Queen Street Rides the Next Wave
The du Maurier Arts Downtown Jazz Festival kicks off on June 23 at Nathan Philips Square, and promises to be ten days of the very best in jazz, blues, and jazz-roots music. One of the many highlights in this year’s festival is the Next Wave Series, featuring a host of exceptional new artists who push the limits of jazz into new territories.
Ron Gaskin is the coordinator in charge of the Next Wave series for this year’s Jazz Festival. Given the reputation of Queen Street, Ron says it is to be expected that the series would find its home here. “Queen Street is evolving as the hip, cool, avante-guard neighbourhood, similar in nature to other international centres like the Soho district in New York. The two clubs that are the double-barreled shotgun focus for the Next Wave Series are the Rivoli and the Bamboo. The Bamboo is known for jazz, world-beat music, things of that nature. The Rivoli is known for more hardcore, austere international and local acts.”
It’s not just the music in this series that’s riding the next wave. The Jazz Festival has set up shop in the Electronic Universe in order to make a less confusing task of finding the bands you want to hear. For information on Next Wave artists, and to hear samples of their work, call the Next Wave Series Listening Post, available on the 46MUSIC service. By dialing 466-8742 with your touch-tone phone, you can access the most up-to-date concert listings and a selection of songs from such musicians as Tortoise, Excalceolators, and Guus Janssen. Information can also be found on the Internet through Rick’s Cafe at http//www.io.org/-rixax/NextWave.html (listings for the rest of the Jazz Festival can also be found at Rick’s.)
These days, artists from every musical scene in the book are exploring the fringes of their genre, but all too often it is the jazz artists that are ignored by mainstream pop culture. Exposing these new local and international musicians to such an artistically progressive market might shed some light on the most enduring from of modern music.