Asper-founded jazz series celebrates 25 years

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This article was published 16/11/2024 (349 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Izzy Asper Jazz Performances series is turning 25 this year.

Its anniversary season kicks off this weekend with two Roaring ‘20s-themed concerts featuring Montreal-based vocalist Susie Arioli and her quartet.

The Oscar Peterson Prize winner’s style is a throwback to the golden era of jazz crooners, but with a quirk: she plays a snare drum while she sings.

“And she’s an amazing storyteller,” says Charlene Diehl, the series’ producer. “There are special singers who feel like they’re living inside the lyrics and songs, and she’s one. It’s delightful and it’s really moving.”

Arioli’s latest album — her 12th, called Embraceable —is a collection of original works and vocal standards from the Great American Songbook, which should tie in nicely with the weekend’s theme. More than a celebration of great jazz, the anniversary concerts, “mark a vision and commitment to an art form that a lot of people love,” says Diehl.

That vision goes back to the series’ founder, Manitoba business magnate Izzy Asper. Asper’s diverse philanthropic legacy is most associated with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, but his role as a jazz impresario is nearly as legendary.

His colourful entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia, based on a 1996 Maclean’s article, reads that his love for jazz was sparked with a copy of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a bar mitzvah present from his brother. It had to be smuggled home, as even this 1924 symphonic piece — a staple of the concert hall more than the jazz club — was seen as vulgar by their Beethoven-loving father.

Asper’s tastes evidently evolved with the tradition. He could be spotted at the Ting on Broadway watching local jazz guitarist Lenny Breau, and often rambled through New York City’s concert districts, where the giants of modern and contemporary jazz played many of their most iconic shows.

Inspired by New York’s famous 92nd Street Y cultural centre, Asper approached the Rose and Max Rady Jewish Community Centre in 1999 about partnering to host jazz greats in Winnipeg. The idea took flight.

“He really thought that Winnipeggers should have a chance to experience jazz in the way it’s played in the great clubs in New York,” Diehl says.

In 2005, two years after Asper’s death, the series was renamed, from the Asper Foundation Performances Jazz Series to the Izzy Asper Jazz Performances, in his honour.

Diehl says the organization — which over the years has hosted such luminaries as pianists Monty Alexander and Emmet Cohen, bassist Christian McBride and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra — has had its ups and downs, and had a tough time during the pandemic, like everyone else.

As well as reflecting on Asper’s legacy, this weekend’s concerts are a chance for Winnipeggers to reconnect at a “difficult time for fun, beauty and to synchronize,” Diehl says.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca