A Yamaha Concert Grand Piano will be the premier instrument for a cavalcade of Jazz, Rag-time, Classical and Blues performers throughout the twelve days of the Festival. Performances on this exquisite marvel of Yamaha craftsmanship and grand piano evolution will range from solo recitals to jazz and blues ensembles in shows and concerts.

In recognition of the dedication to the arts of the many fine instrumentalists and vocalists in our region performing in other musical idioms, the Festival will be presenting a series of recitals and showcases featuring a selection of excellent teachers and students from throughout Simcoe County.

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"THE GIANTS OF JAZZ" ARTICLE

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 8:00 P.M. A "GREAT MOMENTS IN JAZZ" CONCERT Featuring MORGAN CHILDS - ADREAN FARRUGIA NEIL SWAINSON PRESENTS "THE QUARTET THAT CHANGED JAZZ" RELEASED ON AUGUST 17 RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 14 RELEASED IN OCTOBER RELEASED ON DECEMBER 14 1959 It was the seismic year jazz musicians broke away from complex bebop music in an evolution to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express their passions. It was also a pivotal year for America - the nation was enjoying freedom and wealth; social, racial and upheavals were just around the corner; and jazz was ahead of the curve. And four absolutely canonical LPs were recorded that year, each a high watermark for the artists and a reflection of the times - Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", Dave Brubeck's "Time Out", Charles Mingus' "Mingus Ah Um" and Ornette Coleman's "The Shape of Jazz to Come". These albums opened up dramatic new possibilities for jazz which continue to be felt in the Twenty-First century. _____________________________________ JAKE KOFFMAN Jake Koffman, a Canadian saxophone player, plays virtually any reed instrument from clarinet to baritone sax. Jake was born into a famous musical family in Toronto. One of his grandfathers, Moe Koffman, was one of the first Canadian jazz musicians to start playing bebop, while his other grandfather, Victor Feldbrill, was conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, Jake released a debut album, "The Jake Koffman Quartet", and since then has been the jazz hope of Canada. Jake can often be seen in the band of the famous Canadian jazz-pop singer, Nikki Yanofsky.i _____________________________________

