Buenos Aires 53 years ago at the
age of 7. Three years later, his family moved to Israel and the wunderkind proceeded to take Europe
by storm, with recitals in Rome,
Vienna, Paris and London. The
distinguished German conductor
Wilhelm Furtwangler called the
boy "a phenomenon" and, at the
age of 12, he recorded all of Mozart's piano sonatas. He had his
first taste of conducting in 1962
and, in 1975, he succeeded Sir
Georg Solti as music director of
the Orchestre de Paris.

my wife didn't understand, because she doesn't speak Hebrew.
She just saw the hatred in their
eyes, took the salad bowl and
threw it in their faces!" Barenboim
makes light of the incident, but he
well knows that in Israel broccoli
can easily escalate to bullets: He
has received death threats by telephone.
The Ramallah excursion was not
an isolated event — Barenboim
has been shaking things up for
several years. For the last four
summers, he and Palestinian

cal climate of the Middle East too
hot for such an initiative, Barenboim has flown his young musicians to Germany, the United
States and Spain to perform together. And his choice, in a concert last year in Jerusalem, to
present an encore by Wagner — a
composer despised by some Jews,
who associate his music with Hitler's camps — has also won him
enemies in Israel.
Not all Palestinians appreciate
his efforts, either: The prominent
Arab musician Khaled Jubran an-

the conscience of Israeli intellectuals," he stated. Jubran has established his own Centre for Arab
Music on the outskirts of Ramallah.
Barenboim patiently explains
his position: "I believe that there is
no military solution to the conflict
in the Middle East. So one day
there will be a peace treaty, and
from that moment on, they will try
to establish relations on a cultural
basis, on a scientific basis, on an
economic basis. And I say why do
we have to wait for that? The les-

think there are a lot of things that
the individual can and should do."
However, he insists that he has
no political ambitions — indeed,
his penchant for direct action is
exactly what distinguishes him
from most politicians. And if his
activities have brought criticism,
they have also brought praise: In
September, he shared the Prince
of Asturias Concord Prize (Spain's
equivalent to the Nobel Prize) with
Said, and earlier this month he
was awarded Germany's Federal
Cross of Merit.

