Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead
Couldn't load pickup availability
Live at the Cellar
Vancouver's Iconic Jazz Club and the Canadian Co-operative Jazz Scene in the 1950s and '60s
Marian Jago (Author), Don Thompson (Foreword by)
9780774837699
Paperback / softback, published 15 October 2018
364 pages, 50 b&w photos, 2 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.54 kg
Good books on jazz are filled with intriguing stories about the relationships that generate such an energizing art form. This book is that, and more. The more is a carefully considered framework for making sense of the social dynamics that create a jazz scene. Put the stories into the framework and you've got a must-read book. - Brian Fraser, historian and minister (BC Lookbook/The Ormsby Review) Live at the Cellar deserves an audience beyond jazz aficionados: in a town that tends to endlessly reinvent the wheel, it tells how the first wheel was forged. Jago's book is a sparkler. It shows how a small group of believers can make real change and quietly kick ass to boot. Bless 'em all! ... This is Vancouver's book of the year, hands down. Marian Jago has performed a genuine service in capturing one of the places that did exist [in the early jazz scene], with a diligently researched and amiably written study of a unique time and place in Vancouver's musical past.
In the 1950s and '60s, co‐operative jazz clubs such as Vancouver's Cellar, Edmonton's Yardbird Suite, and Halifax's 777 Barrington Street opened their doors in response to new forms of jazz expression emerging after the war and a lack of available performance spaces outside major urban centres. Operated on a not‐for-profit basis by the musicians themselves, these hip new clubs created spaces where young jazz musicians could practise their art close to home. Live at the Cellar looks at this unique period in the development of jazz in Canada. Centered on Vancouver's legendary Cellar club, and including co-ops in four other cities, it explores the ways in which these clubs functioned as sites for the performance and exploration of jazz as well as magnets for countercultural expression in other arts, such as literature, theatre, and film. Marian Jago's deft combination of new, original research with archival evidence, interviews, and photographs allows us to witness the beginnings of a pan-Canadian jazz scene as well as the emergence of key Canadian jazz figures, such as P.J. Perry, Don Thompson, and Terry Clarke, and the rise of jazz icons such as Paul Bley and Ornette Coleman. Although the Cellar and other jazz co-ops are long shuttered, in their day they created a new and infectious energy that still reverberates in Canada's jazz scene today.
Foreword by Don Thompson Preface Introduction Part 1 Setting the Scene 1 Are You In or Out? The Nature of the "Scene" 2 Laying the Groundwork: The Early History of Jazz in Canada Part 2 The Vancouver Scene 3 The Making of a Jazz Scene: Vancouver's Cellar Club 4 No Room for Squares: The Cellar as Artistic Hub 5 In the Swing of Things: Growth, Maturation, and Mingus 6 Altered Chords: New Blood and the End of an Era Part 3 Other Canadian Scenes 7 Co-ops from Coast to Coast: Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax Conclusion Appendices: Gigography for the Cellar, 1956–63; Canadian Jazz Sources Notes; Selected Bibliography; Interviews; Index