Mynett Photography

One of, perhaps if not the, most famous jazz photo taken is known as A Great Day in Harlem. The photo was taken in August 1958 by Art Kane for Esquire Magazine and  featured 57 jazz musicians in New York. Featured musicians included Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins among other legends. As was typical for the time, many other musicians including Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington were out of town on the road.

The picture has become so iconic that virtually every jazz student at some point in their education has it hanging on their wall; I certainly did! Additionally the “A Great Day in…” structure has inspired many homages both within the jazz community and from the arts more widely. When (now defunct) Coda Magazine realized that their 50th anniversary coincided with the anniversary of this photo an idea was born to create “A Great Day in Canadian Jazz” featuring similar shots assembling musicians in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal and capturing a snapshot at the same time of as many canadian musicians as possible. And they reached out to me to set up and take the Vancouver photo as I was doing a lot of jazz concert photography for the Jazz Cellar and had worked with Coda previously. 

Setting something like this up in 2008 (TK CHECK) than 2020 before many people were on email and certainly Facebook and other platforms. Coda picked the date (INSERT Here) and I picked the location and tried to get the word out, but had no way of knowing who or how many would show up. The natural choice - steps at the Vancouver Art gallery - were booked so we picked the steps in Queen Elizabeth Park by the Bloedel Conservatory. 

Our time was set for 10am and part of the uniqueness of the photo was that Coda wanted the shutter released at 10:00am exactly. 

I showed up early - around 9am - and waited. Al Johnson was the first to show up. Others started joining, slowly at first, but building towards 10am. Over XXX people turned out in total featuring a cross section of the local scene ranging from established professionals to students and community players. Some like Phil Dwyer traveled from out of town, while other local players were unable to make it for various reasons – just like the original New York shot. Far from a comprehensive documentation of the local community it was a great vignette of a moment in time.

After the main shot was taken everyone milled around catching up with friends and people they hadn’t seen in a while. We broke everyone down into smaller groups and took instrumental specific shots. 

On a personal note there 

No way to know who all was there

1) Brad Muirhead 2) Ross Taggart 3) Ron Johnston 4) Jeremy Berkman 5) Michael Creber 6) Doug Stephenson 7) Melody Diachun 8) Cory Weeds 9) Joani Taylor 10) Stan Karp 11) Cecile LaRochelle 12) Dee Daniels 13) Kate Hammett-Vaughan 14) June Katz 15) Al Johnston 16) Gilberto Moreaux 17) Andre Carrasquero 18) Rene Worst 19) Dave Say 20) Candus Churchill 21) Jennifer Scott 22) Mike Ardagh 23) Sal Ferreras 24) Don Stewart 25) Anndreyah Vargas 26) Dave Robbins 27) Sharon Minemoto 28) Gavin Youngash 29) ?? 30) Bernie Arai 31) Laura Crema 32) Johannes Grames 33) Bill Weeds 34) Nino DiPasquale 35) Jon Bentley 36) Jesse Cahill 37) Paul Rushka 38) Don Fraser 39) Dave Guiney 40) Steve Bagnell 41) Juhli Conlinn 42) Blaine Wikjord 43) Sybll Thrasher 44) Colleen Savage 45) Gavin Walker 46) Wayne Stewart 47) Kevin Elaschuk 48) Phil Dwyer 49) Sam Cartwright 50) Bruno Hubert 51) Al Wold 52) Brian Davies 53) Tom Keenlyside 54) Ken Pickering 55) Derry Bryne 56) Jill Townsend 57) Bill Coon 58) André Lachance 59) Scott Sanft 60) Chad Makela 61) Dennis Burke 62) Ihor Kukurudza 63) Rod Murray 64) John Korsrud 65) Gabriel Mark Hasselbach 66) Ben Dwyer 67) Cameron Milligan 68) Randall Stoll 69) Rebecca Shoichet 70) Coat Cooke 71) Mike Braverman 72) Saul Berson 73) Chris Startup 74) Mark Fewer 75) Shannon Thue 76) Brad Turner 77) Chris Gestrin 78) Steve Smith 79) Paul Grant 80) Harris van Berkel 81) Lisa Miller 82) Aaron Hardie 83) Miles Hill 84) Dennis Esson 85) Bonnie Ferguson 86) Ron Thompson 87) Campbell Ryga 88) Steve Kaldestad 89) Julian McDonough 90) Mike Herriott 91) Steve Maddock 92) Morgan Childs 93) Mike Allen 94) Daryl Jahnke 95) Budge Schachte 96) Tilden Webb 97) Jodi Proznick 98) Patti Hervey 99) Oliver Gannon 100) Bob Murphy 101) Monique Van Damn 102) Bill Runge 103) Amanda Tosoff 104) Jared Burrows