It happens when you don’t expect it to. Those moments in life when, as they’re happening, it becomes clear that your path lies down a specific road that you didn’t even know existed.
Keeping that in mind, it’s entirely possible that moment for Allison Lee came when she was eight years old. Introduced to jazz music at that time, Lee recalls that feeling that washed over her as she listened and let the music take her wherever it wanted her to go.
“I was a young classical pianist at the time, and the swing feel fascinated me,” Lee said of her first taste. “I soon began playing double bass in a combo shortly after. What continues to draw me to the music is that jazz is essentially completely improvised music; everything written on a piece of sheet music acts as a guide, and melodies, walking basslines, comping, and solos are all improvised on the spot. This really allows musicians to express themselves and find their individual style. Jass also has a seemingly magical way of bringing people together and spreading joy to anyone involved in the creative process or listening to it, which is one of my goals whenever I play.”
Lee hails from Vancouver but has twice made the trip to Stratford as a student at the Stratford Summer Music Jazz Academy. Mark Fewer, the academy’s artistic director, said the thinking behind it was simple: to gather a team of people from across the country who could coalesce once a year and make a team that’s special for Stratford Summer Music.
“I talked with Jim Doxas about it and he gave me three names - I knew all three of them and knew they’d be great,” he said of putting the team of instructors together. “When you’re going to be at that level of intimacy inside of a music environment, you want to make sure you’ve got upstanding citizens. Our group teaches for a week and spends time with the students over at Avondale doing a variety of things, whether it's a group session in the morning or private lessons or combos in the afternoon.”
The teachers Fewer assembled - Doxas on drums, Florian Hoefner on piano, Kelly Jefferson on saxophone and Jodi Proznick on bass - have taken the students under their collective wing and worked to extract their best over the weeklong stay. It culminates with a show on the city’s famed music barge as well as a show at Revival House, something Fewer anticipates each year.
“That’s a big highlight for me, seeing them all together and doing this one-off event like that,” he said. “This is a unique setting for would-be jazz musicians because I believe the four educators we have here all have a way with youth that is unique. They bring their own experiences with them, which then gets wrapped up into how they deal with the students - that’s the one thing you’re only going to find here. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for young jazz musicians to be inside this setting where they get public performances and this kind of teaching as part of the academy mandate.”
The academy has a general guideline that students should be 22 years old or younger, and Proznick said that working with youth has its benefits.
“They all have great promise, and they’re lovely young adults with lots of curiosity and dedication,” she said. “That is the magic ingredient for success in music. The goal here is to offer a safe and joyful space to explore the music while building more expertise around the building blocks of the music. Sound, feel, harmony, melody and a reverence for the tradition. One of my best memories of working here is always watching the students perform on the barge - they always come so far in such a short time.”
Proznick, who is Lee’s teacher back in Vancouver, told her about the academy, but that wasn’t the only thing that drew Lee here.
“Other than my love of travel, what drew me here was the opportunity to learn from some of the best jazz musicians and instructors from all over Canada - coast to coast,” she said. “I wanted to come and soak up as much knowledge and wisdom as I could in a single week.”
Over the two years she’s attended, Lee has seen her confidence grow as she more fully began stepping into the musician she was becoming. She was invited to play alongside the instructors at Revival House in her first year, overcoming her nerves about joining such an experienced group on stage in front of a live audience. And in her second year, she put all that she had learned on full display.
“My friend, Tristan, and I composed a jazz tune for each faculty member and performed several of them on the Barge,” she said. “I felt that each tune deserved an explanation of their whimsical names and the context of how we wrote them, so I decided to ‘emcee’ our performance even though I was very uncomfortable with public speaking at the time. Since then, I’ve been able to volunteer myself to speak to an audience at shows more often, and many of the encouraging opportunities and experiences I had at the academy enabled me to be more comfortable stepping outside my comfort zone.”
Fewer remembers Lee’s performance at Revival House: it was unannounced that she was joining the instructors for their performance, but the audience reception told the story.
“The place went ballistic, seeing this young girl who was just 16 at the time getting up there with the pros and really sounding like a professional herself,” he recalled. “It was pretty darn inspiring, and Allison will be headed to the Juilliard School this fall. I hope we’ll see more students like her - word of mouth in the music world still tends to be how you gain traction, and I know the word has spread.”
Lee credits coming to Stratford in helping get her ready to make the step to Juilliard, saying it prepared her in a few ways to head off to New York in September.
“Music camps always felt like a preview of music school to me, and realizing that I enjoyed them a fair amount more than high school helped me to realize that I was excited about the possibility of attending a music post-secondary program and that going into music in the future seemed like the right career path for me,” she said.
Fewer might be getting his wish for more like Allison Lee, as Lee’s younger sister, Lauren, will also be returning for a second year when the academy kicks off July 29. While Lauren might not be as much of a fan of travel as her older sister, she noted how much Allison improved as a musician after attending … that was all the convincing she needed.
“Last year, the aspect of the camp that really stood out to me was the community, as everyone who attended the camp was friendly and supportive,” Lauren said. “I’m really looking forward to learning from Jim Doxas, who’s an amazing jazz drummer who teaches at McGill University. His advice and insights helped me to improve my playing last year and I’m eager to learn more from him.”
Fewer has gleaned a lot from being involved with the academy, and the thing he takes with him to savour for the other 51 weeks of the year before the students arrive in Stratford once again are the memories of seeing them change in just seven days.
“When you’re in the presence of youngsters who don’t have any kind of game going on, you never know what they’re going to come up with,” he said. “For me as a listener, I want that opportunity to be an experience where I’m surprised and delighted with what they’re coming up with, things I wouldn’t have expected. It’s in these types of creative environments, the sky’s the limit.”
