Skip to content

Vancouver jazz festival builds on 30 years of passionate music-making

Q&A with Coastal Jazz and Blues Society co-founder John Orysik

TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival until July 1: 1,800 artists performing 300 concerts at 35 venues over 14 days. For more information and a full schedule visit coastaljazz.ca.

The TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with a lot of fond memories of what's gone down and a sense of excitement for what's still to come.

John Orysik, marketing and promotions director and one of the co-founders of the jazz fest with Ken Pickering and Robert L. Kerr, talked to the North Shore News about the formation of the Coastal Jazz & Blues Society back in the mid-'80s and how it's all played out over the years.

North Shore News: You've known Ken Pickering since you were both in Grade 2?

John Orysik: It's true we had Mrs. Jones for our elementary Grade 2 teacher at Sir Matthew Begby. It's been a long time.

North Shore News: Have you been friends and worked together ever since?

John Orysik: We've been friends but we didn't start working together until we started Coastal Jazz. We've been passionate devotees of the music since our teenage years. Talked about it a lot, went to concerts a lot, developed a real passion for it over the years and one thing led to another and we decided to form an organization that could stage concerts year round, inject some real strong musical drive into the city and have an annual summer festival to culminate the year round activity.

North Shore News: How did you get interested in jazz?

John Orysik: My mother got me an accordion and I got lessons as a youngster so I've always had an ear for music. Ken went out and bought himself a saxophone and started working out on that instrument. Later on I became Vancouver correspondent for Coda Magazine, which was the Canadian jazz journal out of Toronto that was published and distributed around the world. Ken formed Black Swan Records in the mid-'70s to distribute jazz and blues recordings to the public.

Whenever we got together it was always around listening to music. Going to each other's homes and playing new releases for each other and going to concerts. A lot of times we would drive down to Seattle and check out concerts that were happening. When I was 19 I had the opportunity to go to New York City for the first time and experience music on a level that I'd never envisioned before. There was so much music going on. I just absorbed and soaked it all up and went to as many concerts as I could. The Newport Jazz Festival was happening at that time. George Wein had moved the festival from Newport to New York City in 1972 and the musicians who weren't invited to his festival staged a counter festival so it was double the music that you would expect during a normal week or two in New York.

That was also the time of the loft scene where musicians were involved in a kind of do-it-yourself project where they would rent loft spaces and organize their own concerts. Sam Rivers was an integral part of that scene. He had a place called Studio Rivbea. He and his wife Bea ran it and there was music going on there all the time. I had the good fortune of listening to it. You can imagine as a 19-year-old my head was on a swivel. I was meeting all these musicians. I went to the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association which was run by Michael Mantler and Carla Bley and I got to meet Charlie Haden and Roswell Rudd and Gato Barbieri. All these great musicians and writers like Nat Hentoff. ESP Records owner Bernard Stollman was there - just a who's who of musicians.

That just got me more excited about the music and I would come back and regale people with tales about who I saw and where I saw them. These were just sign posts in our lives as we got older and the fascination with the music grew stronger and stronger. When I look back on it now it seems like it was almost inevitable that we would form Coastal Jazz and the jazz festival. Everything seems to have led up to it.

North Shore News: Were you in New York as a correspondent or as a jazz aficionado?

John Orysik: Well, both. I was a Vancouver correspondent but I wasn't really writing about my visit to New York. I did mention it in my column that I had been there and I was quite thrilled with the experience. I got to meet people and create associations that later on became very useful. Fortuitously, too, in the late '70s and early '80s I joined CJAZ as a broadcaster, as a Jazz DJ. That was a 24-hour, 100,000-watt radio station where you could play the music you loved and get paid for it. I would pinch myself. I was sitting there playing Charles Mingus and John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

Then the station morphed after a number of years into just another pop music station but at the time there was a transition happening. There was already talk about forming Coastal Jazz, forming a society from which we could then present single concerts which would lead to an annual jazz festival. In 1985 we created a small regional festival which was essentially self-financed and contained musicians from Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. We had one international ringer - Hungarian bass player Aladár Pege. It was essentially a success and basically broke even. Staging that festival I think had a great deal to do with attracting major corporate sponsorship for the following year which was 1986, an Expo year. We launched a major international jazz festival in 1986 which, of course, had Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis and Bobby McFerrin and Tito Puente and Tony Williams and Ornette Coleman. The lineup was astounding.

