In the hubbub of Sunday's petty theft and subsequent investigative activities (eg. dumpster diving), I neglected to mention attending on Saturday a couple of performances at the Vancouver Public Library (one of my favourite buildings) for the annual Sweet Basil Jazz Festival. I hadn't been to this festival before – I'd only heard of it. As far as festivals go, it seems to be eclipsed by the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, but it could just be that Sweet Basil is newer... I tried to look up how old it is, but it doesn't seem to want to show its age...
We first saw Pepe Danza, a Uruguayan musician living in Canada since '89. To give you an idea of his musical versatility, this man has over 300 instruments in his house. With his percussion group the Rhythm Fools, they reverberated the walls at the Library. Danza even painstakingly crafted a flute from an eagle feather given to him by a Haida group and played it! Before putting the holes into the feather, he explained, he went to Stanley Park to gather goose feathers to practice on those. Ultimately, he had to guess where the holes would go on the eagle feather and hope they would work.
The second musician was Francois Bourassa, a 2002 Juno award-winning pianist from Montreal. What was interesting about his performance was his use of the piano strings! He'd have one hand on the keys, and the other plucking the strings... I've never seen anyone do that before, and in combination it sounded great.
