Drummer extraordinaire Winard Harper led his jazz band the Winard Harper Sextet through two hours of great music, that featured standards and original compositions-and that was just the first set. Playing before an appreciative audience at West Broadway’s The Jazz Cellar in Vancouver, the sextet was nothing short of marvelous, and after each solo performance, the patrons applauded them. At other times, the audience broke into spontaneous applause to spur their new found heroes onto even great

Denmark’s Christina and Carsten Dahl make sweet music together-in more than one way, for the couple are a dynamic jazz duo, and they are also husband and wife. Denmark’s first couple of jazz possesses a love for one another that is evident on stage, yet it does not come across as syrupy. Their respect for one another as musicians one would assume would contain an element of bias, but they handle this too with class and professionalism. On Saturday, August 11, the Dahl’s performed at F

Swedish jazz diva Jeanette Lindstrom opened her first set at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on the evening of August 10, with "Always," an R&B flavored tune, that served up reminders of Taylor Dane’s song "I’ll Always Love You." Guitarist Peter Nylander, who heads up the Jazz Guitar Department at the Royal Conservatory in Stockholm, Sweden, wove his magic on some smooth and seamless chord changes, while trumpeter Staffan Svensson’s muted horn filled the room with warm, mellow melodies.

I learned a new definition for breathless on August 5th. Breathless, at least in my vocabulary can now be defined as twenty-three year old Vancouver jazz pianist Amanda Tosoff who performed at The Cellar Restaurant and Jazz Club on West Broadway in Vancouver, Canada. Tosoff played to a standing room only crowd, who responded throughout the evening with spontaneous demonstrations of appreciation. A more seasoned and perhaps less humble musician would have realized that as her final set came to

Canadian blues rocker David Gogo opened his set at Vancouver’s Yale Hotel on Granville Street with his massive hit "Skeleton Key," which found a home on the airwaves and in the hearts of numerous blues fans in the United States and Canada. His fans certainly cannot complain about getting their money’s worth as Gogo is one of the hardest working musicians that I have witnessed. Like a man possessed, he worked at a feverish pace for ninety minutes (and later returned for a second set). His chor