Additional Artists Announced for 2019 TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival June 21 – July 1

 TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival Announces 

Herbie Hancock at Queen Elizabeth Theatre on June 29 at 8:00pm 

Artist Lineup Announced for Performance Works, Pyatt Hall, 

and Frankie’s Jazz Club 

Tickets on Sale Friday, April 12 at 10:00am www.coastaljazz.ca 

(Presale Tickets for Festival Donors Available April 9-11) 

Coastal Jazz & Blues Society announced today additional performances for the 34th annual TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, taking place June 21 to July 1. The Festival lineup now includes headliner Herbie Hancock at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on June 29 as well as genre-bending performances from diverse, cutting-edge artists at Performance Works on Granville Island, Pyatt Hall (843 Seymour Street), and Frankie’s Jazz Club (765 Beatty Street). 

Presale tickets for these performances will be available for Festival donors from Tuesday, April 9 to Thursday, April 11 at 10:00am PT, and tickets for the general public go on sale Friday, April 12 at 10:00am PT at www.coastaljazz.ca. 

 HERBIE HANCOCK June 29 • Queen Elizabeth Theatre @ 8pm • Tickets from $69 

Now in the sixth decade of his professional life, Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: at the forefront of culture, technology, business, and music. A legendary pianist and composer, Hancock received an Academy Award for his Round Midnight score and 14 GRAMMY Awards, including Album of The Year. He currently serves as Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and as Institute Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011 Hancock was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, received a Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2013, and a GRAMMY Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2016. For this special concert in Vancouver, he’ll perform with his quartet. 

Donny McCaslin and his Band June 21 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

“If you want to hear how David Bowie still casts a spell over fellow musicians from the great unknown, here’s a prime exhibit.” (The Times). Having collaborated on Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, the shapeshifting legend’s profound influence inhabits saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s powerhouse new music, which “steps boldly into hybrid, tough-to-classify musical terrain, grafting sleek, emotive electrojazz onto lush, proggy art rock” (Rolling Stone). Gritty grooves that take cues from hip hop and electronica, crafty hooks, and soaring post-rock are tied together by McCaslin’s high-octane tenor, Jason Lindner on keys, Zach Danziver on drums, Tim Lefebvre on bass, and local indie/alt-rock luminary Ryan Dahle (Limblifter, Mounties) on vocals. 

Marquis Hill Blacktet 

June 22 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

Contemporary and classic jazz, hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house, neo-soul—to Marquis Hill, they’re all branches of the same fertile tree of African-American creative expression. A startlingly gifted trumpeter with a soulful, highly textured tone, the Downbeat Rising Star Award winner’s sound is a tour through jazz-trumpet history, evoking the high-drama stillness and space of Miles, the virtuosity of Freddie Hubbard, and the groove-savvy phrasing of Donald Byrd, while remaining unmistakably Marquis. His long running Blacktet “crystallizes the hard-hitting, hard-swinging spirit of Chicago jazz” (Chicago Tribune) with Joel Ross on vibraphone/piano, Jeremiah Hunt on bass, and Joe Dyson on drums. 

Elisapie June 23 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

Montreal-based Inuk singer, film director, and activist Elisapie Isaac “synthesizes stories from her eventful life with hypnotic arrangements that channel ’70s rock, indigenous folk music and the low, moody rumble of barnstormers like Tom Waits and Morphine” (NPR). Singing in three languages, the genre-bending artist uses English to explore folk, French for more romantic writing, and Inuktitut to speak profoundly about Indigenous culture. Exclaim! calls her latest work, Ballad of The Runaway Girl, “a powerful record, and a rare album where both the music and narrative are equally stunning.” With Joe Grass (Patrick Watson) on guitar/vocals, Joshua Toal (Plants & Animals) on bass/guitar/keyboard, and Evan Tighe (Basia Bulat) on drums. 

