Tim Tamashiro is CBC Music's Jazz Evangelist and host of CBC Radio 2's Tonic. The Jazz Evangelist's mantra? "Come to the jazz side. We have martinis!" Today, a look at the Ottawa jazz scene.
Most jazz communities have a few things in common: jazz musicians, jazz fans and a dedicated jazz club. Not Ottawa. At least, not when it comes to the third part of that equation. Ottawa is a city of a million-plus people and has no dedicated jazz venue. Ottawa's beloved jazz joint, Cafe Paradiso, closed its doors recently. Does that matter? Hardly.
Ottawa is a city that makes jazz happen regardless of its missing jazz venue. Ottawa singer Renée Yoxon, for example, is someone who is tireless when it comes to getting jazz out there into the world. She's endlessly creative as a lyricist, jazz singer, bandleader, recording artist and physicist. Yes, Yoxon has a degree in physics and she demonstrates her physics prowess in her music career through Newton's laws of motion. In other words, Yoxon makes her career move with constant energy, enthusiasm and talent. Yoxon just raised over $10,000 for a new CD that she's releasing in December. She's a force to be reckoned with, and she's accelerating.
Another force is Craig Pedersen, a trumpeter who embraces the "do it yourself" spirit of jazz in Bytown. Pedersen is one of the co-founders of Improvising Musicians of Ottawa, or IMOO for short. IMOO has held more than 60 concerts of improvised music in Ottawa. Wow!
From what the website OttawaJazzScene.ca indicates, there is no shortage of venues in Ottawa to hear jazz, despite the loss of a jazz-dedicated club. Ottawa jazz journalist (and pianist) Peter Hum calls contributors to OttawaJazzScene.ca "exceptional people" who are "holding up the mirror" to Ottawa's jazz scene. Sushi restaurants, pubs and coffee shops offer jazz on a one-night-at-a-time basis. Jazz jams are plentiful. So you can find jazz throughout the Ottawa region any day of the week.
But if there is a "go to" venue for touring jazz artists to approach for a gig between Toronto and Montreal, it would be Options Jazz Lounge in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. There is also a co-operative live music venue called Gigspace, where musicians can book the venue for a gig for the generous sum of 20 per cent of the ticket sales. Sounds like a win/win.
There's soft seat jazz, too, at the National Arts Centre. This season it centres on bassist John Geggie and Canadian jazz artists, vocalists mostly, including Molly Johnson, Diana Krall and Laila Biali.
Ottawa offers a mix for the true jazz fan, for the musician and for the jazz dabbler. Maybe Bytown should be rechristened as jazz DIY town.
Related:
The Jazz Evangelist: Calgary, a whole new jazz town
The Jazz Evangelist: coffee, tea and Diana Krall in scanties