(This story is sponsored by the Vancouver International Jazz Festival)

For the uninitiated, entering into the wide world of jazz can seem a daunting mission. Jazz music boasts a deep history with many genres and subgenres to explore. With over 150 shows, Vancouver International Jazz Festival serves as an entry point into the endless sonic explorations of jazz music.

Like most great art forms, jazz developed by combining previously distinct, disparate elements into something new. Where would jazz be today without the influence of punk, heavy metal and hip hop? These artists mash it into something surprising and altogether unforgettable.

SUMAC

Post-metal supergroup SUMAC’s sound is akin to free jazz or abstract noise, where the emotional resonance isn’t bound up in melody as much as in performance. Fusing heavy riffage, knotty structures, and expressionistic forays into epic, wildly dynamic narrative arcs, the music of SUMAC is like a confrontation.

June 21, Fortune Sound Club with opening set by Moor Mother

Irreversible Entanglements

Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa’s music contains multitudes of instruments, voices, and cacophony that take on themes of Afrofuturism, colonialism, commerce and collective memory with the forebears of jazz, hip hop and beat poetry in mind. She is also the driving force behind Irreversible Entanglements, a free jazz quintet with an experimental punk mentality called “the most thrilling band in jazz right now” by NPR.

June 22, Performance Works

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis

Drummer Brendan Canty and bassist Joe Lally were the insistent engine of DC post-hardcore legends Fugazi for over 15 years. In 2016, they formed Messthetics with guitar virtuoso Anthony Pirog. In late-2021, they were joined onstage by acclaimed saxophonist James Brandon Lewis - a favorite at the 2023 Jazz Festival - and sparks flew. Lewis relishes the chance to plug into the power of the Messthetics’ punk-adjacent milieu.

June 23, Performance Works

The Vancouver International Jazz Festival runs June 21 - 30 at venues across Vancouver. Go to coastaljazz.ca for schedule and ticket information.