Do We Jazz?
Calgary is a city in passionate embrace with music. The city swells with it, it’s a love affair. In the summer the streets, patios, balconies and basements seep guitars and horns and harmonicas and hums and shouts. In the winter, when we shutter in, percussion and bass can still be heard bursting through vents and windows. The central metropolitan area is teeming with venues of all sorts, supplemented by a strong ecology of schools and initiatives for aspiring musicians. The mindful and supportive relationship between the city’s handful of high-fidelity audio shops and record stores is one to which any couple should aim. You can see a show almost any night if you look hard enough. We are a city of serious music listeners and appreciators.
So what kind of music city are we, exactly? Thoughts of Calgary conjure images of mountains and prairies, leather boots and denim, a tactfully rugged sensibility which naturally lends itself to Country and Rock music, and by extension Punkand Metal. From the strength of our restaurant, bar and club scene has emerged a spirited culture focused on Hip Hop and Soul and Funk, while the neon strobes of our Dance music scene illuminate the night. We have a Philharmonic Orchestra of our very own. We are a city of many musics. And at the center lies the demure case of Jazz in Calgary.
It’s not quite a headline, but Calgary is, in fact, a Jazz City. Beyond the reigns and rodeos, the craft beer, stick ‘n pucks and our love for reverbed guitars, Calgary is home to one of the most vibrant, layered jazz scenes in the country. We house a kingdom of musicians, countless students and a handful of masters. A quick peek at the chock-full JazzYYC event calendar boasts a handful of performances each week, all across the city. Those performances are often conductedby musicians operating at a world-class level.
A short and nowhere-near-comprehensive list of elite Calgarian Jazzsists includes: Al “Elder Statesman of Jazz Trumpet In Alberta” Muirhead, who remarkably began his solo career at the age of 79 and most recently released an album in 2021, at 86 years old; percussionist Luis Tovar, who released the brilliantly spirited Afro-Caribbean Back To My Roots in October on Chronograph Records (a Calgarian label, mind you); trombonist Carsten Rubeling, who obtained a degree from Humber College’s renowned Jazz program in Toronto and whose return to Calgary marked a series of superb hip-hop-inspired albums on Inner Ocean Records (another Calgarian label); vocalist Aimee Jo-Benoit, whose jazz-oriented solo records sit alongside her work with alternative folk/pop artists Woodpigeon and Hermitess; Brendan Rothwell, who’s smooth bass stylings have amassed millions of streams on Spotify and regularly find him occupying spots near the top of global smooth jazz charts; and one-man odyssey Jairus Sharif, who’s 2022 landmark debut Water & Tools dropped like a comet, exposing hordes of new listeners to what our scene is capable of.
And that doesn’t even account for musicians who no longer reside in Calgary, but whose ties are inextricably woven into our fabric. Kris Davis, for example. Davis was born in Vancouver in 1980 and moved to Brooklyn in 2001. Her in-between-years were spent mostly in Calgary, where she began her training at the Royal Conservatory of Music and later spent time at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity’s jazz program. She has gone on to teach at Berklee College of Music’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, play a molding hand in Brooklyn’s avant-garde jazz community, and collected a pair of album of the year distinctions from The New York Times and NPR’s respective jazz polls (for her 2019 masterwork Diatom Ribbons, featuring a star-studded cast including fellow luminary Esperanza Spalding, Marc Ribot and Wilco’s Nels Cline).
But movements don’t often happen in broad daylight. Waves begin as ripples. While there is some infrastructure in place to promote the city's potency, sadly the onus is still largely on the musicians to create in which to thrive. Two of the hardest working musicians we have are often-times bandmates David Lavoie and Nathaniel “Nate” Chiang. They can be found at 17th Avenue’s Betty Lou’s Library and The Deane House in Inglewood, respectively, most nights either leading their own groups or jamming with a rotating cast. They feel the momentum.
“If anything, I think there are more musicians now and maybe more public awareness of jazz programming in the city in general,” says Chiang, the Calgarian drummer who can be seen at seemingly every venue at once these days.
