BY MEGAN WARREN
For ArtSpring
Just in time for International Women’s Day and to welcome the coming of spring, The Ostara Project takes over ArtSpring from March 10 to 14 for a week-long immersive experience.
Join this groundbreaking all-women musical collective for a week of music, film and community gatherings to celebrate women in jazz.
Salt Springers are likely familiar with The Ostara Project, an all-women, all-star jazz collective named for the Germanic goddess of the spring equinox. This immersive experience is packed with events where our community can connect with these remarkable musicians on a deeper level. The residency kicks off on Tuesday, March 10 with Pecha Kucha, a co-presentation from Ostara and ArtSpring’s RoundTable committee, in which nine accomplished Salt Spring women present their passions “Pecha Kucha style” in 20 slides for 20 seconds each. Ostara runs a school workshop at GISS the next day, followed by an open rehearsal. On Thursday, March 12, community members are invited to groove with Ostara in a jazz jam at Woodley’s Restaurant.
The residency culminates in two key event nights based on Ostara’s The Ancestors’ Project. On Friday, March 13, the Documentary Film Night features a panel discussion and three short films: Change the Tune, a 30-minute documentary about the challenges faced by women in jazz; a short film about the making of Roots & Wings; and Toones, a jazzy animated short film co-produced by Ostara’s manager Lisa Buck.
On Saturday, March 14, the group performs their daring two-album project Roots & Wings, which digs into work that “embodies roots — ancestral connections, personal histories and cultural legacies — and wings — bold creative risk-taking and musical freedom.” As Ostara co-founder Jodi Proznick puts it, the project has “one foot in the past and one wing in the future.”
The Ancestors’ Project began with a conversation among the bandmates about their family backgrounds. This conversation brought to Proznick’s mind the image of a table — a metaphor that she references often when discussing Ostara — and of having a cup of coffee with women from all different backgrounds and experiences.
“It struck me that this is how we tap into a generosity of spirit with our neighbours, as well as deep empathy for our neighbours. And so that’s what the whole Ancestors’ Project really is: storytelling, maintaining connection to your family through craft, through art, through song, through storytelling.”
Each participant in The Ancestors’ Project came to the group with a composition connected to their own background. In true jazz fashion, the group improvised and co-created the instrumentation for each song together. The result was Roots, one part of Roots & Wings. Proznick’s song What a Moonlit Night is a Ukrainian folk song in which two weary lovers go for a moonlit walk and notice the light shining on nettles on the ground.
“Essentially, it’s a metaphor saying there are always moments of grace and light, even when things seem very, very dark.”
It reminds her of the grit and tenacity of the Ukrainian people in her family in the face of Russia’s invasion.
“Grit” is a word that Proznick uses a lot, especially when discussing being a woman in jazz. A close second is “lighthouse.” Grit makes sense — only around five per cent of jazz instrumentalists are women, and it takes tenacity to “endure the patriarchy floating around and smacking you in the head and to stay in the game,” as she puts it. “Lighthouses” are the gritty women who do stay in the jazz game and guide other women — they counterbalance the need for grit by lighting the way for women at the beginning of their musical journeys. Proznick sees Ostara as a lighthouse and treasures Ostara’s educational programming. Remembering a young girl who “couldn’t stop staring at Valerie and her drums” and jammed with the group after impromptu lessons, she relishes the idea that for these young people, jazz will be “less like walking into a dark pathway because all of these women are little lights, reaching further along in the past to light up the way.”
While Roots explores where the Ostara musicians have come from, Wings asks: “Where do we want to go as a collective, as a community?” This aspirational program, which opens with Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” emphasizes a hopeful future. “One thing music and art can do is reorder chaos to create songs, artwork and film, and offer these little things to the world to make sense of it all and ground it in form,” says Proznick. “Wings is poetry about where we’re headed.”
The Ostara Project has a “fluid” membership, wherein members can join for an album or a tour when they’re able and can step back when they need. This week’s ensemble consists of Ostara’s co-founders, bassist Proznick and pianist Amanda Tosoff, along with Claire Devlin on saxophone, Rachel Therrien on trumpet, Valérie Lacombe on drums and Kim Zombik on vocals.
For tickets to the documentary film night ($10 youth, $15 adults), the Roots & Wings open rehearsal ($10), or the Roots & Wings concert ($10 youth, $42 adults, $15 Theatre Angel) , visit purchase.artspring.ca. Entry to Pecha Kucha and the jazz jam at Woodley’s is by donation.