Josh Grossman's blog

Okay - day 2 of trying to summarize every free show at the Festival. After a momentary brain freeze ("How exactly do I group together all of these shows?!"), I've decided that today's entry would be purely chronological - first things first, as the saying goes.

For opening weekend this year we were aiming for a party inspired by soul, funk and r&b. We've certainly got that on our OLG Stage on Yorkville Avenue...but if we look at the opening weekend's programming on the whole, we discover quite an interesting range of music! Let's dive in.

A few weeks ago, our Publicity team asked me to choose 15 picks from the more than 150 free shows we're presenting at this year's Festival. That's kind of like asking me to choose which of my 150 children are my 15 favourite. (Or is that a weird comparison?) I LIKE THEM ALL EQUALLY.

But. For the purposes of exploring the free shows you can see at this year's Festival, it's a good place to start. And so - here are my first 20 or so picks. (Because I couldn't even get it down to 15.)

You know how when you say to yourself "okay, self, this time you're REALLY gonna write blog posts every week" and then suddenly it's two weeks before the Festival and a whole lotta time has gone by since your last post?

Yeah, well.

Just over three years ago, I had the opportunity to take my big band to Ottawa for a performance with a fantastic vocalist at the Shenkman Centre. Overall, it was a great experience - the promoter covered our bus trip plus one night of hotel accommodation, and the show was sold out - but the logistics? Oy. Making sure 17 musicians showed up on time for the bus pickup, then soundcheck, then show call and then the early morning lobby call the day after the show...I'm lucky that I knew how to conduct a four-beat pattern during the show!

This Sunday, May 6 at The Rex Hotel, we are excited to co-present, along with the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation, the 2018 Israeli Jazz Showcase, as part of the wider Spotlight on Israeli Culture.

What happens when you bring together four different band leaders, from a variety of musical and geographical worlds, to lead four different bands, all on the same night? I'm not sure, exactly, but no doubt great music will be made this Saturday night with the final Special Projects presentation of 2018.

The next two weeks are going to be busy, both on stage and off - while I work furiously to round out the Festival's programming and we prepare for our major media announcement, we've got a part in three upcoming shows: Special Projects this Friday (Adrean Farrugia and Joel Frahm release BLUED DHARMA) and Saturday (The Smith Sessions Presents: Bitches Brew); then the Israeli

We'll be back at Lula Lounge again next Thursday night, March 29 for our second of four TD Discovery Series Special Projects presentations. On tap next week: the release party for the Heavyweights Brass Band's new recording called This City.

This time of year is always busy here at jazz fest headquarters, as we aim to lock in the Festival's remaining ticketed shows and finalize the budgets required to unleash a serious programming campaign (I'll have over 130 free shows to book - at least - over the next eight weeks). It's bound to be an action-packed month as we announce more shows, ramp up our publicity and figure out the substantial jigsaw puzzle that is the free show lineups.

As I mentioned in my post last week, in addition to the eight shows we've announced for this year's Festival, we have four outstanding TD Discovery Series Special Projects presentations coming up - and the first is next week!