FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| COVER STORY It's no brilliant life-altering statement to say that sometimes it takes losing something to really understand what you actually had. But what if all it took to keep what you already had was as simple as just appreciating it, recognizing it and supporting it? Take Calgary's jazz community, for example. It grows and continues to thrive in the shade of the city's rock, singer/songwriter and country scenes. It continues to produce an uncommon number of impressive players and vocalists without excessive radio play or, for the longest time, venues where jazz was taken seriously as something other than background dinner music. What if it stopped growing? Should the fact that only outside intervention could save Calgary's jazz festival be seen as omen? I mean, when you look at all of the forces seemingly conspiring against them, why would any jazz artist in their right mind stay here? "That's a good question," pianist Brian Buchanan replies. "You know, I was gonna leave here, but I've got a wife and kids now, we bought a house... but I'm certainly not getting comfortably numb by any means. "It was very frustrating last year, I went through a bit of depression. Just the lack of challenge, I think, in my career. Most of the gigs I was doing were completely uninteresting and uninspiring - that's why I took a break." For Buchanan - who has played with everyone from Chet Baker and Herb Ellis to Cindy Church and Big Miller - to be just getting by and having contemplated leaving, you know things aren't sunny and swingin'. For years he's been one of the leading proponents and champions of the local scene. He's been the president of the Jazz Calgary Society, he helped establish a number of clubs as reputable jazz rooms (don't think he's pleased with Kaos's gradual swing to a blues room), and he started up his own jazz label, Isotope Records, which has released several CDs including his latest effort, Soulstice. And while Buchanan seems earnestly eager to help the scene succeed, he admits his actions may also have a lot to do with his survival instinct. "The scene in Calgary has been a struggle because I never felt like I got a lot of support from the older community - the Eric Friedenberg community," Buchanan says, referring to one of the city's elder statesmen of jazz. "I always felt like the more I marketed myself and the more I tried to make things happen, the more they worked against me. "I certainly don't have any negative feelings about it now, but there was a time when I resented the way they treated me." Buchanan explains that the lack of support and "union mentality," which have thankfully fallen by the wayside, forced him to make things happen for himself and subsequently take center stage as a band leader. It's a position he still doesn't seem overly comfortable with, although he does it with ease. On Soulstice - a gorgeous amble through accessible contemporary romantic jazz melodicism - he gives as much time to his bandmates' solos (especially the bewitching, creamy saxwork of Juno Award-winning Phil Dwyer) as he takes for his own. While Buchanan's name and face are on the cover, the album is a collaborative effort in the best jazz tradition. Maybe that's the key to why people stick around - the fact that it really is a community and the musicians who are finding their chops now think of it in that way. And maybe, with a commitment to jazz from clubs like Beat Niq, The Blackfoot Inn and Quincy's, maybe the support system can keep pushing it forward until, finally, it's given the same credibility as other genre's. Maybe then the city's finest, like Buchanan, won't have to look elsewhere for their appreciation. But still.... "If I was going to move I'd like to move to Europe.... My wife is hip enough that I think she would endorse me spending a year or two in Europe if the opportunity was right," he says. "I get itchy feet to leave. I mean, I've always gone up and down about that.... As I'm getting the CD out, I'm really getting anxious to pursue some bigger things." |
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