THURSDAY, JUNE 12 8:00 P.M. A "GIANTS OF JAZZ" CONCERT Featuring JIM GELCER - GEORGE KOLLER PRESENTS Concert By The Sea is so infectious and open-hearted, it almost defies inspection: it's the kind of warm, inviting music that seems born from joy and can't help but engender bliss in the listener. _____________ A RETROSPECTIVE ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF "ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE OF ALL PIANISTS" AND A "BRILLIANT VIRTUOSO" - "THE DEBUSSY OF JAZZ". Erroll Louis Garner June 15, 1921 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. – January 2, 1977 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Erroll Garner (born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard. George Wein regarded him as "a great musical genius". Hugues Panassié said of him, "He is not only the greatest pianist to emerge in jazz since World War II, but he is also the only one who has created a new style which is in the true jazz tradition, one which constitutes the essence of this music." Steve Allen said he was "the greatest popular pianist of our century." Art Tatum called him, "My little boy." Erroll Garner was a formidably accomplished and incredibly prolific self-taught pianist who first began exploring the piano keyboard at the age of three and went on to become a genuine jazz legend. His professional career spanned almost four decades and, in that time, he recorded for dozens of different labels, sometimes solo, mostly with his own trio. His recorded output occupies 33 pages in Tom Lord's The Jazz Discography. He made altogether more than 200 albums. Garner was an amazingly energetic and resourceful musician with a phenomenal ear, remarkable memory and an astonishing independence of right and left hands. He was completely ambidextrous and could write and play tennis right or left handed with equal facility. He was also a sensitive, intelligent and rather shy man with a sunny dispositiion and an impish humour and he never took himself or his art too seriously. Garner was also a gifted composer. In addition to "Misty", his most successful original, written in 1954, he also produced such appealing themes as "Erroll's Bounce", "Dreamy", "Nightwind", "That's My Kick", "Gaslight", "Mood Island", "The Loving Touch", "Paris Mist", "Dreamstreet", and "It Gets Better Every Time". One of his biggest hits was "Laura", recorded in September 1945, and his live Concert By The Sea album, recorded in September 1955, was one of the best selling jazz albums of all time. _____________ PAUL HOFFERT MULTI-AWARD RECIPIENT MEMBER OF THE ORDER OF CANADA Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.- born, Paul "Poli" Hoffert, is best known for his work with the rock band "Lighthouse", which he co-founded with Canadian drummer, Skip Prokop. His musical origins, however, were rooted in classical music and subsequently jazz, and he released his first recording - "The Jazz Routes of Paul Hoffert" - with The Paul Hoffert Quartet when he was only 16 years old. He went on to perform with jazz greats such as Moe Koffman, Freddie Hubbard, Guido Basso, Rob McConnell and Ed Bickert, at venues such as the Newport, Monterey, and Boston Globe jazz festivals, as well as Carnegie Hall. Hoffert's most recent jazz recording, "How High The Bird", is an iconclastic shuffling of the "standards" and "be-bop" deck with music partner-drummer, Jim Gelcer. "Congrats on a great record!" - Jaymz B, Jazz FM 91.1 A mulit-instrumentalist who, as a child, was recognized for being a prodigy, "Poli" counts as his major influences in jazz piano, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. An intellectual and creative peripatetic, Hoffert's vast and heralded contributions to the Arts and Technology are best summed up by the media and his contemporaries ...... "Paul Hoffert defies neat definitions. The founder and keyboard player for the 1970s rock band Lighthouse is now the architect of Canada’s most innovative information highway experiments. A university professor, businessman, composer and conductor, Hoffert is, in the words of some, the quintessential 'renaissance man'. He is also, possibly, the ideal visionary for the electronic age." - Toronto Star "Mr. Hoffert is one of the New Mandarins - along with Microsoft’s Bill Gates … His music wakes up Canadians every morning, but this member of the Canadian Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been waking up the technology sector as well ... " - Financial Post "Musician, scientist, engineer, arts maven, and entrepreneur Paul Hoffert takes us on an accessible, lively, wide-ranging, thought-provoking tour of the frontiers of technology and culture (in his book, The Bagel Effect) ... an optimistic and deeply humanistic view of the world and of modern technology's role in it... Required reading for an introduction to the profound changes being enabled by modern media." - Dr. Ronald Baecker, Director, Knowledge Media Design Institute, University of Toronto _____________________________________

FRIDAY, JUNE 13 8:00 P.M. A "GIANTS OF JAZZ" CONCERT PRESENTS "LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON" French impressionist composers were enamoured with the excitement and musical explorations of the early jazz musicians in the United States, and adopted the rhythms and sonorities inherent in this novel music art-form for their own works. By the same token, Miles Davis and Bill Evans were known to analyze the works of Debussy, Ravel, Satie and Stravinsky together, especially in the influencing of the mammoth modal jazz recording, "Kind Of Blue". Like Father, Like Son ..... Like Debussy, Like Davis Matt Herskowitz examines the works of a couple of French impressionist composers who were influenced by the early jazz and rag-time performers of the era, his own re-arrangements of Chopin études, and wraps things up with a rousing solo piano version of Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue", a heavy influence on Ravel. CLAUDE DEBUSSY Golliwogg’s Cake Walk (from “Children’s Corner”) Minstrels (from Preludes, Book 1) FREDRIC CHOPIN / MATT HERSKOWITZ Etude Opus 10, No. 1, “Boogie-Woogie” Etude Opus 10, No. 2, “El Montuno” Etude Opus 25, No. 9, “Ragtime Butterfly” MAURICE RAVEL, Arranged by MATT HERSKOWITZ Concerto in G: 2nd Movement. Adagio Assai Five O’clock Foxtrot (from “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges”) GEORGE GERSHWIN Prelude No. 1: Allegro Ben Ritmato E Deciso Rhapsody In Blue _____________________________________ MATT HERSKOWITZ Uniquely combining the superlative technique of a classical virtuoso with his prowess in jazz, world music and free improvisation, pianist, composer and arranger Matt Herskowitz has carved out a unique and personal voice in music. Over the course of the last decade, Matt has produced a series of critically-acclaimed recordings, premiered his works in settings from New York’s Central Park to Germany’s Ko¨ln Philharmonie, collaborated with top classical, jazz and pop artists, and has performed at music festivals across the globe.As a pianist, composer, songwriter and arranger, Herskowitz has distinguished himself in several musical genres. His 2007 solo piano release, Matt Herskowitz Plays Gershwin (Disques Tout Crin), featuring Gershwin's great solo arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue and Matt's own original solo arrangements of the Concerto in F and Cuban Overture, was nominated in 2007 for Quebec's prestigious Prix Opus. It also made Montreal's prominent quotidian La Presse's list of top 10 jazz albums of the year. His 2006 solo release, Gabriel's Message, which features his original arrangements and compositions based on popular Christmas themes, was nominated for Québec's prestigious Félix award in 2007. A graduate of the Juilliard School in New York and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Herskowitz is originally from Albany, New York, and has made Montreal his adopted home for more than 20 years. Among Matt's most recent recordings is "Piano Cameleons", a collaboration with pianist, John Roney, in which they explore the jazz possibilites inherent in popular classical music compositions.hi _____________________________________

