Introducing Nica's Circle

We’ve introduced a membership circle for BJP called Nica’s Circle.  You’ll find info about it under the Membership tab:  it’s a $5/month subscription that gives folks access to exclusive content and the earliest access to concert tickets.  

We’ve created Nica’s Circle — named after a famous patron of the arts, Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild —because of our experience with COVID-19.  When the pandemic hit and live concerts were shuttered, BJP had no means to support and employ our community of musicians whose livelihoods had been decimated.  Because the vast part of our ticket revenue goes directly to the musicians (once we were a non-profit we had to keep a fraction to pay for insurance and related operating costs) we didn’t have any means to fund non-concert programming and that left us high and dry.  After many hours of grant writing, we received funding from FACTOR, CADA and the Canada Council for projects that are employing musicians and other artists and for that, we are tremendously grateful.  (Canadians should be proud of the level of support given to the Arts during the pandemic.)

Establishing Nica’s Circle allows us to create a small income stream that can be used to support non-concert programming and that’s important to our future capacity to support the Canadian jazz community.  We also hope that as we build up our content, our Circle members will enjoy the behind-the scenes material and educational content.

As for ticket buying, here’s how that works: 

Nica’s Circle members are recognized by our website when they visit and have 48 hours exclusive access to purchase tickets.  Ticket sales are then opened up to folks on our email list who have 24 hours to purchase before the concert is announced to the general public through social media.

There is no cost to being on the email list:  just be aware that you might see the listing for the concert on Eventbrite and not be able to access tickets until after the 48 hour advance sales is over. 

So, thanks for your support as our programming grows and we develop new ways to keep musicians employed and our community engaged!

Lisa 

Webinar Series with Jodi Proznick

We are absolutely thrilled to announce our upcoming webinar series with Juno-nominated bassist and educator Jodi Proznick!

The first event will take place on Sunday, November 22nd at 3pm MST via Zoom.

The cost is $20 per webinar, or you can purchase the whole four-part series for $70.

Please purchase tickets via our Eventbrite page.

The link will take you to the ticket price for the entire series, but if you scroll down, you can find tickets for the individual events as well.

We recognize that these are tough times. If the ticket price is a barrier to you joining us, please email us at buckingjampalace@gmail.com.

Happy learning and we can’t wait to see you online soon! Grab your tickets today!

BuckingJam Palace Presents: The Jodi Proznick Webinar Series

Sunday, November 22nd - What Makes Them Great? Legendary Jazz Bassists

A feature on great jazz bassists such as Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Jimmy Blanton, Scott LaFaro and Israel Crosby.

Sunday, November 29th - The Roots of Jazz: Exploring the Blues

A focus on important female blues artists such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and also various topics such as Chicago Blues, Boogie Woogie, “Race" records, Rhythm and Blues, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, the relationship of the field holler, country blues, folk music, etc.

You might even learn how to write a good blues lyric and melody yourself by the end!

Sunday, December 6th - Famous Canadian Jazz Couples: Partnerships on and off the bandstand

This is a feature on several notable Canadian personal and musical jazz collaborations featuring the likes of Tara Davidson and William Carn, Jennifer Scott and Rene Worst, Nancy Walker and Kieran Overs, Laila Biali and Ben Whitman, Jane Bunnett and Larry Cramer, Bill Coon and Jill Townsend, Andre Wickenheiser and Sam Hindle, Jodi Proznick and Tilden Webb and more!

Sunday, December 13th - What Makes this Album Great? Night Train by Oscar Peterson

For some, jazz is often the "olive" of the music industry. Sometimes it’s an acquired taste! Join Jodi as she demystifies jazz through a guided listening adventure, featuring an iconic jazz record that also happens to be the album that hooked her as a young musician. Find out why!

*All webinars run 3-430pm MST*

An update on our ongoing response to COVID-19

We miss our community and hope you and yours are well! Through these strange and challenging times, we know we will gather again in the future. In the meantime, BJP has been working to expand ways that we can support the jazz community, paying attention to healthy protocols.

First, a couple of updates. The piano is still here! The loan by Yamaha Canada of the gorgeous C3 grand piano was up in June but given the times and the current impossibility of fund-raising, Yamaha has extended our time. This has allowed us to welcome local musicians for rehearsals, sessions, live-streams and recordings. There aren’t many venues in town that have a great piano on offer (and offer a free space) so this is a significant help to the local community at a time when it is most needed.

COVID-19 delays affected our application for charitable status through CRA but we are hopefully on track now. I have had incredible help from a CRA employee who has been kind and thorough, so fingers crossed that our application is approved soon. This will allow us to issue tax receipts for donations and will open up additional granting streams.

BJP received grant money from the Canada Council that has allowed us to hire musicians for a new on-line initiative we have developed called Jazz Connections. This program has three educational streams: BJP Webinars presented by jazz musicians; Jazz Notes, a video series featuring jazz compositions edited with commentary that explains the jazz structure and creative process; and Five Questions, a video compilation that introduces Canadian jazz musicians to listeners through a series of short answers to five engaging questions.