North Shore News: Did you have much experience at this point or did you just jump in and do it?

John Orysik: We were green, John. There's no such thing as jazz festival school - you can't go and learn how to present concerts and learn how to market festivals and learn how to attract sponsorships. It was the passion for the music that drove everything. We didn't see obstacles, we just saw opportunities and we just motored ahead and did what we had to do. Sometimes what you did failed, other times you had great success but there was always that belief that what you were doing was what you should be doing.

North Shore News: From '86 had you already established late June, early July as the dates for the festival?

John Orysik: That's a very good question. Yes and no, just let me back up: in 1985 the festival dates were in late August, essentially around the same time as the PNE. After having gone through that time frame we thought it would have served us better to kick off the festival at the beginning of summer. That seemed the optimum time to start the festival. We would be the first out of the gate, we would be the festival that launched the beginning of summer activity in Vancouver.

From the '85 experience we decided to stage the festival starting with the third Friday in June and we've always kept those dates since then. It proved to be the best time plus there were other festivals around that time we could connect with and ameliorate costs of travel and booking so it became the optimum time to do it for a lot of reasons.

North Shore News: Where did you hold the festival in the early years?

John Orysik: In '85 we held it in clubs like the Savoy, the Town Pump, the Landmark Jazz Bar. We had an outdoor gazebo at Expo. Expo was just being built and some of it was finished. That gazebo I think still exists. It's right next to Science World. We had some concerts there with Isaac Scott's Blues Band from Seattle.

The free element has always been part of the festival. The idea to make the festival accessible was with us from Day 1. We wanted people to access this music and not have any obstacles to it. Whether those obstacles were economic or whether they had a stereotypical view of what jazz was and so they weren't willing to spend any money. Here was an opportunity by presenting free concerts where you could just go and dabble without any obligation.

There was something like a dozen venues that we had during that '85 festival mostly small clubs around the city clustered in Gastown and then Expo Centre outside.

North Shore News: How did a brand new festival get people like Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis to show up?

John Orysik: You offered them contracts. Ornette Coleman performed at the New York Theatre on Commercial Drive that first year with his band. The Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and Bobby McFerrin concerts were co-presented with Expo. That's why we were able to put Miles and Wynton Marsalis at Expo Theatre. We did a blockbuster blues bash featuring Albert Collins, Koko Taylor and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. We did a triple bill with Bobby McFerrin, Tony Williams and Tito Puente. Those four Expo Theatre concerts were co-produced with the folks at Expo. We were able to use their pull as a world's fair to draw those musicians in.

Our festival in '86 was Bill Frisell's coming out party. He wasn't doing live concerts, as a matter of fact he was so shy at that time we literally had to push him out from backstage to go out and play.

So many memorable moments - seeing Ornette playing at the New York Theatre with his band Prime Time. It was just extraordinary. We presented Ornette almost back to back - we presented him in the '86 festival and then in 1988 at the Commodore Ballroom. All of his shows were memorable. He's just one of those singular artists. There's nobody else like him on the planet. The last time was not in the jazz festival but as part of the Cultural Olympiad during the leadup to the Olympics. We presented him at the Chan Centre at UBC and that was an amazing show too.

North Shore News: What were some of the other highlights over the 30-year stretch?

John Orysik: The showdown. It wasn't so much the show but the showdown between Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis at Expo Theatre (where Davis told Marsalis to get off his stage) that comes to mind right away. Fast forwarding over the years Caetano Veloso's one and only performance at the festival in I think '97 was just extraordinary. We had a lot of jazz critics who were covering the festival for different magazines like Downbeat and Jazz Times and The Wire, out of London, England, and there was all this other activity going on but everyone of those critics was at the Caetano Veloso show because they knew that was the concert not to miss. He's an amazing musician and it was a hugely memorable show at the Vogue Theatre.

The one and only time we presented Sun Ra and his Arkestra was in the late '80s at the Commodore. That was an incredible concert. He was such a legendary figure in music and he had a philosophy, kind of a cosmological look at life and music. The band dressed up in these costumes and Sun Ra claimed that they come from Saturn. He had little pithy phrases like, 'We came from nowhere here, let's go somewhere there.' And away we would go somewhere through his music. His music would transport us. It was extraordinarily fascinating. You can have a philosophy like that but if the music isn't compelling it's just a gimmick.

