Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Vogue Theatre, Sunday, June 26, 9 p.m., as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Go to www.coastaljazz.ca for full schedule.

Blame it on Bob Rebagliati.

It turns out the retired Handsworth music teacher was the one who first got Darcy James Argue interested in big band jazz.

Now based in New York City and the leader of the critically acclaimed 18-piece ensemble Secret Society, Argue audibly groans over the phone when I tell him that I'm looking at a March 1992 photo of the Handsworth Jazz Band. Everyone's dressed in matching white outfits with red vests and Argue's cradling a portable keyboard.

"I was mainly playing piano, that was there for the photo shoot," he laughs. "It was a really great music program. I probably wouldn't be in the predicament I'm in now if it wasn't for (Rebagliati). Renee Rosnes came out of the program about 10 years before I did and subsequently Brandi Disterheft and Laila Biali. It was also a really great outlet. It brought some meaning to a jumble of confused adolescent angst and all the rest of that."

Argue went to North Vancouver's Cleveland elementary school before moving on to Handsworth in Grade 8. Although he'd begun piano lessons at a young age it was strictly because his famly lived in the catchment area that he ended up in Rebagliati's band.

"I don't think high school band directors have a lot of experience with jazz and a lot of them don't have any experience at all with the rhythm section," says Argue. "Bob was a drummer and jazz really lives or dies by the rhythm section. He was able to instill that in the band from an early age and work with the rhythm section and build the bands up from there, which was sort of why the group's always had the success they did at the local jazz festivals and whatnot."

Argue can pinpoint the exact moment he discovered big band jazz in Rebagliati's music class. "In my first year we were playing this simplified version of a piece called "Us" by the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. He brought in the original recording, which he had on vinyl, and when he played that a kind of light went off which was, 'Oh that's what it's supposed to sound like.' I went down to A&B Sound and picked up a Thad Jones/Mel Lewis cassette to put in my Walkman and that was the beginning of my investigating big band music.

"I was maybe 13, 14 and I completely fell in love with Thad's writing and as a composer he's probably one of my biggest influences to this day. Stuff that you discover when you're young often is the music that sticks with you your entire life and really shapes your interests. I had no idea it would lead me down this path of folly where I would start my own big band."

After graduating from Handsworth, Argue went on to study at McGill University and the New England Conservatory of Music. At McGill in Montreal he got his first taste of the jazz life as a musician and in Boston he obtained a masters in jazz composition studying with Bob Brookmeyer.

"I heard his music at a fairly young age on those Thad Jones tapes because he was a member of that band," says Argue. "And I saw him lead a band at a jazz conference back in 1994. That was the first time I had seen him live and then I started corresponding with him when I still lived in Montreal."

Brookmeyer invited the young musician to study with him at the conservatory in Boston. "At the time I didn't have any intention of pursuing a masters degree but that's not an invitation you turn down," says Argue. "Bob was born in 1929 in Kansas City. He heard the original lineup of the Count Basie Band when he was 11 years old. He's been a part of and seen almost the entire evolution of jazz in the 20th century. He's someone who has been at the very forefront, never resting on his laurels and always challenging himself to do new things. That was obviously a very inspirational time to have that opportunity to study with one of my lifelong heroes."

Argue commuted back and forth between Boston and New York for a year before he decided to move permanently to the Big Apple. "They had these very cheap Chinatown to Chinatown buses that you could take at the time for like 10 bucks. I would go into New York and there was this jazz composition workshop I was doing there called the BMI Jazz Composer's Workshop. I was meeting a lot of other like-minded young composers and musicians who were interested in that music and I guess I was trying to figure out whether I should actually follow through on this crazy dream to move to New York and start a big band.

"I was in touch with a lot of other enablers, other people who had done the same thing, and it seemed to have worked out OK for them. They weren't lying face down homeless in the street."

In 2003 Argue moved to New York City with his girlfriend and started to put together an ensemble. "I would cold call people and explain I'm a new composer in town and I've got this music that I'm trying to get some players together to read through it. We would get together informally once every couple of months whenever I had new music to read through and that was the seed of Secret Society."

The 18-piece ensemble played their first gig in 2005 at the late, lamented CBGB, known more as a punk hangout than a concert hall back in the day. "There was three stages and we were in the basement space," says Argue. "They had a jazz series there on Sunday nights and it was really like a big open space. There was a corner where there was a makeshift stage and we spilled out from that and came forward into the audience with the keyboards blocking the fire exit and all that kind of stuff."

About half of the musicians who played on that first gig with Argue are still with the band. The core of the group is the rhythm section of Matt Clohesy on bass and Jon Wikan on drums and they give Secret Society a consistency that has continued to take shape over the years.

"I write specifically for the players in the band," says Argue. "Sometimes I write because they have facets of their personalities that I want to bring out and I want to put them maybe in a situation that they wouldn't normally be in when left to their own devices or in small-group music just to see what will happen. Poke and prod them and challenge them to react to a situation that's a little different from your standard jazz solo format. The music that I write tends to be very narrative driven there's kind of a throughline that runs through the piece and its not cycling over the same form over and over again. Usually there's an overarching progression to a piece that's a musical progression and an emotional arc. I've been fortunate that the players in the band respond well to that and they are able to put themselves into the piece, rather than outside of the piece, and sort of improvise in a way that is coming out of the written page. It's almost like actors inhabiting a part within a larger play, like there is a role that they have to play within my composition. I have been really lucky that all the players are really great at that."

Argue's Secret Society recorded their debut album, Infernal Machines, in three days in 2009 in a New Jersey Studio. Village Voice critic Richard Gehr called the result released on New Amsterdam Records "maximalist music of impressive complexity and immense entertainment value," while Nate Chen of the New York Times said "it was a wickedly intelligent dispatch from the fading border between orchestral jazz and post-rock and classical minimalism . . . radiating self-assurance, and an almost chilling steadiness of conviction."

The album was nominated for a Grammy and a Juno and garnered a huge response worldwide. "It was beyond anyone's wildest dreams," says Argue. "What I thought I was doing was making a really expensive business card, something you can hand to a promoter at a showcase concert or send in to get some reviews from the jazz press. Basically something to open a few doors. I was utterly unprepared for the level of critical acclaim that it got but obviously I couldn't be happier. It's music that I want to resonate with people."

For more on Argue and his ensemble visit www.nsnews.com.