Vancouver's entertainment industry is tapping into unique event formats to draw bigger crowds, as music fans flock to innovative pairings of music with film, games, tea time, and more.
The Hargrove: A New Venue for Intimate Events
Vancouver Jazz Festival co-artistic director Cole Schmidt is excited about The Hargrove, a recently opened off-Main Street venue that houses the jazz festival's administrative offices. This space is ideal for the intimate, unique events that local audiences are increasingly attending. With a mix of assorted seating, funky lighting, and a back alley entrance off East 3rd Avenue, The Hargrove has hosted album release parties, regular concerts, songwriting intensives, and lecture-shows about specific musical genres.
Schmidt draws inspiration from various models, including The China Cloud, the 1980s loft scene, and the Big Ears Festival. He highlights events like Feven Kidane and Nebyu Yohannes discussing Ethiopian music as a neat way to package performances, offering a more intimate look into the artist's mind.
Feven Kidane: A Rising Star in Immersive Performances
Multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Feven Kidane is a rising star on the Canadian jazz scene, known for performances paired with lectures or film screenings. Her Hargrove presentation led to the Halleluya Hailu Plays Ethiopia show, directed by Kidane, taking place July 4 at Performance Works during the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Kidane notes that audiences want immersive experiences, seeking more than just hearing a show or watching a movie—they want to pick the artists' brains.
She explains that when she performs before a film screening, it's about saying something about the artist in the film rather than talking, which is also cool. These film screenings are part of the successful VIFF Live Year-Round series, co-presented by VIFF Centre and Infidels Jazz, where a pre-show musical performance precedes a documentary screening.
Growing Demand for Hybrid Events
VIFF programmer Tom Charity says demand for this type of multi-media showcase has been growing for the past decade. He describes it as event cinema, a response to the streaming age, with examples like Live At The Met performances. Post-pandemic, VIFF began doing more hybrid music and film shows to convince people to return to the cinema, and it works—these shows regularly sell out, leading to more such events.
