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Date 24 June 2005 at 8pm Venue The Ironworks

Reviewer John Jane

Kate Hammett-Vaughan header


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Vancouver International Jazz Festival 2005

The Coastal Jazz and Blues Society kicked off their 20th Vancouver International Jazz Festival last Friday (24 June) with a half dozen choice gigs around town.

I doubt if there were any that were livelier than the Kate Hammett-Vaughan Quintet performance at the Ironworks. Converted into an Art Gallery and film studio from an old machine shop, The Ironworks is a new venue for the 2005 festival and located a couple of blocks east of Gastown.

Kate Hammett Vaughan's musical selection this night consisted mainly of jazz standards by Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus -- bracketed between improvisational forays into pop standards like the Lennon & McCartney tune Things We Said Today. “Seventy-five percent of what I know about music, I learnt from the Beatles,” confessed the singer.

The quintet opened with a ten-minute rendition of the Rodgers and Hart tune (If They Asked Me,) I Could Write a Book that featured some bold solo passages from Jim Pinchin on tenor saxophone. Drummer Tom Foster, bass player Andre Lachance, pianist Chris Gestrin, and tenor saxophonist Jim Pinchin, work as a core unit, and measure their playing to Hammett-Vaughan's range, leaving the musical bravado entirely to the singer.

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Hammett-Vaughan is still a very creative jazz singer who really makes the most of her voice. Her scatting is incredibly inventive, amply demonstrated with scatted squiggles and squeaks that she executed in Duke Ellington's You Left Me Everything but You.

High points of this concert included a pair of Joni Mitchell songs, Woodstock and The Fiddle and the Drum, which the artist dedicated to “the pursuit of peace” and a shimmering, wistful tribute to underrated Canadian composer, Kenny Wheeler with Everybody’s Song, but my Own. Her quartet was both unobtrusive, yet elegantly swinging. Most notable was Chris Gestrin, who played chords as thick as treacle.

Kate Hammett-Vaughan
Kate Hammett-Vaughan

The auburn-haired, bespectacled Hammett-Vaughan doesn’t have the glitz, or the glamour of Diana Krall, who was simultaneously performing a few blocks away at The Centre for Performing Arts; she more closely resembles a school teacher than a jazz vocalist. As a matter of fact, when she is not performing, recording or collecting Junos, she works a day job at the Vancouver Community College where she teaches jazz vocal technique. She is, however, aware of her tremendous gifts as a musician and connects with her audience with passion and humour.

© 2005 John Jane

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