Beverly Glenn-Copeland 

June 25 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

Classical singer, multi-instrumentalist, transgender artist, experimental electronic pioneer, children’s show composer and actor, Buddhist practitioner, and psychotherapist: Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s diverse and long career has run the gamut. After a 20-year absence from performing, he returned to the stage in 2018, finding an audience at 74 and sharing his experiences of identity as a means of encouraging others. His self-titled album from 1970 (reissued last year) is a lush folk-jazz album in the vein of peers such as Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell. Don’t miss this rare live performance by one of music’s purest individualists and his five-piece band. 

Patricia Barber June 26 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 | June 27 • Tom Lee (workshop) @ 1pm • Free 

“Few performers in or out of jazz are as consistently brilliant as Patricia Barber” —JazzTimes 

A formidable musical presence whose artistry has been called “conspicuously literate and restlessly inventive” by The New Yorker, celebrated vocalist/pianist Patricia Barber has again broken artistic boundaries with her first album in six years, Higher, which rethinks the canons of jazz songwriting into a highly personal, uncompromising musical language. Broadly inspired by jazz as well as Fauré and Debussy, Barber’s harmonic sophistication and incisive lyrics lead the charge of an audacious new musical expression alongside her superb longtime collaborators Patrick Mulcahy on bass, and Jon Deitemyer on drums. 

Davina and The Vagabonds June 28 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

With New Orleans charm, Memphis soul swagger and tender gospel passages, Davina and The Vagabonds synthesize 100 years of American music with original tunes full of edgy nostalgia and fresh new directions. With comparisons to the likes of Etta James, Amy Winehouse and Billie Holiday, vocalist/pianist Davina has released two albums (Black Cloud, Sunshine) that swell with heart and swing. Ranging from the sounds of Fats Domino and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Aretha Franklin and Tom Waits, the quintet is rounded out by bassist Liz Draper, drummer George Marich, and the spicy horn section of Zack Lozier on trumpet and Jacob Melsha on trombone. 

Brian Jackson Plays Songs from the Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson Songbook 

June 29 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

The late Gil Scott-Heron is revered as one of the founding fathers of spoken word. He and his musical co-conspirators invented a style at the crossroads of jazz, soul, blues, and funk: deeply political and in turns terrifying and uplifting. Keyboard player and flutist Brian Jackson co-composed many of the poet’s recorded masterpieces. The pair’s 1974 Winter in America was lauded as “a masterwork of ghetto melancholia and stark political gravitas,” and included their most commercially successful song, “The Bottle.” This project both pays homage to Scott-Heron and continues his work—from his sharp and speculative vision to his poetic versatility. 

Melissa Aldana Quartet June 30 • Performance Works @ 8pm • $29 

Fast-rising New York-based tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana has made quite a splash since relocating from her native Chile. Her pure tone and “cultured, emotionally weighted, purposeful sound” (Boston Globe) draws on the traditions of Lester Young, Sonny Rollins, and Stan Getz while bringing a fresh and distinct new voice to the conversation. In 2013, she won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition for saxophone, becoming the first female instrumentalist to win the award since its inception in 1987. Aldana’s “savvy subversions to jazz’s modern mainstream” (JazzTimes) feature Sam Harris on piano, Pablo Menares on bass, and Kush Abadey on drums. 

The Arntzens: 3 Generations in Jazz June 21 • Pyatt Hall @ 7:30pm • $34 

“…a dynamic dynasty of musical progeny” (All About Jazz). If you want to talk traditional jazz in Vancouver, you need to talk about the Arntzens. Spanning three generations, this prolific musical family dazzles with melodic, swinging tunes rooted in the New Orleans tradition. Patriarch Lloyd Arntzen discovered the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong as a boy, lighting a fire in him that burns brightly to this day. Blessed with a golden voice and marvelous clarinet tone, he passed the love of music onto son Tom (piano/vocals), daughter-in-law Georgina (vocals), and grandsons Evan (clarinet/saxophone/vocals) and Arnt (guitar/banjo/vocals), who return from New York. 

