THE NUMBERS WERE GOOD for the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, with media director John Orysik reporting that the 20th edition of the annual event set a number of financial and attendance records. "There's been some significant growth," Orysik reported in a Tuesday (July 5) telephone interview. "We broke $1 million in ticket sales. That was a first. And we've broken the half-million mark in terms of attendance, so along with the great music and the great experience we're delighted by the ways things unfolded." The jazz fest may also be on the verge of extending its international influence. "We had 37 presenters from all across North American and even Europe come to the festival this year," said Orysik, "and the constant theme that we heard from these presenters was that they're knocked out by our artists, and by the presence that the festival has in the city. The Germans, in particular, said that everywhere they turned there was music, and now they're telling us that they're going to go back home and talk about this particular paradigm that we've created here in Vancouver-and they're going to try to do something similar, along with bringing Canadian artists to their stages."...

AND WHAT BETTER WAY for those visitors to spend Canada Day (Friday [July 1]) than by kicking back on Granville Island and enjoying a cross-country selection of fine music? The jazz fest's free holiday programming was inspired, and no one sounded better than Montreal multi-instrumentalist Jean Derome. The reed virtuoso is primarily known as an avant-gardist, but he opened his midafternoon set with a romping baritone-sax take on Duke Ellington's "Jump for Joy" before switching to alto for his own "Verona", a snaky, soulful portrait of "some place we never went". Another highlight was a charming vocal version of Fats Waller's ageless "Jitterbug Waltz". "I'm trying to learn how to sing," Derome explained, "so I'll sing you a song so I can gain some experience-and at the same time I'll play the flute, which was my first instrument, so it'll keep me safe..."

AIRLINE SNAFUS ALMOST prevented Terence Blanchard and his band from appearing at the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts on Friday. Their flight was repeatedly delayed, their equipment had only just arrived, and their luggage was still somewhere in limbo. "That's why I'm wearing tennis shoes and jeans," explained Blanchard. "All that for a pack of peanuts and a Coke." Blanchard and his sextet used their music to chill out. The blend of cool jazz and postbop had an oceanic quality, with serene passages giving way to crashing waves. Blanchard's new album is aptly named Flow, and he ended with a gorgeous, stream-of-consciousness performance of the title track. But the discovery of the evening was guitarist Lionel Loueke, from Benin in West Africa. As Blanchard alerted the audience before a Loueke composition, "If you watch him carefully, his head glows." It did. The guitarist wrung an astonishing series of tones from his instrument, banging and slapping on it to make a sound like a talking drum, then imitating the stuttering of an ngoni (harp-lute) before breaking into a resonant midtempo groove with the whole band that ended with a chant. It was a spectacular voyage to one of the sources of jazz and back again...

"THEY STARTED PLAYING me on the radio-the same radio they got those flat-bellied girls on. To hell with those flat bellies," proclaimed Shemekia Copeland-who is built like a Mack truck and sings like one too-at her Commodore set Friday night. Everything about her show was enormous: Copeland's deep, knock-you-down-with-a-two-by-four vocal style; the pummelling blues-rock drums; and the relentless wailing guitar solos. Her lyrics were also huge and dead simple, and they concerned the kind of love you find in a highway bar: "Not Tonight, Baby," "Living On Love", and "Turn the Heat Up, Baby" were among the raunchy, down-home tunes about one-night stands, fooling around, and getting screwed over. After an upbeat, original, and hugely energetic set of James Brown-style R?&?B by Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Copeland's music felt far too big-and ironically, far too thin...

FIFTEEN MINUTES INTO his improv set with violinist Jesse Zubot and cellist Peggy Lee at the Roundhouse Saturday afternoon (July 2), British keyboardist and composer Matthew Bourne hadn't even touched the keys of his piano. But he wasn't just sitting idly by as Zubot and Lee drew long, tense lines from their instruments or drummed on their strings with their bows. Instead, he beat on the inside frame of the piano like it was a drum. He ran his fingers along the strings like it was a harp. At one point, he even thwacked it with a towel. The impressive three-way improvisation sometimes shifted into quiet, almost meditative states, then built into thundering crescendos before releasing into dark, sweet melodies. Although Bourne had never played with the two Vancouver-based musicians-he even forgot Zubot's name when it came time for the introductions-all three displayed such remarkable skill, talent, lyricism, and wit that the chemistry between them was instant and complete...

