EVENT CALENDAR
Sunday November 26, 2023 at 7:15 pm
The Ashley Wey Trio
Ashley Wey, a multi award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter and pianist, who has worked with Canadian Idol winner Eva Avila, Juno Award-winners Brandi Distrehaft, Mae Moore, The Parachute Club and has toured on cruise ships around the world with four-time Grammy Award winner, Manny Kellough. With three critically acclaimed self-produced albums to her credit, Wey released her first album of primarily original music, Hummingbird – a genre-bending project melding alternative folk, pop, and jazz on July 9, 2021.
Ashley lights up the stage with her bright smile, charming charisma, and magnificent sounds that open minds and reach hearts. Pianist, composer and singer Ashley Wey is a multi-faceted artist, who is highly regarded for both her playing and her writing as well as how she seamlessly crosses over from modern jazz to D&B and hip-hop..
Anchored by audience interaction, diverse musicality, and candid authenticity, the Ashley Wey Trio has become beloved to fans around the world whenever they can be seen in performance. Wey is an expressive player with a sound firmly rooted in the jazz tradition. The charming piano extraordinaire is an unforgettable performer. She turns every performance into an informal master class regaling audiences with her accounts of jazz history and some of the most heartfelt piano playing you will ever hear. Is there a more ebullient or convincing advocate for jazz today? Her music is marked by unmistakable purpose and harmonic authority and she employs a powerful technique and deep insight into a wide range of repertoire from the Great American Songbook to her own soulful originals.
The Ashley Wey trio features Louis Rudner on bass and Hans Verhoueven on Drums.
You can find out more about Ashley Wey at www.ashleyweymusic.com
Sunday January 28, 2024 at 7:15 pm
Gord Clements Quartet with Tom Williamson
This Spirited Jazz special event is unquestionably a unique opportunity to hear music that made history with a tribute to the music of Gerry Mulligan & Chet Baker
The Tribute celebrates the historical instrumental recordings produced by Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker in 1952 and 1953. The chemistry between these two legendary musicians became iconic of the evolution of jazz from Bebop to the Birth of Cool.
Mulligan’s arrangements are exactly reproduced but the improvisations are created fresh and in the moment by the musicians themselves. The music swings with elegant harmonies and arrangements that are both complex and evocative with a wide range of sensual textures produced by combining the baritone saxophone and trumpet with infectious grooves on upright acoustic bass and drum set.
The musicians are well known to jazz audiences in Victoria. Gord Clements is the Victoria Symphony’s jazz saxophone soloist. Tom Williamson recently relocated to Victoria from San Francisco and is enthusiastically remembered for his trumpet work and leadership of the late 1970’s Victoria based jazz group “Elmo Whigget”. Both Louis Rudner on upright bass and Dave Emery on drums are often heard at Hermann’s Jazz Club and are highly respected for their inspiring rhythmic teamwork.
For out more about Gord Clements
Sunday Febrary 25, 2024 at 7:15 pm
Ryan Oliver, Mark Crawford Duo
Juno-nominated, Victoria-based saxophonist, Ryan Oliver honed his craft on Canada’s west coast before moving to Amsterdam, Toronto and New York. Since returning to Vancouver Island, he has maintained a busy schedule as one of Canada’s most in-demand saxophonists.
Along with seasoned guitarist Mark Crawford this dynamite duo is at the top of their profession. Their smooth beautiful innovative treatments and stylizations of Swinging Standards, BossaNovas and Ballads provide a blissful evening of imaginings filled with pure joy.
