There are few brands more consistent in Vancouver than that of the Vancouver Jazz Festival.
Other regional jazz fests have a tendency to lean in one direction or another, gamely attempting to cover all the bases to appeal to everything “jazz.” Vancouver’s jazz festival remains an ever shifting patina of urban music, free improv and traditional music.
Very rarely do you come across a two week event that’s happy and contented to skip from Kid Koala and legendary Dutch drummer, Hans Bennink to Janelle Monae and then onto George Benson.
Highlights of this year included Kid Koala’s triumphant return with a brand new art show and silent disco and Jose James‘s sublime outdoor appearance in the pouring rain. Vancouver’s a hard market to crack when you’re dealing with an event designed to cross demographics but this year’s festival showed you can talk all that jazz and still be saying something to all kinds of people.