Blue Moon Marquee | Creative Music Commissions Presented by TD

“You need to step away to fill up the well—you can’t just continuously draw water without replenishing.”

In this interview, Blue Moon Marquee reflects on how they replenished their creative well throughout the pandemic by focusing on *not* playing music—instead working on vintage motorcycles, gardening, & nesting.

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We’re making Blue Moon Marquee’s 2021 Jazz Festival performance available again for one week only! It will premiere next Monday, December 6, and you can stream it for free on YouTube & Facebook until the following Monday.

The show will be available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-LeOlJqJDQ

We hope you’ll tune in!
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In March 2020, the performing arts ground to a halt, and event producers scrambled to figure out next steps. Here at Coastal Jazz, we entertained a number of ideas, but ultimately what we heard from the artistic community was that what they really needed was to replace lost income and to feel creative.

In response, and with the ongoing support of TD, Coastal Jazz launched the Creative Music Commissions presented by TD, which supported artists with commissioning fees, allowing them to use that time to write new music while also paying their bills. We did not put any requirements on time, results, number of tunes, format, or ensemble, with the intention of supporting artists regardless of the outcome of their time.

This summer, we sat down with commission recipients to talk about their musical lives during the pandemic and hear the music that came from their commissions. These interviews shine a light into the creative processes and inner workings of some of Vancouver’s most compelling musicians. We’ll be releasing one video per week in the coming months—we’re excited to share them with you!

#TDMusic