A18 G THE GLOBE AND MAIL | THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Aprodigal playwright re-

turns. One of the two worldpremieres among the

seven plays of the Tarragon The-atre’s 2018-19 Toronto season isThe Message, a long-in-the-workslook at the Canadian media guruand “the medium is the message”theorist Marshall McLuhan, fromplaywright Jason Sherman.

The Message deals with the lastyear of the life of McLuhan, whodied in 1980. The play was sched-uled to be part of Tarragon’s 2003-04 season, but the productionwas waylaid when the McLuhanestate threatened legal action. Aplanned reading at HarbourfrontCentre during the city’s WorldStage festival was cancelled.

Sherman is Tarragon’s currentplaywright-in-residence, a posi-tion he held to much applause formost of the 1990s – the fertile pe-riod which produced The Retreat,Patience, An Acre of Time and threeplays helmed by current Tarragonartistic director Richard Rose: It’sAll True, Remnants and 1994’sThree in the Back, Two in the Head,which received the Governor-General’s Award for Drama.

Since his residency, Shermanhas concentrated on writing fortelevision and radio, includingthe CBC Radio series Afghanada(2006-11). With his latest effort,Sherman is reunited with Rose,who will direct The Message.

In a media statement thataccompanied the announcementof Tarragon’s forthcoming pro-gramming, Rose noted the diver-sity of the season’s stories andstorytellers. “We will present aculturally rich season of playsthat reflects our country’s history,engages with contemporary Can-ada and looks to our future.”

To that end, Rose and Tarragonwill bring in Kiviuq Returns: AnInuit Epic, a creation from the Arc-tic theatre company Qaggiq,which had a single performancein Toronto in 2017 after a brief

tour to Banff, Alta., Iqaluit andthe National Arts Centre in Otta-wa. The production (described asan “Inuit Odyssey”) is performedin Inuktitut with English surtitles.

The season opens in Septem-ber, 2018, with a revival of HarlemDuet from Governor-General’sLiterary Award winner DjanetSears. Conceived as a Harlem-setprequel to Shakespeare’s Othello,the 1997 drama was the first playat Stratford Festival by a blackwriter, with a black female direc-tor and an all-black cast.

Besides The Message, the sea-son’s other world premiere isGuarded Girls, written by Char-lotte Corbeil-Coleman. The dra-ma deals with the psychologicaldestruction brought on by soli-tary confinement.

Other plays include NormanYeung’s Theory, a topical storyabout a young professor whotests the limits of free speech byencouraging her students to con-tribute to an unmoderated dis-cussion group. Making its Toron-to premiere is New Magic ValleyFun Town, a Cape Breton storyfrom Daniel MacIvor. Roundingout the season is the HannahMoscovitch musical Old Stock: ARefugee Love Story, a production ofHalifax’s 2b theatre company.

Subscriptions and tickets will go onsale at tarragontheatre.com.

Message delivered: Tarragon to premiere long-awaited play

BRAD WHEELER

Richard Rose

We’ve come to expect littlefrom jazz.

Mostly the sound-track for septuagenarian nostal-gia these days, jazz makes onlyoccasional appearances in ads forluxury products, none affordableto its performers then or now.And then there’s George Clooneystill thinking he’s Frank Sinatra.

So who can be prepared whenthe real deal comes along in allits sweet and sad glory, as it didlast weekend at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., for the debut of theOscar Peterson International JazzFestival?

Who ever expected to hear liveThe Peacocks (A Timeless Place), arare and mysterious ballad fromself-effacing accompanist JimmyRowles? Who could have imagin-ed it so effortlessly, breathlesslyperformed at the opening Fridayconcert by Cécile McLorin Sal-vant? Only 28, she’s already EllaFitzgerald’s heiress apparent.

“We wanted something differ-ent,” says Kelly Peterson, the latepianist’s widow and festival pro-ducer. “The summer has so manyfestivals, so we wanted one inwinter. And remember, this isBlack History Month. But theidea was to do more, not to haveevery concert as a tribute toOscar. It’s our intent to presenttrue, swinging jazz. This is a jazzfestival.”

The festival has its beginningsin a series of 2015 recordings ses-sions she organized. An A-list ofjazz pianists were invited to playon Peterson’s Bosendorfer grandpiano in the Peterson home forthe three-CD set, Oscar, With Love.After Regina-born pianist/arran-ger Renee Rosnes arrived for herturn, the talk between the twowomen turned to festivals, par-ticularly those based around asingle musician, such as theJames Moody Jazz Festival inNewark, N.J., where Rosnes nowlives. The pianist was soonappointed the Peterson Festival’sartistic director.

“At first, we didn’t know where

it was going to be held,” Rosnessays. “But when Niagara-on-the-Lake came up, it seemed to bethe right place.

