Think global, jazz local

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This article was published 12/06/2022 (928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two worldwide events have made the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival into something far greater than a musical celebration.

The COVID-19 pandemic cranked jazz fest’s volume to zero for nearly three years, and its effects on the event — not to mention Winnipeg’s summer festival season — will continue to loom when musicians from around the world kick off the event Tuesday night at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The festival addresses the second global crisis — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — by inviting two Ukrainian performing artists who will prove Ukrainian culture survives and moves forward in spite of Russian artillery shells and missiles that are levelling cities and killing civilians.

“It was very timely to tie that to issues of human rights and our opening nights (at the museum), which are also very deliberate,” says Angela Heck, executive director of Jazz Winnipeg. “The Ukrainian connection is strong for obvious reasons and that’s what we’re going to present.”

One of the opening-night performers is Ukrainian saxophonist Bogdan Gumenyuk, who takes the stage at the museum’s seventh-floor theatre Tuesday at 8:45 p.m.

While he comes from the small city of Berdichev, about 180 kilometres west of Kyiv, and spent many years living and studying music in Ukraine’s capital city, his studies at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, where he earned a Fulbright scholarship, and Montreal’s McGill University, along with years of performing in North America and Europe prove his jazz knows no borders.

He switched from classical to jazz saxophone after hearing Kenny Garrett’s 1999 album, Simply Said.

“I was drawn into his music and through Kenny Garrett I discovered Coltrane and Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins and I went back to where jazz started and started to discover all the saxophonists and musicians in general,” he says. “I went to a couple of teachers and that was it for me. I was driven by this music and I still am.”

He has lived in Montreal the past couple of years and has played a few concerts in Quebec recently to raise funds for the Ukrainian World Congress’s aid efforts. He says people have been amazing with their support and donations, but he worries it isn’t enough.

“I feel like everyone is praying for us, people who believe in God, who don’t believe in God, everyone is thinking about us, and I wish Western governments who are talking about freedom would do more,” he says.

“It’s important to help refugees, but if we’re not going to stop this evil, there will be more and more refugees, not just from Ukraine but all of Eastern Europe.”

Playing music helps shift his attention and worries for his family and friends in Ukraine for a while, but he also is concerned for his native land’s music scene. Jazz and other genres were growing so quickly in Kyiv, Lviv and other Ukrainian cities prior to the invasion, it led led him to start a record label, Label Who Able, which has produced about five records a year from Ukrainian artists since 2017.

“To be honest, it’s very hard to explain and to describe how it feels when your country is invaded and there’s a full-scale war you only heard about (before) from your grandparents,” he says. “Hopefully one day I will continue what I used to do in Kyiv.”

Also Tuesday, local jazz singer Rosemarie Todaschuk, who during the winter holidays sings Ukrainian Christmas carols, is among seven acts who will perform at a patio beside the CMHR, which will also host jazz performances Wednesday and Friday evenings as well as lunch-hour shows.

Three days later, Friday night at the Burton Cummings Theatre, the jazz fest doubles down on Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian artists with a quickly arranged headline concert.

Go_A, a group whose mix of folklore with electronic beats earned them fifth place in the 2021 Eurovision song competition, is at the top of the bill along with Balaklava Blues, the Toronto-based EDM duo of Ukrainian-Canadians Mark and Marichka Marczyk.

“With Go_A it was really an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up. Who doesn’t love the Eurovision song contest,” Heck says. “They are hugely appealing to a younger demographic. Anyone on TikTok has heard their tune SHUM and they’re a really spectacular visual performance group.”

Mainstage performers Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at the CMHR — René Marie and the Melissa Aldana Quartet on Tuesday; Renee Rosnes and Lisa Fischer on Wednesday — are part of Jazz Winnipeg’s commitment to gender parity among its performers.

Jazz has long been a male preserve, but things have changed at the 2022 jazz fest. Whether it’s during the opening two nights at the human rights museum, club shows at the Royal Albert Arms or the King’s Head Pub or at its free evening concert series at Old Market Square that runs Thursday through Sunday, there will be more women performing during the event than men, Heck says.

Jocelyn Gould, the Winnipeg-raised Juno-winning guitarist who debuts her new album, Golden Hour, Sunday at 7:30 at the Royal Albert Arms, welcomes the greater emphasis on female artists.

“I think it’s awesome, it’s about time to be honest,” she says. “I think it’s going to be an incredible festival with incredible music and music is always better when it represents the population properly. The more inclusive festivals can be, the more gender-inclusive, the more racially inclusive, you can only win.”

The six-day event will also be a launching point for performers returning to Canada’s festival circuit. Gould, for instance, has 12 festival dates on her summer itinerary.

For Toronto percussionist Ernesto Cervini, who leads his Tetrahedron concept Tuesday at 10:30 p.m. at a stage in the museum’s Stuart Clark Garden of Contemplation, seeing live audiences dig music again will be a welcome change from solitary songwriting sessions, Zoom meetings with bandmates and students and hours of uncertainty.

“The last gig I played before everything shut down was the CD release for this album,” Cervini says of Tetrahedron. “I’m so thrilled that all these festivals are still around and nothing catastrophic happened.

“I know everybody’s eager to get back to this. Around Toronto, around Ontario and performing in Europe this year, I’ve noticed there’s a strong appetite for live music.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall