trio, Sackville Public Library, Wednesday, April 18, 7 p.m.*

*old school, R&B, swing jazz with Bucky Adams with Andrew Gillis at Captain William Spry Public Library, Sunday, April 22, 2:30 p.m.*

Each show is open to all ages with no cover charge. Registration is not equired. For more information, call 902-492-2225.

For more information about the international programming presented by the Smithsonian or its affiliates, visit their website or go directly to viewing JazzEast's page that represents Canada.

JazzEast Announces Move to the North End

On Wednesday, March 28 at the opening night of JazzEast's Out like a Lion music festival, Artistic Director, Laura 'Lulu' Healy, announced to a surprised audience the move of the JazzEast office to Gottingen, just down the street from the night's venue, The Company House.

"We are excited to join the North End community," says Healy. "Just a couple of doors down from The Company House, in the building next to Plan B, will be our new home."

Renovations are taking place now at 2178 Gottingen Street. A team of volunteers, musicians, and supporters are preparing the space for the staff to move in early May.

"JazzEast needed more space," says Heather Gibson, Executive Director of JazzEast, "and the North End became the best choice for many reasons. A good number of our community of musicians live here and the North End is the cultural heart of Halifax. We are excited to take a place in this community and be a part of the development of Gottingen Street."

JazzEast offices have resided at 1313 Hollis for a number of years, above the rental space that has been a venue for different concerts and workshops during the TD Halifax Jazz Festival and other events programmed throughout the year. The location for the summer jazz festival will remain on the waterfront.

READ WHAT BILL POWER HAS TO SAY IN THE CHRONICLE HERALD

Three TD Halifax Jazz Festival Concerts Are Up For Sale

JazzEast feels good and it shows in its first rush of concert releases. Three TD Halifax Jazz Festival artists have been announced to the public and based on their collective energy, there will be heat in Halifax this summer!

“Our first release always gives music fans a peak at what we have in store for them,” says Laura ‘Lulu’ Healy, JazzEast’s Artistic Director. “This year, the promise is heat!”

Opening weekend sets the tone for the rest of the festival. On Saturday night, the blues and the guitar reign over the Halifax waterfront. Junior Watson, one of the most influential blues guitarist of his generation, heads the party at the Festival Tent. Watson’s highly recognizable signature comes from his seamless injection of swing into the oh-so-popular sound of Chicago-styled blues, and his feel for spontaneous original riffs and an oddball sense of humor has made him a favourite of all music fans, not just blues enthusiasts. Heating up the stage as the evening turns to night is one of Atlantic Canada’s most impressive new groups, The Garrett Mason & Keith Hallett Show. Individually, Mason and Hallett have been racking up accolades, such as Maple Blues Awards, for their passionate and spot on performances, but as a duo their rapport takes classics songs to the next level where improvisation makes the experience unrepeatable. (July 7, 8pm, $20 until April 1, $23, $18 JazzEast members).

On the next night, down the waterfront to the Casino Nova Scotia, the hey day of vocal jazz performance is revived in The Schooner Showroom. The charismatic young Russian-born, Israeli-raised, Toronto-based jazz artist, Sophie Milman is creating a lush, inviting, romantic mood with her excellent selection and arrangement of jazz and pop standards. Cheeky renditions of classics from composers like Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Gainsbourg, Jobim, and Ellington, and melodies with twists and turns, conduct the emotions of audiences from playfully romantic to the bitingly bittersweet in plenty of style. (Sunday, July 8, 8pm, $25, $35 front of room table seating).

Back to the Festival Tent, this time for the closing weekend, the soul of Halifax is about to receive a jolt of intense joy and tenderness. If you have heard of Daptone Records and Sharon Jones and those names excite you, then Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires are your new best friends.

Bradley, the “Screaming Eagle of Soul,” has seen plenty of hard times, but with a twist of fate and plenty of funk/soul/ R&B talent, his heartache has turned into soul-stirring music and intensely energetic entertainment. Keeping in step with an equal degree of talent is local neo-soul powerhouse, Cyndi Cain. She brings a modern vibe to the 60s sounds of R&B, reminding music lovers that this music is not meant to be tied down in the past. (Friday, July 13, 8pm, $20, $15 JazzEast members).