David Lavoie performing at I Love You Coffee Shop
“There’s an appetite for it here. There’s a rejection of the algorithm going on. People are looking for their music elsewhere. People can choose their path with what they want to listen to” says Lavoie, who studied at Capilano University before returning home to carve out a space for himself. “The thing about Calgary is that it’s an entrepreneurial city, where you’re not necessarily jumping into an existing scene. You have to make it happen yourself here.”
So the musicians are largely making it happen for themselves. Jazz musicians just want to explore. There are different personalities in every walk of life, but Jazz musicians ask themselves ‘What can I do to create this moment that may not be the same every night? What can I do to make this interesting — not only for the audience — but for myself?’
Take Chris Dadge’s Bug Incision concert series and label. Except for a two-year hiatus from 2016 to 2018, the inclusive and boundaryless presentations have been an improvisational home and incubator for our avant-scene since 2005. The hiatus was brought upon out of necessity as Dadge toured and recorded with his band Lab Coast but thankfully brought to an end by the inspiring presence of avant-garde jazz guitarist Joe Morris’ residency at the University of Calgary. Currently, shows are hosted out of the High Line Brewing space, and you are welcome to join in on the fun.
Or take Jairus Sharif who, in his own words “circled [around] for a long time...doing hardcore 70's Iggy style shit.” He went from punk to DJing soul 45s, to eventually picking up a broken saxophone and recording Water & Tools. In true DIY fashion, Sharif wrote, played and recorded the entirety of the album himself, at home. How? “Self-taught, all the way down. Youtube, a little bit.” That ethos led to a staggering, genre-agnostic body of work that has reached every corner of the jazz world. Among the ranks of his international fanbase include American composer/clarinetist/pyroclastic free-jazz auteur Angel Bat Dawid of International Anthem (who placed the first online order for Water & Tools) and L.A. multi-instrumentalist Patrick Shiroishi, both leaders of an incumbent alternative-jazz renaissance.
Jairus Sharif at his home studio
A scene is only as strong as its members, and we have the talent to be seen the world over. So what’s holding us back? With all we have going for us en route to international recognition, there are a few crucial components Calgary lacks.
For one, despite that Calgary’s high-school jazz programs are some of the country’s finest, we lack a large-scale post-secondary program. “The loss of the MRU Jazz program was and still is a huge loss,” says Chiang, “This means students have to move elsewhere to study which makes it harder to grow a local scene. Your hope is that some of these students move back to start careers, which some do. But a lot don’t.” In 2013, due to provincial budget cuts, Mount Royal University closed the doors on its Jazz Faculty, eliminating a host of career opportunities for instructors, and subsequently dispersing any latent players to neighboring programs in Edmonton (MacEwan University), Vancouver (Capilano), or out east to Humber’s vaunted halls.
Every student who picks up a trumpet or upright bass or pair of drumsticks dreams of walking into a studio and laying out a masterpiece sans edits to be cut, printed and pressed onto vinyl. It doesn’t work like that. You need years to begin to figure it out. If there’s no academic infrastructure in place to guide you, at the very least you need spaces to cut your teeth. You need a band you can trust, at a venue you can trust. Mastery takes time, opportunity, and consistency. Mastering an art form is not a part-time gig, and a gig or two a week does not a master make. To echo the sentiments of the jazz community: To become a hub, you need a hub. And while we have approximations and venues that do an incredible job in their own right, we lack an idealized playground for musicians. We lack a dedicated, true Blue-Note jazz club.
That’s not to say we’re not rife with great places to see jazz. Another incomplete list, this time of venues that offer performative jazz on the semi-regular, would include: The Eden, Asylum For Art, Arts Commons and the Jack Singer Concert Hall, Betty Lou’s Library, Cornerstones, The Ironwood Stage & Grill, I Love You Coffee Shop, Kawa Espresso Bar, High Line Brewing — pause for breath — Studio Bell, Cliff Bungalow - Mission Community Association, Alvin’s Jazz Club and so, so many more. Depending on who you ask, Buckingjam Palace reigns supreme as our jazz venue of choice, with renowned cats rolling through on the regular.
