2008 Season
Artistic Director’s message
The spirit of music binds us to community
I remember reading somewhere how studies had proven conclusively that mice fed a steady diet of jazz were consistently healthier than mice nourished with other kinds of musical diets. I can't quote the source, and, to be honest, I have no idea whether there's any truth to these claims. Of course, I'm always looking for reasons to be able to extol the health (and other) benefits of jazz. I've long claimed that the kind of music you hear during our festival has the capacity to foster healthy and sustainable communities.
Little could I predict that my own health would be a test case. At the end of May, while returning from Paris, I suffered an in-flight heart attack over the Atlantic. Fortunately, there were a number of doctors and nurses on board, and they responded expertly and immediately, forming a kind of impromptu life-saving team. After an emergency landing and hospital stints in two provinces, I returned home to Guelph, where I've been recovering well.
During this whole ordeal, my family and I have been the recipients of a tremendous outpouring of support: from musicians, arts presenters, audience members, friends, and colleagues, to complete strangers who've gifted me with their kindness and prayers, and who've often gone out of their way to help us in ways that I can't even begin to describe here. I'm touched by the care, concern, and compassion that people have shown me.
More than anything else, I've realized, it is the spirit of the music that binds me to such a caring, vital, and healthy community. This fact seems proof enough - more powerful even than scientific experiments with mice - of what I've always hoped for with the music that I present at the Guelph Jazz Festival. It is therefore with a feeling of particular poignancy that I offer this year's 15th anniversary edition with my heartfelt thanks for your continuing support.
I dedicate this year's festival to the memory and music of Oliver Schroer (above right), a Festival performer who died on July 3, 2008 after an 18-month battle with leukemia.
- Ajay Heble
Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra
With the playfully volatile and oft-contradictory duo of Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink at its core for more than 40 years, ICP is now a long-established 10-piece ensemble that features several of the most original voices in creative music. The ICP Orchestra is a radical band at the peak of its powers and brimming with outrageous (and outrageously varied) soloists.
