As Sal Ferreras sees it, a good musician's ears are always open--even if they're only listening for the sound of the next bus home. And for singer-guitarist Ari Neufeld, that's a good thing: a public-transit encounter with the veteran percussionist resulted in two feature spots as part of the fourth edition of Listen Up!, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre's annual survey of "new sounds from the city".

Ferreras, who's capable of playing everything from symphonic music to salsa, has been the mini-festival's artistic director since its inception, and he admits that he's never sure where or when new candidates for the youth-oriented series will emerge.

"Rather than do things the traditional jazz-festival or folk-festival way where you put out a call and invite submissions, I just went looking for whatever new stuff was around," he says of Listen Up!'s early days, interviewed by phone from his East Vancouver home. "Now that word's gotten around I'm receiving more demos, but most of the people we present are people that I've seen, often as part of some show where I've appeared.

"This year, though, I met one of the performers at a bus stop. I was sitting out at UBC waiting for a bus, and I heard this guy, Ari Neufeld, singing with his guitar, just waiting for the bus as well. I thought 'Wow, this guy's got a nice voice,' so I got a little closer and listened to him, and he sounded really good and his guitar was really well in tune. So I started a conversation with him and we got on the 99 and all the way to Commercial Drive we just talked about music. At the end I said, 'Send me a demo if you can,' and he did, and it's beautiful stuff."

Neufeld plays the second and third nights of Listen Up!, which this year takes place between Thursday and Saturday (January 20 to 22). He's not the only young songwriter to be featured: Joel Kroeker, who has already inked a recording contract with Toronto's True North label, appears Thursday and Saturday. For the most part, however, the featured performers are relative unknowns, like Richmond's Issah Contractor, another musician Ferreras met at UBC--but in the classroom, not at a bus stop.

"I try to make it obvious to really talented students that if they haven't recognized their talent I certainly have, and they'd better do something about it," Ferreras says. "That's the case with Issah. He's a fabulous drummer. He sort of comes out of the jazz-fusion field, but he's got fantastic chops and a great personality. He's been going to UBC for the past few years, sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time, and I stopped him in the hall one day and said, 'You know, you'd better take yourself a little bit more seriously than you presently do, because I see all kinds of musicians and you're as good as anybody out there.'

"Issah's dad is a bass player, and he taught him to play bass too," Ferreras adds. "And although I'm not going to say he's as good a bassist as he is a drummer, he's a fabulous bass player, too. He's got a doctorate in grooveology. I asked him to perform all three nights, and he said, 'Can I perform each night with a different group?' So the first night he's playing with a jazz quartet, the second night it'll be with more of a fusion group, and the third night it'll be with the band he has with his dad, Excalibur, playing more jazz fusion and a little bit of reggae. So I'm just trying to give people an opportunity to show what they can do."

Also appearing as part of Listen Up! will be 11-year-old jazz pianist Gustav Joseph, whom Ferreras describes as having made startling artistic progress in the past year; operatically trained soprano Neema Bickersteth; the Anna Magdalena chorus of the Vancouver Bach Choir; the Vancouver Academy Celli; and violinists Patrick Ernst and Trillian Mitchell, students of Romanian folk virtuoso Lache Cercel. And, in a rather daring move, musicians of all levels are invited to bring their instruments to the Cultch on Saturday night, for a celebratory jam session with the featured performers. (Listen Up! also has an educational component: Saturday morning, multi-instrumentalist Pepe Danza will lead a percussion workshop, while Kroeker hosts an afternoon seminar on home recording for aspiring tunesmiths. To sign up for either, young performers should call VECC youth coordinator Jaimie Robson at 604-251-1363, extension 315.)

"One of the things I hope to do is to encourage young musicians to experiment through improvisation--and by 'improvising' I don't just mean playing solos, but also exploring different musical situations with other colleagues," says Ferreras. "A great deal of my formation was just from jamming, and I still tell students that some of my greatest ideas come from fooling around at sound check, just allowing myself to be completely free, without an agenda--and I just don't see enough of that going on these days."