AS THE SUN began to tuck itself behind the downtown high-rises late Saturday afternoon, the jazz fans at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre's David Lam Park looked like they were starting to wither. But luckily, the hugely charismatic Dr. Lonnie Smith, along with his New York band and Vancouver saxophonist Cory Weeds, was on hand to give them an injection of Hammond B-3 organ. A master of classic funk and jazz, Smith-who was dressed in a black turban and long black robes-beamed from ear to ear as he performed several jazz standards and originals, infusing each tune with dozens of playful intricacies. But while the B-3 is great when it's upbeat, it can sound like schmaltzy hold music when it's used in a slow, serious ballad-and that's exactly what happened at several points in the set. Still, with a few catchy funk grooves, and even an eerily accurate impression of Stevie Wonder singing "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," Smith managed to get the weary crowd back on its feet...

THE DEDICATION ORCHESTRA and its musicians loomed large during the second part of this year's festival. The British band played two concerts, and several of its members worked with local artists in impromptu groupings. For the Jazz at the Roundhouse program on Saturday afternoon, London-based saxophonist Julian Arguelles played in an excellent chordless trio setting with Vancouver's Bernie Arai on drums and André Lachance on bass. Their set began with a free-jazz intro that developed into an uptempo postbop groove, with a darkly textured passage of growling sax, droning bass, and shimmering cymbals. The imaginative and open-ended compositions by Arguelles provided plenty of space for Arai and Lachance to explore. And the saxophonist's burnished tone on the set's only standard, Cole Porter's "Everything I Love", was the refined roar of one of the young lions of British jazz...

THE FOLLOWING EVENING (July 3), Arguelles played in the reed section of the full Dedication Orchestra. Opening for Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, the 23-piece ensemble played a mix of township jive, free jazz, and bop, with amazing tightness for musicians so busy with individual projects that they rarely get to practice together. The music was a celebration of the legacy of the Blue Notes, a South African mixed-race jazz-outfit-in-exile that lit up London's jazz scene in the 1960s and '70s. The group captured the buoyant spirit of the Notes-of which DO drummer Louis Moholo is the sole survivor-and expanded it through inventive, evocative, and often roisterous arrangements. A conversation between four trombones sounded like a party of happy wart hogs rolling around at a watering hole...

LOCAL PIANIST Paul Plimley maintained a high profile during this year's jazz festival, and his two Sunday shows indicated that he'll continue to do so. His noon-hour Roundhouse appearance with zheng virtuoso Mei Han previewed their forthcoming duo CD, which promises to be looser and more improvisatory than many might expect. "Paul's turned me into a monster," explained Han after one particularly strenuous passage of noisy, percussive interplay. "Actually, I'm a very refined Chinese lady." And Plimley's first meeting with educator and multi-instrumentalist Mwata Bowden, at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Sunday night, suggested that another duo CD would be a fine idea. Their attention-grabbing intro, with Plimley pounding a small drum and Bowden on wailing clarinet, led into a high-spirited exploration of everything from stride piano to didgeridoo-fuelled drones-and throughout, their immediate rapport was a joy to behold...

MORE HIGH SPIRITS were in evidence after Bowden and Plimley's set at the Cultch, but not always to musical effect. Headliner Roscoe Mitchell's young band lent its 64-year-old leader some fresh energy, but trumpeter Corey Wilkes seemed out of control, playing blaring solos that displayed little musical intelligence and sometimes stepping on pianist Craig Taborn's improvisational toes. Mitchell's set had its moments, but the best came during an encore that found bassist Jaribu Shihad putting down his upright and picking up an electric to lead a blazing funk workout in which, for once, the extroverted Wilkes seemed right at home.