See you at the shows!

John Wesley Chisholm is a pretty interesting, smart cat who has had a significant presence in Halifax since the late eighties.  Blackpool, Johnny Favourite Swing Orchestra, Arcadia Entertainment, and Halifax's Cycle Gallery are the contributions I know about, and there are probably more.

What intrigues me about him is that he is bold yet tries to be apart of what's around him.  He knows how to be a successful business man yet he is an artist, which is a rare combination.

His latest musical project, Jubilee Swing Orchestra, is the headliner of our major Winter Season 2012 production, The Prohibition Swing Dance, and I decided to email John Wesley some questions and share with you the answers.

One of my favourite images that comes to mind when I think about the Jubilee Swing Orchestra is style. I see many details working all at once. You are the band leader, but I also think you are a sort of Artistic Director. As such, what is your vision for the JSO, and will you share with us one or two of the stories that come with realizing this vision?

Yes, I'm the band leader. David Christensen is the band captain. We have several arrangers including Trevor Wentzell. Each section of the band also has a senior member who calls the shots within that section. One of the great things about being in a band is being in the band - being part of something larger that creates something. Being creative is the greatest joy in life. To take an undeveloped situation, musical or otherwise, see the possibilities and devote all your effort to carrying it out, even it it means battling against the flow of popular opinion, brings a satisfaction like no other. If that work is shared with others under a common purpose, it's an experience that can connect people in ways far beyond the superficial pleasures of life.

The four piece guitar, bass and drum combos and old fashioned rock bands we all grew up with were famously rancourous. A 17 piece band (there are seventeen pieces in a traditional swing band) is more like being on a baseball team. The larger group is more supportive, more team oriented. It's easier in some ways, someone is always there to pick up the slack, but also creates incredible musical opportunities. My position in the band is guitar. Guitar in a swing band is not like in rock music. My job is more essentially cheerleader. The guitar pushes the music along and creates a kind of fairy dust on the music as passing chords and the natural messiness of heavy rhythms mix with the written sectional parts, on which the soloists can float their magic. When I'm doing my job properly you will never hear the guitar - not consciously. But if it were removed it would be sorely missed by all.

The greatest accomplishment of the orchestra is that it exists. It should be impossible. It's not jazz. It's not a school. It's not old folks nostalgia. It's a living breathing big band born from the diverse musical mind and manners of Halifax.

The goal is to exist, to thrive, in a pop world without compromise.

I personally want to create a musical world where there was none before. We found this space and we can do it. What does success look like? Competition. School band programs churn out hundreds of potentially awesome players into an abyss of silence. I'd like to create a world where there are lots of socially dance music bands filled with young players in their 20's taking what they've learned in school and giving us all something joyful to do on Saturday nights.

When it comes to the music, I have a little batch of questions, but before I ask them, I want to recognize that you have a grand number of fantastic performers in the band.

It's hard to say now if the band created the idea or if the idea created the band. In 1993 (seems so long ago) I did an interview with Harper's Bazaar and told them I'd really had it with guitar rock in all its genres and that I was going to start a swing band. Remember, I'm an ass and that's just the kind of thing would say at 2am at the Double Deuce. They not only printed it -they used it as the pull out quote and mis-artibuted it to Chris Murphy who gave me such grief for it. "So, what are you going to do now?" I said I'd buy a clarinet and I did. And two records: Benny Goodman Stompin at the Savoy and Glen Miller at Carnegie Hall. It was kind of random but it was fate. I still don't think there are two better swing records.

From there it took almost two years to find the players and at least two more for them to grow in to their parts in the Johnny Favourite Orchestra. Finding the singer for that group was a whole other story and the seeds of it's destruction were built in to that. But what a glorious beginning. Ten years after that band ended, when I was again in the position to be creative musically, the players from the JFSO had grown in to the city's most accomplished, professional and in demand musicians. They were so graciously open to the idea of a new orchestra. It was a chance not to go back, but go forward, fixing all the mistakes we had made along the way. We also had an opportunity to bring in new friends. Adam Fine on Bass. Julian Marentette on drums. And more young horn players. A big band is always hungry for what Dawn Hatfield likes to call 'monster players'.

