Vancouver International Jazz Festival hits all the right notes

The Vancouver International Jazz Festival, which started last weekend and winds up Tuesday, is so diverse and multilayered, six people could have six different but equally wonderful experiences there.

I managed to take in 10 groups the first weekend, including a double dose of European avant-garde favorites; homecoming celebrations by a pair of brilliant Vancouver tenor saxophonists (both coincidentally named Blake); and several free concerts at scenic outdoor venues.

The whole city lights up during Jazz Festival week, and savvy locals know some of the best music can be heard gratis. On Sunday, on the pier behind Canada Place, which juts into the cerulean waters of Burrard Inlet and offers a spectacular view of the towering mountains beyond, New Yorker-turned-Vancouverite June Katz sang a Broadway-to-bop set with throaty sensuality and an easy sense of swing.

Sunday held another nice surprise in the sizzling piano of 24-year-old Amanda Tosoff, who bristled with soulful, swinging, uncluttered ideas on a Latin tune by Bud Powell for a crowd lounging on the Victory Square lawn. Down the street, by the steam clock in Gastown (the city's historic district), hundreds of fans gathered to cheer on tenor-sax man Seamus Blake, who moved to New York from Vancouver several years ago. Performing with the no-nonsense Montreal drummer Joel Haynes, Blake pumped the energy level up, tune by tune, until he reached a blur of notes — Michael Brecker/John Coltrane style.

At the same stage Saturday, the London post-bop group Empirical raised a refreshing ruckus inspired by the spare, sweet-and-sour sax and trumpet sound of early Ornette Coleman. Down the street, in an overlapping set, Cuban vocalist Wil Campa and La Gran Union singed Maple Leaf Square with salsa — hot, tight and sweet. Campa unleashed a torrent of words on the classic "La Mujer de Antonio Camina Así" ("Antonio's wife walks like this") as the chorus barked back its lusty refrain about that famous female strut.

Vancouver specializes in avant-garde New Dutch Swing, and two of its most compelling practitioners — reed man Ab Baars and his wife, violist Ig Henneman — performed twice. Saturday, they collaborated in mix-and-match permutations with Norwegians Inbebrigt Håker Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) at the Performance Center at the Roundhouse, veering from careful sound explorations to frenetic conversations.

Chicago reed man Ken Vandermark's trio, Free Fall — named for the famous Jimmy Giuffre trio with the same clarinet, bass and piano instrumentation — followed with a lively, commanding set that nicely showcased pianist Håvard Wiik, a fleet, postmodern Bud Powell.

Baars and Henneman duetted Sunday at the Western Front, offering a model of intimate, witty "handmade" music, as Baars' flannel, low-register clarinet blended gorgeously with Henneman's viola. Baars also recited haiku and played the shakuhachi, a difficult end-blown Japanese flute. He acknowledged his shakuhachi teacher, Vancouverite Takeo Yamashiro, who was in the audience.

My weekend closed with tenor saxophonist Michael Blake, another Vancouverite turned New Yorker. His conceptual project with the large group Amor de Cosmos (named after a 19th-century British Columbia politician) was a bit ponderous, but his other group, Blake Tartare, with a Danish trio, evinced a spectacularly oblique, punkish energy.

Tonight, the always-swinging Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis, performs at the Orpheum Theatre, and vocalist Andy Bey plays a double bill with pianist Monty Alexander at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts.

There's free music all day Saturday and Sunday at the Roundhouse with, among others, the NOW Orchestra, saxophonists Tim Berne and Chris Speed, pianists Paul Plimley and Sylvie Courvoisier and drummer Michael Vatcher. Monday is dark, but there is more free music Tuesday at Granville Island, celebrating Canada Day.

Enjoy the festival.

And, as they say in Canada, "goodbye for now." I am taking a leave of absence to work on a biography of the incomparable Marian McPartland, host of National Public Radio's "Piano Jazz."

The Seattle Times will continue to cover Seattle's lively jazz scene, however, so please check NWTicket and our daily arts pages.

I'll see you when the book's done.

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com