| I’m reminded of Billy Bragg as I look at these boom times Calgary is currently enjoying. He said, "you got to take the crunchy with the smooth," and while these days are great for some, musicians often struggle to find affordable performance space. It’s particularly difficult if you’re a jazz musician, but it’s affecting all performers from classical to punk rock.
It seems this problem is at its worst in downtown Calgary, where parking is scarce, expensive and space is at a costly premium. There is, however, one notable downtown exception – Cantos Music Foundation.
Cantos has just launched a new partnership with JAZZIS and for at least the next year jazzers can get their fix of JAZZIS gigs at the Cantos Foundation. The foundation’s manager of communications is planning a whole list of new nighttime events for jazz and otherwise.
"Absolutely," says Andrew Mosker, describing the breadth of Cantos’ commitment to Calgary musicians. "Classical, singer-songwriters and everybody in between. The whole idea of our music room right now is to make it accessible for arts organizations and individuals – artists, in the city. There is nowhere you can go to my knowledge, besides a church maybe, where you have a room with your choice of a couple of really good pianos that are tuned and in good shape, a Hammond b3 organ and a PA (system) with a capacity of about 120 people." And, as Mosker points out, Cantos is affordable and accessible, two key factors in this city of rising costs.
Cantos’ location also just happens to be in the heart of some pretty major boom building in the last few years. As Mosker describes it, "there are a lot of developments that have come into that part of the city both across the street, kitty corner to the street , everywhere, that have really seen that neighbourhood turn around and it’s only going to continue."
Logically speaking, if the neighbourhood profile is upscaled, costs would go up, right? Probably true, but while the landscape on that stretch of 11th Avenue S.E. has altered, it hasn’t changed Mosker's determination.
"What we need to do in this city is give our local artists a platform to perform from. We do a pretty good job with our festivals, but there aren’t a lot of live music venues in this city, particularly for jazz, and that is becoming increasingly harder to produce. There’s no question, Cantos isn’t perfect, but it’s affordable, it’s accessible and the instruments definitely help produce concerts where there’s a piano needed. So, for that reason alone we are going to continue to be a venue for live music in the day and in the evening, as long as we can find the right partners to work with."
And that puts the smooth ahead of the crunchy. |
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