And while from the outside looking in this list of amazing joints reads like a booming roster, for the musicians on stagethere remains a disconnect. There is a subtle divide between a capital-J Jazz Club and a club that provides jazz, a distinction that this writer (and likely most readers) can’t grasp. We don’t have a steadfast room in the sense of Edmonton’s Yardbird Suite or Vancouver’s Frankie’s Jazz Club or Victoria’s Hermann’s or The Bassment in Saskatoon, where the audience comes because they know it’ll be jazz. In those rooms, the audience knows it will be their music, and so do the artists.
“The lack of a bonafide jazz club is a real detriment to the community,” according to Chiang. “There isn’t really a place you can go see world-class talent on a nightly basis, which is essential for up-and-coming musicians to get exposure and inspiration. You can see some incredible jazz musicians roll through here, but even they would tell you [we don’t have something that] replicates the feel and vibe of a jazz club, nor is it the same sort of community asset. I think they occupy slightly different realms and that’s ok. Maybe one day someone will open a club.”
We had one once, a jazz club. Many will remember the Beat Niq on 1st St SW, in the basement of Piq Niq. For fifteen years between ‘97 and 2012, it was the home of Calgary’s jazz scene, hosting local musicians and touring bands. It also held a special place in the hearts of countless Mount Royal students, who would frequently use its stage to study and practice. In conjunction with the termination of MRU’s Jazz program the lack of a designated space for jazz created a gap in our output, and with it, may have dropped a glass ceiling on our potential.
But these limitations won’t and haven’t slowed the city’s progress in bringing jazz to the forefront of its artistic footprint. Timely initiatives like Art’s Commons TD Incubator program and JazzYYC, have gone to great lengths to maintain consistent opportunities and interest. A wide net was cast to catch as many disparate performers and listeners as possible, resulting in several annual festivals that have drawn marquee names like Booker T. Jones, Jon Batiste and Jose James to Calgary.
Kodi Hutchinson performing A Tribute To Tommy Banks
“We just want to create a thriving scene and work with players to build opportunities,” gushes Kodi Hutchinson, Artistic Director of JazzYYC. “Presenters like us try to build the size and scope and general audience for Jazz. We just want people to like what we love. Trying to get more and more people out to try jazz.”
Kodi also happens to have played double bass professionally for almost 30 years. A product of the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Kodi cut his teeth at Beat Niq, gigging three times a week at minimum. That led to a career as a renowned sessionist, international touring, and culminated with the Grand Jazz Award at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 2013. He owns the aforementioned and critically-lauded Chronograph Records with his wife, Stephanie Hutchinson (who is herself the Director of Programs at the NMC). He still gigs regularly.
“There’s an explosion of players who are trying to create venues and opportunities, and it all goes to help the view for the art form in the city. I feel the pandemic refilled the cupboard a bit. If you’re in a good program in the city, you feel like you can make it in that city and live there. There’s a good level of different age ranges in the city that are doing different things to fill out the scene. Players are going to fall where the work is and where the love of music is.”
So we return to the genesis of our jazz affair: the love of the music. We love jazz. We love jazz. But as anyone involved in a truly loving relationship will readily tell, love means work. It’s no country for the apathetic, the complacent, the satisfied. It takes a village — we have a city.
“It’s really important in any scene to have musicians who create new places to play, and gather audiences who want to see them perform,” continues Hutchinson. “There’s a few of those players in the city, who have helped build up activity.
“We definitely need to work on expanding our audience and entice people to come out and listen to live jazz. But Calgary has the potential to be a really great jazz city,” Chiang says. “Some things need to fall into place for sure, but if we empower musicians to do what they do best, and if people keep raising the bar musically, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be really great.”
So next time you stroll past the Eden or I Love You Coffee Shop, or visit the latest program at Studio Bell, listen close to those horns, baselines and crashing drums. It’s likely jazz. It may be David Lavoie’s trumpet or Jairus’s broken alto. The base that oozes through the window pane may be Hutchinson laying down a walking baseline in rhythm with your steps. The crash of symbols may be the loom through which Nate’s bandmates weave tapestries. Even if we don’t realize it, Jazz is Calgary’s soundtrack. The music is there, as it has been for decades. So is the love, growing by the day. You can hear it.
Title image: The Hutchinson Andrew Trio featuring Al Muirhead and PJ Perry performing at Studio Bell’s A Tribute To Tommy Banks
