Jazz, in many ways, is like life. You have a birthing period, you have a grooming period, you have a professional period—and then you have the back end. A hundred years ago, you would have accessed jazz through situations where the most important thing might have been buying liquor, or meeting with people you don’t […]

Trumpeter Derrick Gardner has an impressive resume. Among his many accomplishments: he’s played with Count Basie, he was a protégé of Frank Foster, he’s toured with Harry Connick Jr, and he’s performed with Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra. (You may have heard his acrobatic improvising and incredible trumpet sound when he did a […]

It’s that time of year again—warm air, long evenings, and the luxury of listening to music outside. For over thirty years, the Winnipeg Art Gallery has welcomed jazz lovers to its rooftop gallery for a series of summer concerts. The space is open and elegant, and even when everyone is seated and attentive, there’s a […]

Every August, sixty or seventy young musicians get together for a really intense week of immersion in the jazz culture at the U of M Summer Jazz Camp. For five solid days, they work hard with peers who also want to explore this art form, and their skills and knowledge are fostered by a network […]

If you’ve been anywhere in this city over the past couple of decades, you’ll be familiar with the laid-back warmth of Walle Larsson’s saxophone. You’re probably also familiar with the laid-back warmth of his voice—he’s been one of the city’s busiest and best jazz radio hosts. As we come around the corner on his Sunday […]

Hugh John Macdonald School, up on Bannatyne near the Health Sciences Centre, has been a weekly destination for a few of us since the beginning of January. We’ve been testing out and refining a brand new program called The Bridge—an outreach effort to connect with and support young musicians in the inner city. Steve Kirby […]

Art Blakey was a dynamic leader and a volcanic drummer whose hard-bop band, the Jazz Messengers, was a finishing school for young jazz musicians for almost forty years. His graduates include Hank Mobley, Chuck Mangione, Wayne Shorter, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Dorham, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, Benny Green, Geoff Keezer, John Hicks, Mulgrew Miller, Terence Blanchard, […]

Trombonist Steve Davis is one of my favorite musicians playing jazz today. We share similar bloodlines, having both studied with Jackie McLean at the Hartt School in Connecticut. After graduation in 1989, Jackie recommended Steve to his old boss Art Blakey, making Steve one of the last musicians to join the Jazz Messengers before Blakey’s […]

Recently I had one of those great listening experiences with the Robert Glasper Trio—the kind where you are completely wrapped up in the sound, and absorbed in the musical language rather than those endless subtitles from your own life. I suspect that shaking free of that internal racket is one of the reasons I am […]