By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
From February 13 to March 22, the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) is hosting WinterTide on Fridays, Saturdays, and select Thursdays.
WinterTide is a collaboration between the RBG and the Emerging Artists Association (EAA), where jazz musicians get a chance to showcase their music in front of an audience at the RBG’s Rock Garden. Most of the musicians are up-and-coming, though there are some Grammy and Juno award-winners among the lineup.
Every weekend features a different group of bands and musicians, and each day has a slightly different musical theme. Thursday comprises global music artists, Friday is pop and jazz, and Saturday is solely jazz.
David Lee, the music director of EAA, said the event has been a great success so far.
“As an event organizer, just by looking at what kind of feedback we have been receiving from audience members, it’s a big success,” Lee said. “We’ve been getting really good feedback. There has been some very constructive feedback, which we love to have so that we can improve more.”
Lee said that this is the best WinterTide event since they started in 2022.
On February 28, the band Wanderer performed; Lee spoke about the band.
“They do a lot of very interesting arrangements like Marvel songs in jazz, Spider-Man songs, for example,” Lee said. “Zachary, the leader, is also a composer. I think half the songs are arrangements and half are his compositions.”
The EAA is a non-profit organization that works with artists 45 years and younger to try and provide avenues for them to showcase their music. Their signature festival is the T.U. Jazz Fest, which has run annually for the past 11 years.
Throughout December and January, EAA received 30 applications for the WinterTide event.
EAA also hosts networking and workshop events.
“We invite music greats and music business greats who have a successful career in music,” Lee said. “And then we invite all the emerging artists to listen and learn from them and ask questions.”
Lee spoke about the opportunity that the EAA provides to musicians.
“We want to give opportunities not only to showcase, [but to provide an] audience, because otherwise, it’s really hard for them to start,” Lee said. “If they just got out of school and their passion is in music, there’s no place to go. Even if they do [perform], in many cases, there’s only one or two people. It’s not fun.”
Lee said that select artists from WinterTide will play at one of EAA’s festivals, which are usually attended by 30,000 to 40,000 people.
“They [the artists] always appreciate those kinds of opportunities,” Lee said. “And we often see at the festival, they perform, and people ask them to perform at their wedding or their restaurants. That’s the kind of scenario that I want to see on behalf of the Emerging Artists Association because we don’t want them to just play once for us.”
“We want them to continue doing what they love, which is music, through those opportunities,” Lee continued. “And opportunities create more opportunities. That’s what we want to happen.”
