It is the sixteenth annual university-college big band jazz festival at Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre, on March 23rd, Jazz big bands from across the lower mainland come gather and perform their sets. Schools including Douglas College, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Capilano University, UBC, and VCC.
I was invited by my friend, Cyrus Bhiladvala, who was in UBC Jazz II (Jazz two), he would perform for the last time in the band. I was not aware of the length of the event, under the impression that it would be just a performance by Jazz II, but I did end up staying for the entire event which lasted 7 hours.
I am not familiar with big band Jazz music beyond watching the movie Whiplash, but the experience was overall good, even though there wasn’t a huge variety of music. There wasn’t much differences between different bands the universities, but I noticed a trend that Capilano university brought generally larger bands compared to other schools, often having at least 3 of each trombone and trumpets compared to 1 of each from many other bands, as a result the their big bands were that much BIGGER, the Cap bands were often so loud my ears heart.
The way the event was set up was to feature the more amateur bands earlier in the day, and the heavy hitters for later in the night. Though that is not to say the earlier bands were worse than the later bands.
UBC Jazz II were up pretty early in the day. Cyrus was one of the alto one’s in jazz II, and he had two instances of solos, his first solo in Gordon Goodwin’s Hit The Bricks, featuring a steady three note groove from an electric bass. His second solo was in a big band arrangement of Jerome Kern’s Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, originally a song from the Broadway musical Roberta. Cyrus moved a lot during the solos, often bowing completely over or leaning backwards during longer melodic runs, heavily contrasting the other alto one in the band, who would stay completely still during his solos.
Cyrus was complaining to me earlier that he wished jazz II played harder music, as the night progressed I can tell that the music was getting ‘harder’, featuring much more exotic chord changes and rhythm changes, and often faster as well. To be perfectly honest I felt that jazz can get too out of hand, and out of touch when it gets ‘harder’, some of the songs played later in the night definitely felt too out there for me, but when it hits home the highlights are well worth wait in between.
One of my favorite pieces played throughout the night was Bob Florence’s Afternoon of a Prawn performed by UBC Jazz I. WHAT A RUSH, the song supposedly originated from a joke, amongst the jazzheads, the soprano sax is sometimes called a ‘fish stick’. Afternoon of a Prawn of course then features the soprano sax on the main hook. The song starts of with the keyboard, bass, and drums meandering, as if a prawn was having a nice afternoon, who would soon be heavily disturbed by a storm of ‘fish sticks’, blasting through the nice swinging rhythm with a series of jagged downward melodies with odd rhythmic changes, portraying the fish chasing the prawn through tight twists and turns in the ocean. I particularly enjoyed the sonification of such a story, I’d highly recommend everyone check out this song.
Some of the other highlight tracks include Rick Hirsch’s Catch Me If You Can, performed by CapU B Band, featuring a playful motif and rhythm, with multiple simultaneous sax leads playing leads in exotic scales, almost as if they are ‘bragging’ at the audience, like a portrayal of someone saying ‘catch me if you can’ at you, then sticking their tongue out. It’s overall a really sour track, it really tickled my fancy. More highlights include Peter Herbolzheimer’s Blues in Latin, performed by UBC Jazz I, Count Basie’s Blee Blop Blues, and many Duke Ellington tracks played by the VCC band.
It was a great night, filled with wonderful performances from many virtuosos, I was a little tired of big band Jazz music at the end of the night, but I’d recommend everyone to check out some live big band music, it’s not like anything else out there.