West Coast celebrates its own jazz niche
It's been 25 years since some Vancouver
musicians got together and carved their
own musical idiom, MARK MILLER writes
t started in 1977 over at Paul musicians in town who were interPlimley's house. The New Or- ested in improvisation."
chestra Workshop's five foundIn short order, NOW established
ers, all young Vancouver jazz itself as a non-profit society, taking
musicians with an inclination to as its mandate "the creation of an
play something other than bebop, original West Coast musical
got together at the pianist's behest idiom," opening the first of two
for an afternoon session.
lofts in Vancouver's Kitsilano dis"We felt pretty good about what trict and successfully seeking out
we did," recalls Plimley of their financial support from the Canada
first encounter, "and we decided Council.
to get together a little more and
Several ensembles were soon
develop a repertoire of pieces."
flying the NOW banner, among
so a band was born. Jazz groups them the founders' own New Oroften begin under just such cir- chestra Quintet, as well as the
cumstances. But this band soon Community Orchestra for Rebecame something much more, an search and Development (CORD),
organization that is now celebrat- Sessione Milano, A Group and the
ing its 25th anniversary with its Sound Energy Arkestra.
annual fall festival, Hear It NOW,
Concerts were presented, festitonight through Sunday at Van- vals produced, recordings made
couver's Performance Works and and workshops held, the last with
the Western Front.
such notables as the American
As the story goes, one of NOW's saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and
founders, bassist Lisle Ellis, had the German trombonist Gunter
recentiy returned from a term at Christmann. "It's amazing," muses
the Creative Music Studio, a work- Gregg Simpson at the memory,
shop in Woodstock, N.Y., that at- "how those guys could make you Vancouver's current NOW Orchestra lineup, with original founder Paul Plimley sitting at right rear.
tracted some of the brightest play beyond what you thought you
minds in what was then the avant- could do."
things in our playing and our writ- living in Montreal and San Fran- work with the American trombongarde of jazz. Duly inspired by the
Of course, NOW was not alone ing that reflected the different cisco en route to his current base ist George Lewis.
sense of common cause and com- in challenging the prevailing stimuli of all the musical traditio is in San Diego.
Some things are different for
munity that he found there, Ellis mainstream view of jazz in Canada and styles that were around at the
Simpson, meanwhile, returned NOW this second time around,
impressed upon Plimley, saxo- during the 1970s. Toronto's CCMC time; we were trying to find our home in time to join Plimley and and some are not. For one thing, it
phonist Paul Cram, trombonist (which continues to this day), way through this plethora of infor- other old NOW hands, including is no longer on the fringe of the
Ralph Eppel and drummer Gregg Montreal's Atelier de musique mation with the ultimate goal of former CORD saxophonist Coat local scene the way it was 25 years
Simpson the value of developing experimentale and the Ensemble forming our own voices and our Cooke, for the organization's re- ago.
something similar in Vancouver.
vival in 1986. Cooke and guitarist
de musique improvisee de Montr- own musical identity."
These days, though, several of
since NOW's members, notably singer
In 1981, however, NOW — in Ron Samworth have
Ellis went so far as to invite the eal were all part of what was in fact
Creative Music Studio's director, an international movement to- Paul Cram's words — "wound up emerged as NOW's primary Kate Hammett-Vaughan, trumpetGerman vibraphonist Karl Berger, ward self-determination among in three boxes under someone's movers and shakers, both as direc- ers Bill Clark and John Korsrud
tors of the society and as co-lead- and drummer Dylan van der
up for a two-day workshop in the musicians seeking a place of their steps for a while."
spring of 1978. That event, Plimley own in the jazz tradition.
For five years, to be exact. Cram, ers of its current flagship Schyff, also work on the mainremembers, "brought out a lot of
Says Plimley in retrospect: "It Ellis and Simpson headed east, ensemble, the 15-piece NOW Or- stream scene. And some mainpeople and created a sense of net- was very much a learning period Cram spending time in Toronto chestra, which enjoys a growing streamers, including Brad Turner
working and liason among the in which we were trying certain before settling in Halifax, and Ellis international profile through its (of Metalwood) and violinist Jesse

I

own future. Successful and powerful, at the beginning of his seventh
decade he maintains a fresh, unsatiated attitude: For him, music
— by its very nature — demands
and generates constant renewal.
"With music, you never do everything because whatever you've
done has disappeared. It's the fascinating thing about music —
sound evaporates. We played
Bruckner's Ninth yesterday. Where
is it? It's gone."
Special to The Globe and Mail

Zubot (of Zubot & Dawson), have
crossed over in the other direction.
The local landscape has further
shifted with the rise of the Coastal
Jazz and Blues Society, which produces Vancouver's acclaimed
summer festival and a year-round
series of concerts. Under Ken Pickering's artistic direction, the society has been most sympathetic to
NOW's initiatives and has taken
over some of the workshop's role
in the presentation of improvised
music in the city.
NOW has nevertheless continued to sponsor music on its own
— at the Glass Slipper, the grunt
gallery, the Western Front and
lately a downtown loft.
NOW has also remained consistent to its name by offering an autumn series of workshops at the
Front and a winter intensive at the
loft for the city's emerging improvisers.
"So often when we've gone out
on the road," Cooke says, "People
have said, 'We've never heard anything like this; it has really got a
different flavour and sense to it.'
We've heard this from people in
Toronto and Montreal, and even
in New York. And that's a result of
the deepening of the community
here — of people playing together,
and of workshops where there's a
kind of oral tradition of passing on
the ideas that were introduced to
us by Karl Berger, Roscoe Mitchell
and Gunter Christmann."
So it is that an organization so
purposefully known as NOW looks
in its 25th year both to the past
and to the future. "We have a responsibility here," Cooke observes, "to ourselves, to our
tradition and to the next
generation."
Hear It NOW includes a
performance by the NOW
Orchestra with Paul Cram, Lisle
Ellis and the Montreal turntable
artist Martin Tetreault as guests
tomorrow night at Performance
Works and other events tonight
through Sunday at the Western
Front. For information: www.vancouverjazz.com.