Laila Biali June 22 • Pyatt Hall @ 7:30pm & 9:30pm • $34 

“A voice that makes the listener shudder it’s so rounded and pure” (Montreal Gazette). Keyboardist/vocalist Laila Biali moves effortlessly between incandescent contemporary jazz and absorbing modern pop. An acclaimed composer, deeply personal lyricist and acute interpreter, the New York-based Vancouverite took home this year’s JUNO for “Vocal Jazz Album of the Year.” In Laila’s eclectic and energetic live show, melodies take thrilling left turns and bold choruses give way to thoughtful instrumental interludes. One minute, Biali is soaring over a hard-charging, bluesy storm, and the next, she’s pouring out her soul on an impassioned ballad. It’s jazz, it’s pop, it can’t be put into a box…but it’s definitely beautiful. 

Joe Magnarelli Quintet featuring Ralph Moore 

June 24 • Pyatt Hall @ 7:30pm & 9:30pm • $34 

Coming in hot with his new album If You Could See Me Now on Cellar Live, American trumpeter/flugelhornist Joe Magnarelli pays tribute to composer/arranger Tadd Dameron, who Dexter Gordon called the “romanticist” of the bebop era. In his short life, Dameron was one of the most important figures in bridging the swing and bebop periods, and even has a distinctive and very jazzy chord change named after him: the “Tad Dameron Turnaround.” Magnarelli’s supremely swinging quintet features Anthony Wonsey on piano; Dezron Douglas on bass; George Fludas on drums; and former Tonight Show, Horace Silver and Oscar Peterson collaborator, Ralph Moore on tenor saxophone. 

Steve Maddock and The Jill Townsend Jazz Orchestra play Sinatra at The Sands June 25 • Pyatt Hall @ 7:30pm & 9:30pm • $34 

Now in its 19th season, this critically acclaimed jazz orchestra features hard swinging, delectable music and sparking arrangements by leader Jill Townsend and guitar sensation Bill Coon. For this special occasion, jazz vocalist extraordinaire Steve Maddock joins the ensemble as they pay tribute to the classic sounds of Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Big Band, who originally recorded definitive versions of Old Blue Eyes’ best-known songs in the Copa Room at Las Vegas’ legendary Sands Hotel. Featuring outstanding soloists like Brad Turner, Dave Robbins, Steve Kaldestad, Cory Weeds, Rene Worst, Dennis Esson and Rod Murray, this is some world-class swing you don’t want to miss. 

Eric Alexander Quartet featuring Eric Reed June 26 • Pyatt Hall @ 7:30pm & 9:30pm • $34 

Boasting a warm, burnished tone, and keen harmonic imagination, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander brings fresh ideas to the illustrious bop-based jazz tradition. With influences from bebop pioneers and post-bop innovators, his wide vocabulary touches on Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, the Sonnys (Stitt and Rollins), Charlie Parker, and Coltrane. Regularly working New York City’s most prestigious jazz clubs, he’s collaborated with the likes of Joe Lovano and Rufus Reid while appearing on more than 80 albums. His sharp quartet features Mike Gurrola on bass, Kevin Kanner on drums, and pianist Eric Reed – “a commanding presence on the jazz scene” (JazzTimes) – who has worked with Dianne Reeves, Elvin Jones, and Wynton Marsalis. 

FRANKIE’S JAZZ CLUB 

June 21 & 22: Emanuele Cisi Quartet 

June 23: Jacqui Naylor 

June 24: Tara Kannangara 

June 25: Mazacote 

June 26: Black Gardenia featuring Daphne Roubini 

June 27: Dave Robbins Sextet 

June 28 & 29: Steve Smith’s Groove Blue Organ Trio 

June 30: Groovy Goodies: Cory Weeds with Organ Accompaniment 

Further details regarding the 34th annual TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival will be released by series. Full details, including free programming, will be available by May 1, 2019. 

Website: www.coastaljazz.ca 
Twitter: www.twitter.com/coastaljazz (#VanJazzFest) 
Instagram: www.instagram.com/coastaljazz 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/coastaljazz 

Media release provided by Teresea Trovato, Teresa Trovato PR.

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