Sonny Rollins To Open Vancouver Jazz Festival

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Vancouver, B.C.’s Coastal Jazz & Blues Society, which produces the TD Canada Trust Vancouver Jazz Festival, has announced that Sonny Rollins will kick off this year’s 22nd-annual festival with a concert at the Orpheum Theatre on June 22.

The festival, which runs for 10 days through July 1, will envelope the city with the sounds of jazz, blues, funk, Latin, fusion, electronica and world music with more than 400 concerts at venues large and small, indoor and outdoor.

More than 1,800 musicians from Canada and around the world will participate in this year’s festival, which includes 130 free concerts like the Gastown Jazz street festival (June 23–24), Canada Day on Granville Island and the Jazz at the Roundhouse extravaganza on the final two days of the festival.

For more information, visit: www.coastaljazz.ca



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    Wilson’s ability to connect to audiences helped her to win two Grammy awards and multiple other accolades. She was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2022.

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    Bertoncini was a specialist and advocate for the nylon-string acoustic guitar, turning down high-profile opportunities that were unsuited to the sound and techniques that he used with that instrument.

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    A solo concert by saxophonist Joshua Redman will close the first night of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Sept. 26.

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    “It was just that suddenly … I could hear it,” Ravi Coltrane said of an epiphany he experienced during his late teens regarding his father’s music. “And it was almost like a calling, like something saying, ‘Hey, man, come on. It’s time to get serious.’ And the first time you really tune in and dial in and focus like that, it can be very life-changing.”

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    Camille Thurman took to the stage alongside bassist Kenny Davis and drummer Tommy Campbell for a rendition of Johnny Mercer’s “I’m An Old Cowhand” that recalled Rollins’ epochal 1957 trio outing Way Out West.