It was a lot easier to explain the idea and get the Jubilee Orchestra up and running because of our Halifax history with swing music.

You have been composing music in different genres for years, and some of them have become key markers of distinct eras in Halifax music history. What is it about Big Band music that keeps bringing you back?

Big band music is social dance music. It exists for no other purpose than to be in the service of dancers. It changes the whole musical equation to something that really adds up for me. Like all of Halifax musicians (it's somehow in our DNA) I was always desperately uncomfortable striking a rock star pose. You can see this over and over in Halifax music. Bands will literally self-sabotage when they start to feel the least flicker of stardom. For me, being in a big band, a dance band, prostrating ourselves before the dancers in the audience who are the real stars, makes the whole effort make sense. It's a more balanced relationship. When we play I am in awe of the dancers. To play music and have people dance - I mean REALLY dance - is the most fulfilling experience musically possible. It's so immediate. It's so visceral. Frankly, the experience is as ineffable now on this computer as it would have been by a ritual fire forty thousand years ago.

Sometimes I wonder if the overall experience of JSO is more important than the music, that as long as it is upbeat and you can dance to it, the essential need would be met. What do you think? Your musicians could play anything really well, so is swing music intrinsic to the JSO experience?

We play social dance music. It is a very formal thing. We exist only to serve the dancers. It is their experience that matters. Upbeat is an understatement. The music often travels at over 220 beat per minute. (Typical pop music is locked in around 120 BPM… about the speed of your heart). 220+ is beyond hectic. It enables energetic dancers to push their personal limits. But, as it's played formally and consistently, it can also be divided in half for a lovely "touch dance" to the same song - that's the Tigris and Euphrates of romance… slow dancing, touching carefully, hearts pounding to music going twice as fast . It's a miracle really. And it's beautiful to see.

As it's a unique form of music where those on stage stand in pure awe of those in the audience.

History is present on stage with the JSO almost as much as the musicians. I think the reference is a part of the appeal. What do you want history to tell us through the JSO?

In music the pendulum swings, not just to count beats but in styles, tones and meaning. It's crystal clear that even though music has segmented in to many sub-cultures the prevailing popular trend in recording and performing all types of music is toward technology, digital processing, computers and electricity all in the legitimate pursuit of perfection. As many counter-culturalists have done in the past when the pendulum seems to swing too far one way, we've gone back the other way. We're a 17 piece orchestra playing acoustically. For much of our first year we played shows in small venues unamplified. Even in our largest shows we mic the group as a Bluegrass band would with sections gathering around one or two microphones. We do this because the individual mixing and recording of instruments and the use of digitally manipulated interments breaks the spell. It's the natural blending of real instruments in a room - the mixing of natural talents, timbres, strengths and weaknesses, ideas and passions that makes this kind of music work. It's never going to sound like modern music. It's never going to sound stereo. It's not that kind of thing.

Is it historic? Is it retro? I don't think so. But I do think we need to recapture some of the certainties of the past that have been lost through ill-conceived criticism of past customs and formality. Call it manners. Call it timeless style. The kids (and it's mostly 20 somethings at our show) aren't being retro. They're not being ironic. It's not that kind of scene. They are interested in being entertained. They are interested in social dance music. This may be provocative but the biggest criticism of our group has come from bar owners. They see the big crowds roll in and they ring their hands with glee. But then they look at the bar take at the end of the night and they think something is definitely wrong. They've just watch an evening of kids rock out as hard as anything they've ever seen - a long sweaty, loud and boisterous night with a screaming crowd…. and the bar take is half of a normal night. It's inconceivable to them that this much fun was had with half the alcohol consumption of a normal night. The truth is social dancing and heavy drinking do not mix. We've seen some serious swing dancing accidents when they do. Dancers must be both athletic and socially dextrous. There is a formal etiquette to asking someone to dance that must be followed and it is taken very seriously by experienced dancers and even more so by novices who need to be able to feel the social boundaries of dancing in order to have fun.

What I think is happening is that a more sympathetic understanding of the past helps recapture some of its beauty.

The Jubilee Swing Orchestra is performing as a part of The Prohibition Swing Dance along with Swingology.  More information about the concert can be found here.

The interview was conducted by Kasia Morrison, Communications and Marketing Manager, via email.