NANAIMO BIG BAND FESTIVAL
Where: Maffeo Sutton Park, 100 Comox Rd., Nanaimo
When: Friday through Sunday
Tickets: $34 (daily) or $79 (festival pass), from tickets.porttheatre.com
Festival producer Margot Holmes hadn’t given much thought to the prospect of a big band festival until one of her clients, Stevan Paranosic of the Vancouver Island Repertory Jazz Orchestra, mentioned how much he and his fellow band members loved performing the music of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.
Holmes, a longtime artist manager and agent in the Nanaimo area, later had a similar conversation with another client, Nanaimo singer Joëlle Rabu, who voiced the same sentiments. Not long after, the first annual Nanaimo Big Band Festival was born.
“I said, ‘I guess we’ve got a festival,’ ” Holmes joked. “It kind of grew from there.”
The three-day event gets underway Friday at Maffeo Sutton Park, with Chemainus tenor Ken Lavigne playing the music of Frank Sinatra, with support from the Vancouver Island Repertory Jazz Orchestra. Rabu is headlining Saturday night, with set of cabaret music accompanied by the Nico Rhodes Jazz Orchestra. Vancouver clarinetist James Danderfer will close the festival Sunday evening alongside the Vancouver Island Repertory Jazz Orchestra, with a program of big band era favourites.
“Last week, we were being told it was going to rain for these three days, and I had this moment of, ‘Why am I doing these events?’ ” Holmes said, with a laugh. “Now, it’s going to be beautiful weather. You can’t win.”
Holmes had several reasons for staging the event. The veteran producer works closely with a number of artists, and said she could “really see” that many of them were hurting financially. With a roster of 70 participating in the event this weekend, Holmes is pleased that her efforts will result in some much-needed work for the musicians.
“It’s a way for them to make a little money doing what they love to do and playing what they love to play. That was the appeal for everybody — that it was a little bit different from what other festivals were doing, perhaps. There are big bands, but there are no big band festivals.
“People love the music, it’s sort of nostalgic. It has been made popular by people like Michael Bublé, who have brought it forward into the era of music.”
Holmes is also donating $2 from every ticket sold to the Marianne Turley Memorial Fund, which supports the Vancouver Island Symphony’s music education program. Turley, who died at 70 in 2021, was a popular florist in Nanaimo, and a longtime volunteer within the Nanaimo arts and culture community.
“We wanted to give something back, that would support music,” Holmes said.
