Bruno Hubert reflects on his Montreal roots ahead of Vancouver International Jazz Festival concert
Pianist brings his expressive playing to Performance Works alongside bassist André Lachance, drummer Joe Poole, and trumpeter Brad Turner
Bruno Hubert. Photo by Vincent Lim
As part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Coastal Jazz & Blues Society presents the Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner at Performance Works on June 25 at 2 pm, in association with the Queer Arts Festival
EXPO 86: BOON OR BOONDOGGLE? The jury is still out on the long-term economic and cultural impact of the global exposition on B.C., with some arguing that it established Vancouver as a truly “world class” city, whatever that means, while others are convinced that it marked the end of affordable rents, plentiful arts venues, and relaxed West Coast living.
One thing we know, however, is that Expo played a major role in establishing our city as a Mecca for jazz musicians from Quebec. “What happened was that in ’86 there was the big Expo here in Vancouver,” Bruno Hubert explains to Stir. “The Quebec government decided to hire just about every big band and vocal band that existed at the universities, both in Quebec City and Montreal, and they flew us out. We were all staying in one big floating hotel that was by Science World, and we were all playing in front of the Quebec pavilion for the entire summer.
“We went back to Quebec after three months, and one of my teachers [Réjean Marois], he was saying ‘What are we doing in Quebec City, man? Let’s move back to Vancouver,’” the affable pianist continues, adding that he decided to stay, but that Marois soon found work at what was then Capilano College. “Every three months after this he would phone me and say ‘Bruno, come on. I’m at Cap College, and there’s a guy named Miles Black here that’s teaching the piano. You should come over here, man.’ And Cap was kind of easy to get into, so I was like ‘Okay, then. I’m coming.’”
By the time that Hubert actually arrived, in 1989, Vancouver was already awash with Montreal-trained musicians, including such notable figures as saxophonist and pianist Mike Allen, drummer and bandleader Dave Robbins, singer Denzal Sinclaire, and guitarist Bill Coon. The pianist fit right in, as did his companion on the long drive west, an 18-year-old bass prodigy named André Lachance. As Hubert tells it, he saved one of the most in-demand musicians on the local scene from a life of test tubes and equations; having finished high school early, Lachance was enrolled in a science program when a freelance gig put the two of them together.
“We were playing this little concert with his old high school’s vocal-jazz band, playing all the hits—‘Route 66’ and that sort of thing—and André’s got this Fender bass plugged into this little Roland Cube amp, and I swear, at the end of that concert I was like ‘Wow, this kid just swings like crazy!’” Hubert recalls. “He was 18 years old, and so I went to him and said ‘What are you doing here, little boy?’ ‘Well, you know, I’m in science.’ And I was like ‘I’ve heard a lot of people play electric bass here in Quebec, but I’ve never heard anyone swing like you. Would you consider going to music school?’”
Despite parental opposition, Hubert’s enthusiasm—and his semi-celebrity status from playing in various talk-show bands—won the day. “André is still quite nice to me after all those years,” the pianist says, laughing. “He knows that I convinced his parents to let this man play music for the rest of his life.”
The two friends—along with a pair of musicians they met soon after arriving in Vancouver, drummer Joe Poole and trumpeter Brad Turner—will convene at Performance Works on June 25, as part of a “pay what you can” concert presented by the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in association with the Queer Arts Festival. Expect a high level of musical telepathy, and don’t be surprised if Hubert’s evident gift for storytelling sneaks into the music in surprising ways.
Musicians are often expected to be composers as well, but this pianist is a rarity: he seldom, if ever, writes a tune. Even during his years of taking composition classes, Hubert admits, “holding a pencil in my hand and writing music was not something that I liked at all. I just needed to play, so basically analyzing other people’s compositions is what I like to do.”
That’s evident on Hubert’s most recent Cellar Music release, Fire Waltz, which features works by such eminent jazz composers as Charles Mingus, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, and Mal Waldron, delivered with stellar support from Poole and bassist James Meger. But Hubert goes far beyond spirited playing: he often visualizes tunes as mini-movies, thinking deeply about the narratives they inspire and how they might be fed back into his improvisations.
With Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, for instance, the pugnacious bassist’s gorgeous eulogy for saxophone innovator Lester Young becomes a cinematic depiction of Prez’s funeral cortège, with his casket carried by six jazz legends.
“The piano starts out like I was imagining that they’re lifting the coffin and they’re leaving the church,” Hubert explains. “They’re marching very slowly with the coffin and going to the cemetery. In the front there’s Mingus, and then there’s Joe Williams next to him, and all those other famous jazz musicians holding the coffin up. And as they’re walking towards the cemetery I imagined Mingus singing that melody; it’s a very gospel thing. And Joe Williams is next to him and when he starts singing, the song becomes way more intense. I kept imagining this all the way through the song to the very last chord, when they drop the coffin in the hole.”
Hubert’s version of Waldron’s title tune sets up a happier scenario: a swing-dance competition, with each run through the chord progression introducing new movers. “Every chorus of the solo,” he notes, “should feel like it has a totally different personality as a new couple slides in.”
Further narrative interest is generated by Hubert’s ability to work musical quotes and references into his performances. Check out the way that Paul Desmond’s jazz classic “Take Five” magically appears in Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn’s “I Fall In Love Too Easily”, or how Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s show tune “My Favourite Things” provides a thematically appropriate foil for Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma”.
Hubert’s artistry might not involve arranging notes on staves, but it offers compelling proof that rearranging is an art in itself—and that Quebec’s loss has been very much Vancouver’s gain, no matter what else might have gone awry in 1986. 
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