Boosting off-season wine-country tourism helped localbusiness get on board. “A lot ofpeople think wineries close up inwinter when, in fact, it’s a won-derful time for visitors to get adeeper, more thorough perspec-tive,” says Suzanne Janke, estatedirector for Stratus Vineyards,host site for a pair of concerts.

So, yes, this was that kind ofjazz festival – the Bordeaux-sip-ping, dreamy ballads kind, some-thing of lovely social fantasy notfar in spirit from that evoked bythe “dear gentle folk of New-port,” as sung in That’s Jazz byBing Crosby in the 1956 film HighSociety. In broader terms, herewas a reminder of jazz’s goldenafterglow in the 1960s and early70s, when the music still mademoney, when compact festivalsfrom Newport, R.I., to Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, werewell-curated at the start. Supportfrom Playboy Magazine, Holly-wood and designers such as YvesSaint Laurent brought an autum-nal richness to jazz’s surface.

At Niagara-on-the-Lake, onesaw what might be called the On-tario jazz society – white folks forthe most part, well turned outand hitting their stride. The lookand feel of success glided effort-less from day to day, hour tohour, from the trays of butteryOysters Rockefeller passedaround at a Saturday evening re-ception at the Stratus’s glass-cladwinery – it could stand in for aspace station in a movie – to late-afternoon Sunday, when Ed Bick-ert, the wry Toronto guitarist,accepted the inaugural CanadianJazz Masters Award.

The festival’s musical model isthe Jazz at the Philharmonic(JATP) concerts organized byAmerican impresario NormanGranz from 1944 to 1983, withOscar Peterson being a rising starfrom 1949 on. (Granz died in 2001at the age of 83.) These were theoriginal supergroups, the modelfor the all-star unit Rosnes orga-nized for the all-American Fridaykick-off concert at the FirstOnta-rio Performing Arts Centre in St.Catharines, and the Canadian all-star wrap-up Sunday afternoonat Stratus.

St. Catharines heard a band –Christian McBride, bass, drum-mer Kenny Washington, to givean idea only of the rhythm sec-tion – unlikely to ever be togeth-

er again, its recording of thenight destined only for the vaultsof the festival’s own archives. Yetthis group might well be men-tioned in the same sentence withthe now legendary 1953 Jazz atMassey Hall concert and one ortwo Boss Brass blowouts over theyears, led by Rob McConnell.(The late Toronto trombonistMcConnell received a Jazz Masteraward, as did Oscar Petersonhimself.)

Indeed, the lineage of Rosnes’s“International All-Star ‘Jazz atthe Philharmonic’ ” led directlyback to that legendary MasseyHall Quintet. Trumpeter Jon Fad-dis hit some screaming highnotes that only Dizzy Gillespie,his mentor in the Quintet, mighthave comprehended. All-Starpianist Benny Green, a musicalcubist, channelled the hard-bop

at the Quintet’s core. Green alsoset the high bar for piano playingthat was leaped over with easewith the Saturday afternoon two-piano pairing of Rosnes and herhusband, Bill Charlap. One-upmanship, a great jazz staple,was certainly in the festival air.Rosnes’s contemporary Cana-dian JATP edition, led by saxo-phonist Mike Murley, althoughout-famed by the American,proved to be down and dirtier.

Examples of the JATP film leg-acy were screened Saturday, at St.Mark’s Anglican Church, assmoky jam sessions shown ongrainy film contrasted withvibrant colour shards of the sunpiercing the stained glass of the1792 church. Film host and long-time Granz confidant JacquesMuyal felt the Peterson fest “hadsoul” but warned that when a

jazz festival “goes far from jazz, itcreates confusion in the music.”

One might assume that the ra-cism and violence Granz famous-ly fought with the JATP, insistingon non-segregated concerts, wasin jazz’s past. Saxophonist JimmyGreene’s very presence on stageFriday sadly refuted that, comingonly two days after the tragicschool shooting in Parkland, Fla.Greene’s own daughter, AnaGrace Mârquez-Greene, waskilled in the 2012 Sandy HookElementary School shooting. Shewas only six years old.

“Everyone understood,”Rosnes explained. “I don’t thinkit changed the dynamic. It’s goodto be an artist. Jazz is the art ofimprovisations. It’s living in themoment.”

Special to The Globe and Mail

Peterson festival brings true jazz to Ontario

The Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival, held Friday to Sunday, followed the musical model of the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts organized by Norman Granz from 1944 to 1983. ALEX HEIDBUECHEL

A who’s who ofperformers playinaugural event in wine country, evokinggenre’s golden afterglowof the 1960s and 70s

PETER GODDARDNIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT.

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