From The Ashes Of Jazz City | Kent Sangster and crew formed the Edmonton International Jazz Festival, now in its fourth year.
2005 was a scary, albeit exciting time for Edmonton’s jazz community. When Jazz City folded after 25 years as a summer institution, the city’s musicians and jazz lovers had mere weeks to cobble together a new festival.
“Energetic” is the word Edmonton Jazz Festival society executive director Kent Sangster uses to describe those turbulent days. “We had six weeks to put a festival on,” he says. “But we did it using a small group and, thankfully, the volunteer base that had formed around the previous festival.”
Heading into 2008, Sangster is cautiously optimistic about the new festival’s progress. “It’s two steps forward, one step back,” he admits. “Balancing out everything that we do is kind of like sitting down with a new piece, looking at it as a whole and editing it.”
Luckily, sponsors see that the festival is working and support has solidified. “We work hard to find sponsors and we have some really good friends of the festival,” says Sangster. “From top to bottom, the support is connected to the music: for example, Acura’s involvement in the festival is driven by a few individuals in Acura that just really love jazz.”
Even though Sangster is pimping the festival nonstop these days, he’s also a member of the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra, an initiative of the Festival Society. “It’s not so much a big band as it is a concert ensemble,” he explains. “The orchestra exists to foster local compositions but also local talent by having concert experience available for players. We’ve tried to fill the void left by Tommy Banks’ band. Not that Tommy’s done doing his thing, but the band’s retired.”
Jazzworks is another important initiative of the EJS. “It’s a program that puts on workshops for kids that get to be mentored by musicians here and all over Canada,” Sangster says. “It culminates in a yearly non-competitive festival for high school and college bands. During the festivals, students will be invited to some of the soundchecks as well.”
Sangster would like to see family concerts become more a part of the Jazz Festival in future years. “My kids really love the concerts that the ESO puts on,” he says, “and it’d be nice to have some afternoon concerts that would get families and kids out.” And they’re educating you too. “At our websites and at our concerts there’s a glossary we’ve made called ‘Jazz 101’ to introduce people to the terms and styles of jazz.”
Let’s face it: jazz experts can get a little snobby. But Sangster says the last thing Jazz Festival promoters want is to make new listeners feel intimidated—after all, those newcomers are the ones who’ll keep the festival running in the future. “When the festival’s on and I’m at concerts,” Sangster says, “I just like to sit back and see who’s there and watch the smiles on people’s faces.” Now, that doesn’t sound snobby at all.
