Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

MARIE BYERS
Beat by Beat | Jazz Notes
When Music
Meets the Summer
the Jazz Gets
Festive
STEVE WALLACE
The 32nd TD Toronto Jazz Festival will run June 22 to July 1, with
23 ticketed shows in various venues and approximately 150 free
concerts. For the second straight year, the festival will be centred
around Bloor-Yorkville, with seven core
venues: outdoor stages on Cumberland
St. and Hazelton Ave., The Pilot Tavern,
Josh Grossman
Heliconian Hall, the Church of the
Redeemer, the Isabel Bader Theatre and the
Village of Yorkville Park. This year’s festival
also has some new initiatives, including
four ticketed concerts at Trinity-St. Paul’s;
an opening night celebration co-produced
with the Royal Ontario Museum called
“Jazz Club,” in which the ROM will
be transformed into a giant nightclub
featuring jazz, swing and dancing
throughout the evening; and a partnership
with CBC Music and the JUNOs rotating
between two Yorkville stages and
highlighting Canadian musicians who were
either nominated for, or won, JUNO awards
this past year. The showcase will feature
eight bands on June 30, including David
Braid/Mike Murley, the Okavango African
Orchestra, Hilario Durán, Shirantha
Beddage, Autorickshaw, Beny Esguerra and
New Tradition, and more.
With the festival fast approaching, I
sat down for a conversation with Josh
Grossman, now in his ninth year as artistic
director, about this year’s festival and its
continuing evolution.
WN: Walk us through the move away
from Nathan Phillips Square into Yorkville, which began last year.
What has this change brought to the festival?
JG: There were programming-flexibility and other issues involved in
having the big tent in Nathan Phillips Square as the festival’s central
venue. These involved noise by-law requirements which limited us
to three shows a day – one at noon, one in the late afternoon and one
in the evening – and we wanted to be able to present more. Also, the
tent held 1,200 people and the pressure of filling it for ten straight
days proved to be a challenge. The sound was often less than ideal and
so was the atmosphere – we lacked the budget to decorate the square
to give it more of a festival feel as it had during the Pan-Am Games.
The move to Bloor-Yorkville allows us to present smaller shows,
but more of them, and in a variety of indoor and outdoor venues
that provide more flexibility and variety. Also, with its pre-existing
history, Yorkville provides a village-within-a-city feel that makes a
jazz festival feel like more of a festival, which is hugely important. It
has a built-in community and neighbourhood vibe and offers many
other advantages. It’s in the centre of the city, easily accessible by
public transit and, with seven venues, it offers a flexibility of programming.
It’s also close to some of the hard-ticketed venues such as the
Danforth Music Hall, Koerner Hall, the ROM and Trinity-St. Paul’s,
so there’s a sense of concentration. We want people to be able to
catch a variety of shows each day by simply walking or taking a short
subway ride. Because Yorkville is relatively small, many of the venues,
even the outdoor ones, offer an intimacy which suits the music being
presented. Heliconian Hall for example, where we’ll be presenting
ten free concerts, holds just 100 people, has wonderful sound, a good
grand piano and a great stage. The Church of the Redeemer is similar
and both these venues have a history within the city, which it’s nice to
take advantage of.
What has response from the Yorkville community been like?
Local councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam and the Bloor-Yorkville BIA have
been very supportive, which has allowed us to increase the Yorkville
footprint of the festival this year. It’s helped that CEO Howard Kerber,
who formerly ran TIFF in the community for several years, has been
involved. There are still noise by-law issues – no more than 85 decibels
and nothing past 11pm – but most shows will wind up by ten.
And the local businesses certainly appreciate
the influx of 5,000 people into the
neighbourhood.
Apart from affordability, availability
and avoiding repetition from year to
year, what drives your selection of acts
for the festival?
We focus on the audience in Toronto,
being aware of who’s popular in the
city, and of the increasing cross-cultural
aspect of the community with an eye
toward promoting this. With the ticketed
big-name shows we look for variety; we
want the acts to be exciting and vibrant
as well as financially viable. It’s certainly
not a matter of me as artistic director
just indulging my own tastes; there have
been many times I’ve wanted to bring in
an artist I love but have been shot down
by the board. It’s surprising, but there
are a number of artists with huge international
jazz reps who simply don’t
sell well in Toronto. The free concerts
are easier because there’s no box
office pressure and the possibilities are
almost endless.
There’s a perception that the festival
has grown smaller in the last couple of
years – is this true?
Not entirely. There have been slightly
fewer big-name, hard-ticketed events the past couple of years, but
the total number of presentations has held steady at 170 to 180. Part
of the perception that we’re smaller is we no longer involve, under
the festival umbrella, many clubs which present jazz part time. This is
largely because they didn’t allow us input into their booking of artists.
The exceptions this year are the Home Smith Bar, The Rex (which
does its own booking but we wanted to maintain a partnership with
because it presents so much jazz year-round) and The Pilot Tavern, an
obvious choice given its location and long history.
I’ve often thought that with jazz festivals, smaller can be better.
Yes, we’re finding that can be true – that musical quality and variety
matter more than size.
You’re likely sick of this question – as am I – but what do you say
to the inevitable criticism that there are acts in the festival that aren’t
really jazz?
So when we bring in someone like Willie Nelson, or Alison Krause
26 | June | July | August 2018 thewholenote.com