Toronto Jazz Live!

[Lois Gilbert]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 3, 2003
DISCOVER TORONTO'S JAZZ SCENE; NOW ONLY A PHONE CALL AWAY!

TORONTO - Now visitors can experience the thrill of Toronto's extraordinary jazz scene with just one telephone call! By visiting
www.torontojazzlive.com visitors can obtain information on Toronto's jazz activities plus a choice of affordable travel packages. Once a choice is made, the Toronto Jazz LIVE! experience is easily available by calling Tourism Toronto at 1-800-205-7638, whose travel counselors will book the package.

Few cities can boast such a vibrant jazz scene as Toronto with five annual jazz festivals, world renowned jazz clubs, first class concert halls and mainstages plus a roster of outstanding local and visiting talent which combined, offer superb jazz entertainment 365 days a year. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the live jazz scene in Toronto is second only to New York. Recognizing the growing interest in live jazz music the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation in collaboration with an alliance of key presenters from Toronto's jazz industry and other hospitality partners, have developed Toronto Jazz LIVE!

Toronto Jazz LIVE! offers a choice of hotel accommodations starting at $89 CDN or $59 US per night with breakfast for two; dinner and music cver charges at outstanding jazz venues including the Montreal Bistro and Jazz Club, The Top 'O The Senator and The Rex Hotel and Jazz Bar; preferred seating at major jazz events including The Distillery Jazz Festival, The Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, The Beaches International Jazz Festival, Downtown Oakville Jazz Festival and the Southside Shuffle Blues &Jazz Festival; tickets to headline jazz performances at Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall and admission to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum. Other choices may soon include train travel options on VIA Rail (a Toronto Jazz LIVE! partner) plus artist CDs from Toronto music stores, spa experiences, harbour cruises and other incentives. As new jazz opportunities arise, Toronto Jazz LIVE! will make them available to visitor far and wide.

[Lois Gilbert]

50th CELEBRATION OF THE"GREATEST JAZZ CONCERT EVER" AT TORONTO'S MASSEY
HALL MAY 15 - AVAILABLE THROUGH TORONTO JAZZ LIVE!

TORONTO - On May 15, 1953, legendary jazz masters Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and Max Roach performed together for the first and only time in their careers in an astounding concert at Massey Hall in Toronto which jazz historians labeled "the greatest jazz concert ever."

On Thursday, May 15, 2003, jazz history will again be written when Massey Hall presents a special 50th Anniversary Concert commemorating the event. The 2003 concert has all the potential to be the second greatest jazz concert ever held because a star-studded cast of today's jazz luminaries including

Herbie Hancock (piano)

Roy Haynes (drums)

Roy Hargrove (trumpet)

Dave Holland (bass)

Kenny Garrett (saxophone)

will be the anniversary headliners -- all playing together for
the first time! This once-in-a-lifetime event is expected to sell out but a limited number of tickets to the concert are available to out-of-town visitors through Toronto Jazz LIVE!

[Nate Dorward]

Few cities can boast such a vibrant jazz scene as Toronto with five annual jazz festivals, world renowned jazz clubs, first class concert halls and mainstages plus a roster of outstanding local and visiting talent which combined, offer superb jazz entertainment 365 days a year. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the live jazz scene in Toronto is second only to New York.

I guess I shouldn't take such a patently absurd press release seriously, but the statement above is a total falsehood. Toronto has, considering its size, a surprisingly lacklustre jazz scene, & the fortunes of its annual (Du Maurier) jazz festival have followed a similar course to the Toronto Blue Jays since the mid-1990s--viz. bloated, expensive but strikingly underachieving & lethargic. The best jazz scenes in Canada are surely Montreal & Vancouver. Actually, the main Toronto jazz festival is sufficiently weak that actually even the Halifax jazzfest is usually considerably better (run by the knowledgable & spunky Susan Hunter). -- There are plenty of good reasons to visit Toronto but I can't say I think the jazz scene is one of its better selling points.

[Lois Gilbert]

I think the press release might also be prompted by the 50th anniversary of the Charlie Parker/Massey Hall date which I noted in a seperate press release. Maybe I should combine them.

[patricia]

Good idea, Lois.
Although no Canadian city can compare to the New York scene, when it comes to jazz, we do have some notable venues, although smaller and for the most part, less prestigeous.
Montreal's Jazz Festival has an international reputation and Toronto is no slouch, though not New York, clearly. There are also smaller, shorter festivals, across Canada, in Vancouver and, oddly, a festival in........Calgary [!!] around the time of the Calgary Stampede [July]. That one really surprised me when I moved here a couple of years ago and was worth catching.

Lois, don't stop giving some ink to our jazz. We really could use it, particularly out where I am. Thanks.

[mjb]

The Guleph Jazz Festival held in September each year is small but usually very good. Last years stuff is still up at the site Guelph Jazz .

Guelph is about an hour west of Toronto and is a very pretty place. The venues are small & intimate and everyone has a jolly good time.

[Nate Dorward]

David--yep, thing have changed, alas..... It was actually pretty good here up to the early nineties. There was for instance an extraordinarily ambituous attempt to create an international-calibre jazz club, the Bermuda Onion: they had everyone from Johnny Griffin to Oscar Peterson to the Sun Ra Arkestra to Carla Bley to Courtney Pine. Didn't last, unsurprisingly (the location is now a posh Chinese restaurant), but it was great at the time. The Toronto jazzfest was also in those years extremely good & catholic. I knew nothing much about contemporary jazz at the time & so I simply would go from gig to gig--for instance, noticing that an outdoors gig in a parking lot was about to start, I sat down on the bleacher seats & waited. Some great violin-driven jazz-funk followed--some guy I'd never heard of at the time named Leroy Jenkins & his band Sting!. There was a very ambitious more outside-looking series at the jazz-fest, the Next Wave series, run by Ron Gaskin. But eventually this came to a halt: Gaskin's funds kept getting cut & then cut again till he resigned in protest. It was getting so tight he had to force bands from the States to drive themselves up to Toronto across the border for the privilege of playing. -- The wonderful Sam's went bankrupt (massive firesale of their stock about three years ago) but under new owners it's still going, but it's hardly what it once was. HMV is now the only major record shop in town; Tower Records made an attempt to move in (opened a couple shops) & after a few years gave up & closed the shops.

Anyway, it's perfectly possible to see some very good jazz in the city--with some effort. But to paint it as one of the hotspots in North America is a total crock. It's particularly poor for non-Torontonian avantgarde jazz--mostly one sees such players if they happen to be passing through on their way to or from Victoriaville or Guelph. The Canada Council occasionally gives the NOJO Orchestra some dough to bring in Sam Rivers or Don Byron or Ray Anderson (so you get to see them stuck playing NOJO's charts--feh); & during jazzfest time, the various European arts councils will sponsor maybe three or four acts (the Italian arts councils seem to be particularly keen on this in recent years). There was for many years a serious venue for new music & jazz, the Music Gallery, but their lease was not renewed when the owner of the building decided it would be better turned into condos. The Music Gallery now operates in disembodied fashion, holding concerts in a downtown church, St George the Martyr, but the programs are mostly new-music, with only maybe one or two jazz/improv-oriented gigs every month.