Josh Grossman's blog

It feels as though it was only last week that I was moderating a panel charged with selecting three TDJ Special Projects from a strong pool of applicants. It was in fact back in December...and with Spring now here, the first Special Project is only days away! And so - a bit about Easterween...

"A 500-year-old magician. A ruthless, multinational egg corporation. A love story between a Hasidic girl and an Amish boy. A band of sauciers and dumpling bakers. An egg-hunt of cosmic proportions to save us all from eternal winter.

Welcome to the world of Easterween."

As I continue to put together proposed lineups for our various stages, an infrequent - but difficult - question I find myself asking is whether a musician's political and ethical viewpoints should effect whether or not they get a festival play.

My wife and I chat often about the process of booking a jazz festival. She wishes that I would be a bit more flexible in terms of what I consider the standard required to appear onstage at a major jazz festival. Not that she wants me to be booking music that is clearly sub-par; she wishes instead that there might be some room for artists who are up-and-coming - who may not be up to snuff quite yet but for whom a jazz festival appearance might provide a big boost.

My brain kinda hurts. According to my very fancy spreadsheet, I'm now through 401 official submissions. And, when you add in all the other stuff I've been checking out, it's a lot of music. The problem is so much of it is good.

I must be careful to not bite the hand which feeds me but...well...isn't grant writing fun?

I had the pleasure of being the guest speaker a few weeks ago for the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice (ICASP) Reading Group in Guelph. It was a fun session: I made a short presentation dealing with my philosophies - and the challenges to those philosophies - behind booking a jazz festival, then Ajay Heble, Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival, asked me a series of in-depth questions about how I approach my job. (Some of them were toughies: what is jazz?

JUNOs

I had the pleasure of being in the audience at The Rex Hotel yesterday evening for a retirement celebration in honour of Katie Malloch. Katie is retiring in March after a long career as an on-air host with CBC radio. Her most recent tenure was with CBC Radio 2's Tonic, but she has been on the air promoting jazz since the late 1970s. The evening was full of positive energy and gratitude for Katie's commitment to outstanding jazz, and to Canadian jazz musicians in particular.

We had a bit of extra excitement around here on Tuesday with the announcement of the first ten acts to go on sale for the 2012 TD Toronto Jazz Festival. In case you missed it, you can read the press release here, or just head over to our homepage. A little secret - although we only announced ten shows, we've actually got 12 on sale: Benny Green (solo piano) and Los Amigos Invisibles are also confirmed.

I'm still catching up on sleep and family time since returning Tuesday from four nights in New York, where I attended the annual APAP conference and took in a ton of music, including a number of acts at the 2012 Winter Jazzfest. As is usually the case when I get back from New York, I'm finding some of the differences between that city and Toronto in stark contrast. And it's particularly frustrating to return to the office on the day that a report is released bemoaning the low per-person funding assigned by the City of Toronto to the arts...