Dutch master drummer Han Bennink's many performances here have always been fantastic. He's back again this year. He's one of the elder statesman now after all these years. The great thing about Han is he's such a collaborative artist. He's willing to put himself in situations that are new and are challenging and so we have been able to put him in one-of-a-kind combinations. This year he is going to be performing with Dave Douglas on trumpet, Peggy Lee, of course, from here, on cello and Han on drums. That will be an incredible international trio.

Dave Douglas is another highlight. We were presenting Dave back in the early '90s when nobody knew who he was. This young trumpeter who was so versatile and so curious about putting himself in all kinds of different musical situations. And he hooked up with Dylan van der Schyff and Peggy Lee here too. He was just knocked out by their musicianship and they created a band called Mountain Passages.

The Dedication Orchestra, all those wonderful musicians, that was a highlight. There's been so many highlights over the years. You could fill a book, they're all so different and memorable for different reasons. The music is diverse and the personalities and settings are different. It's been pretty amazing over the 30 years and to be so close to the music and to be able to have all these rich experiences.

North Shore News: Speaking about the settings you've had specific venues that the jazz fest has returned to year after year.

John Orysik: We consistently had a series at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in the early years before its renovation. We've used the Vogue Theatre as well for a long time. We've also used the Orpheum Theatre from the very beginning.

Granville Island is our earliest and longest standing partner. They hooked up with us right from Day 1. We've had performances at the Public Market Stage and different venues around Granville Island since 1986. I don't know if you remember we were at the Plaza of Nations right after Expo as some of the buildings were left standing.

When the new community of Yaletown was formed they built the Roundhouse and David Lam Park and we thought 'This is the place to go.' We would have a park setting right by the water for the big outdoor stage and then the Roundhouse afforded us an opportunity to have two indoor venues plus we could use a studio for workshops as well and there's already a kids' play area there. It just made the most sense plus it's really easy to access from different directions. It's become one of the most anticipated events in the festival that weekend in the Roundhouse and David Lam Park. We've definitely kept continuity with a number of different venues both indoor and outdoor.

North Shore News: You've had several initiatives you've carried out over the years such as the high school intensive program to augment the concert line-up.

John Orysik: A big feature of what we do is education and outreach. It's very important for us to get kids involved in the music, to give them opportunities to learn from professional musicians that they look up to and also have instruction from the highest level. Tomeka Reid this year has come back from Chicago. She brings those charts and she challenges those kids. The kids just get so excited because it opens up so many areas for them to explore that they couldn't even have imagined in the beginning. And they also have access to scholarships. Dal Richards has graciously offered a $2,000 scholarship for quite a few years now to one high school kid who is aspiring to become a professional musician. There's other scholarships that TD provides as well.

The workshops are open to everybody. People can come and listen to musicians talk about the creative process and why they play music and how they play music and what they're trying to do. People have the opportunity to ask questions. It tears down the mystique, the barriers if there are any, between an audience and an artist. You see them on a different level and you are able to communicate with them and see what drives them. The love of the music.

North Shore News: Another aspect you've had for a number of years now is the North Shore Jazz component.

John Orysik: Absolutely. There's wonderful things going on on the North Shore, both in terms of the concerts that are being presented at Cap U and Presentation House. Cap U has a highly respected education program and there are many great instructors. To connect with the North Shore and make them part of the jazz festival is a fantastic thing. The ethos of the festival has always been about nurturing creativity and encouraging collaboration and building community and I think we hit on all three by having the North Shore involved in a big way. We cherish that.

North Shore News: Thirty years on I guess you've got things figured out by now and everything runs like clockwork.

John Orysik: It's a huge enterprise. There's so many musicians, so many venues. It takes a lot of planning. Essentially when one festival is over we're already starting to put the building blocks together for the next one. We're in heavy marketing mode now letting people know there's a festival happening and everybody's invited.

 

Other stories of interest:

Tomeka Reid gives budding musicians a taste of jazz: http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/music/tomeka-reid-gives-budding-musicians-a-taste-of-jazz-1.1137443

Ornette: Made in America: http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/dossier/ornette-coleman-film-back-in-circulation-thanks-to-shirley-clarke-project-1.364060

Hot jazz ticket: Bria Skonberg brings her music home: http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/music/hot-jazz-ticket-bria-skonberg-brings-her-music-home-1.1974042

Petunia practises what he preaches: http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/music/petunia-practises-what-he-preaches-1.1974048

Jazz notes: Off the Cuff: http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/dossier/jazz-notes-off-the-cuff-1.1974467