Our plan, dependent on grant money and donations, is to create a subscription portal on the BJP website that will give access to content we produce and provide an income stream that will allow us to develop further programming. This will create new revenue streams for musicians as we hire them to host webinars and edit videos and provide licensing fees for video use. It will also allow us to reach a global audience and raise the profile of Canadian jazz music and musicians.

Musicians are feeling particularly isolated right now so we organized a BJP hang for jazz musicians recently via Zoom. It was a big success and we are going to continue and expand that initiative to help musicians connect with other peers.

Be careful, be well, be hopeful. And be in touch: send us your thoughts and ideas about our new initiatives, suggestions for other areas to explore and musicians you’d like to see when concerts return. As always, we appreciate your continued engagement and support.

A Message from Lisa Buck

Well. Where to start?

These are strange and stressful times.  The threat of illness brings with it huge amounts fear and anxiety and it is surreal to be experiencing this on a global level.  Just when we need comfort and strength from our communities, we are voluntarily isolating ourselves, locking our doors on an enemy we can’t see.

It’s important to remember that we are overreacting on purpose: it is not fear but prudence that is pushing the shutdown of many of our institutions and I am grateful that we have leaders who are willing to make these hard choices now, while there is time to work at containment.

We have rescheduled our March concert to October.  We will make lemonade out of this situation and host a mini-festival of female band-leaders featuring the Claire Devlin Quartet, the Adi Meyerson Quartet, and Gentiane MG with Frank Lozano.  It will be epic and I hope it gives you something to look forward to. We will be assessing the viability of the May shows closer to their dates.

I am proud to say that the first reaction in the jazz community to shows being cancelled was an overwhelming concern for the musicians who are losing their livelihood. I met Friday with members of our community and we have created Calgary Jazz Relief as a way to address this crisis. Kodi Hutchison, Artistic Director of Jazz YYC, was quick to offer the resources of his organization.  

We are also looking at ways to live-stream music.  Music is hope and we need this sound-track to our lives to lift us through tough times.  Festivals you are used to attending in person may come to you over the internet this year. Please be open to that possibility and consider buying a subscription to streamed concerts.

I know this is a crappy, fretful, fearful time.  The arts community will be reeling from the after-effects of this cultural shut-down long after people forget how COVID-19 infected our lives.  But with adversity comes opportunity and this is our time to show the vulnerable amongst us that we care for them, that we journey with them, that we support them emotionally and financially.

On a personal note, Tom and I are instituting a voluntary quarantine for the next couple of weeks, at least, because Tom has several health concerns that make him part of a vulnerable population.  But I will be helping distribute beef donated by Mitchell Bros. Beef to musicians (when the dust settles, please buy from them as they have been incredible!), BJP will be an active partner in Calgary Jazz Relief, and we will have our radar out for anyone who needs care and support.  If that’s you, please be in touch.  We want you to be well.

Best,

Lisa Buck

BuckingJam and the Junos

BuckingJam Palace prides itself on the consistent high quality of the many jazz artists who play there. In the spirit of the Juno Awards (which are taking place in Saskatoon this coming weekend) we thought it would be prudent to recognize the many Juno awarding winning artists and nominees that have graced the BuckingJam living room stage over the past couple of years.

Here's a short (!) and concise list of the many BuckingJam artists who have either won Juno awards as a leader and/or sideman or have been nominated for an award:

Juno Award Winners

Kirk MacDonald

Mike Downes

Robi Botos

Mike Rud & Sienna Dahlen

Laila Biali

Mike Murley

Nominees

Jodi Proznick

Ted Quinlan

Larnell Lewis

Joel Miller

Quinsin Nachoff

Shirantha Beddage

Morgan Childs (with the Amanda Tosoff Quartet)

Jeff McLeod (with the Alison Young Quartet)

Joanna Borromeo

Adrean Farrugia

And here's a few other worthy mentions as well...

Bassist Solon McDade (who performed with pianist Noam Lemish's group) won the 2007 Juno award for best Roots-Traditional Album with his world-folk group The McDades.

Speaking of bass players, Jodi Proznick took home the 2019 Western Canadian Music Award for Best Jazz Artist of the Year while Edmonton's Rubim De Toledo captured the same award in 2018. Toronto bassists Steve Wallace and Kieran Overs have anchored the bottom end of many Juno award-winning and nominated projects over the years.

We would also like to recognize Montreal alto saxophonist Benjamin Deschamps and his band No Codes which took home the coveted 2019 Montreal Jazz Festival Grand Prix du Festival award.

And how about bassist Paul Sikivie (who appeared with tenor saxophonist Sam Taylor) and his two-time Grammy winning work with vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant?

And of course, don't forget about drummer Lewis Nash whose has played on no less than 10 Grammy winning albums over the years (including an album with Betty Carter!)