SATURDAY, JUNE 14 10:30 A.M. DARYL YAEGER - Music Director COME ON OUT TO THE HEART OF THE CITY AND ENJOY THE TALENTS OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF JAZZ MUSICIANS AS THEY EXPLORE THE BIG BAND COMPOSITIONS MADE FAMOUS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. ______________________________________ 8:00 P.M. A "GIANTS OF JAZZ" CONCERT HISTORIA DEL PIANO JAZZ CUBANO CHUCHO VALDES PRESENTED BY GRAMMY MULTI-AWARD NOMINEE LATIN GRAMMY AWARD RECIPIENT MULTI-AWARD RECIPIENT Featuring AHMED MITCHEL - ROBERTO RIVERÓN "There is something extraordinary about the pianists of Cuba that mystifies the global audience. The exceptional levels of technical brilliance, the ongoing creative exploration, and a deep respect for the legacy of those who came before, have all contributed to the musical lexicon on the island across time, generation, geographic boundary and socio-political lines. It is without any doubt that the foundation in the European classical tradition in Cuba, coupled with a surge in nationalism at the end of the 19th century, did much to define a musical canon that is, like the strands of human DNA, an inherent part of everyday Cuban culture. Furthermore, it was the rhythmical structure within this neo classical repertoire that prompted early American composers such as Jelly Roll Morton to refer to the highly syncopated feeling in the music as a "Spanish Tinge." We now know that this tinge was, in fact, Cuban." ..... MORE - Rebeca Mauleón, ON THE CORNER, THE SFJAZZ MAGAZINE _____________________________________ HILARIO LUIS DURÁN TORRES Cuban born Hilario Durán grew up in Havana in a musical family surrounded by a variety of diverse musical influences. He began working as a professional musician in Cuba's Los Papa Cun-Cun Ensemble and in a variety of musical formats. Later on, in the 1970's, Durán was Chucho Valdés' chosen successor in Cuba's most modern big band, Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. Hilario Durán toured worldwide and performed with Dizzy Gillespie and Michel Legrand, among many others, as part of Arturo Sandoval's band, where he was pianist/keyboardist, arranger and musical director for 9 years. Chucho Valdés has acknowledged that the Grammy-nominated, multi JUNO-award winner and Latin Grammy award winner is "an unparalleled pianist, composer and arranger of the first order". After making his mark in Cuba, Durán continued to hone his skills as a pianist, composer, arranger and musical director of remarkable virtuosity. Since arriving in Canada, Hilario has made a name for himself as a multi-Canadian National Jazz Award winner and and the proud recipient of the 2007 Chico O'Farrill Lifetime Achievement Award, from Latin Jazz USA, for his outstanding contributions to Afro-Cuban Jazz and Latin Jazz. . Durán immigrated in 1998 to Canada and was named as One of the 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians in 2009. Hilario has been named Best Artist of the Year 2013 by the Toronto Musicians' Association and also as 2014 Best Vision Award Winner (Premio a la Trayectoria) for his work as an entrepreneur and as a director of his musical company, ES MI MUSICA PRODUCTIONS. Hilario is a 2018 Recipient of the Louis Applebaum Composers Award by the Ontario Arts Foundation. He is also an educator at Toronto's Humber College, acting as a piano teacher and ensemble director. _____________________________________

THIS PROGRAMME SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE
Current to MAY 10, 2025