It's hard to believe that our spectacular 2008-2009 season finale was the twenty-fifth event presented under the Impressions in Jazz banner. It all began in February 2005 when I staged The Magic of Miles Davis. My goals from the beginning were to make the music of jazz more accessible to a wider audience, to share the music I love and the stories behind it, to showcase the great artistic talent we have in Ottawa and to give artists opportunities to perform unique and challenging material. When we received a great response to that debut performance and John Kelman wrote in All About Jazz that “Cho’s intentions were clearly to educate as much as entertain, and he succeeded on both fronts,” I knew that I had achieved some considerable measure of success towards those goals.

That debut performance was followed by an invitation to perform a subset of the programme at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival in the prestigious Connoisseur Series. In 2006, I presented the first “large-scale” concert with Suite Freedom featuring twenty-five musicians. At that stage I had no intention of establishing a permanent ensemble, but like many things worth pursuing, it took on a life of its own. In 2007-2008, with the help of a small team of volunteers, we presented an astounding ten performances including many Ottawa premieres. We performed a diverse array of music including Gil Evan’s Sketches of Spain and Miles Ahead suites featuring the fabulous Lina Allemano, and Duke Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder (Shakespearean Suite) presented in collaboration with Shakespearean actors and the Ottawa Baroque Consort. The Canuckracker was a uniquely Canadian and very swinging Nutcracker that featured actors, contemporary and swing dancers, computer animation and, of course, Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s delightful reinterpretation of Tchaikovsky’s music.

In 2008-2009 we again presented ten events ranging from the pre-jazz of the 1850s to an extremely well-received evening of entirely improvised music. The twelve performances in our 2009-2010 season will continue to push the envelope with innovative, entertaining and educational programming featuring the finest jazz and symphony musicians in Ottawa. Our four season concerts bookended by tributes to Duke Ellington, are especially not to be missed. We look forward to seeing you at one or more of these fabulous events.

Cheers

Adrian Cho
Founder and Artistic Director

April 18, 2009