2022 Jazz festival tear down shift day 4, July 7th, 2022

The day 4 crew consisted of: Jean Messier, Guy Tauvette, Doug Thompson, Guy Larocque, Taylor Morey, Adrian Raghuandan and Tomo Iwasawa.

Our task today, tear down the SA 80 Main stage tent.

Our tent is lonely but will get a whole lot of attention today

With the additional assistance of Petr Cancura, James Richardson and Justin Kean from the office, we proceeded to take down the tent one step at a time.

Step #1 is to untie the cables and fold the tent back low enough so we can remove the back curtain.

Step  #2

Unhook the back curtain, move the tent in a safe position and fold it into a small pack.

We then fold the tent down, remove the cover and fold it into its pack, ready for storage.

Step #3

The frame is then taken apart and all of the components stowed onto special pallets for storage.

And finally, everything is gathered and loaded into the storage trailer not to be reclaimed until the next festival.

That’s a wrap.

Thank you all who volunteered to make sure that this event was a success.  We worked hard, heard some great music and went home every night being satisfied that we had left our mark on the festival.

A big thank you to Tom Corden, Chris Elms, John Cvetan, James Richardson, Kaitlynn Steele, Mike Laviolette and Justin Kean.

Hoping to see you next year.  Look for my emails starting in January 2023.

Have a great summer.

Jean Messier

Stage Volunteer Coordinator

Advertisement

2022 Jazz festival tear-down shift day 3, July 6th, 2022

The day 3 crew was a small crew.  Jean Messier, Will Brodie, Guy Tauvette and Doug Thompson.  Unfortunately, Guy Larocque could not join us due to a small injury.

The plan today was to finish packing the backstage gear and get ready for loading of the gear in the storage trailer.

Everything went according to plan until the stage strike team (Contractor) advised us that they were short personnel and may need some help to take down the stage structure in preparation for taking down the SA80 tent tomorrow (July 7^th).

Working as a team, we made short work of the task.  After the break, the stage team went on to keep packing the stage gear and I (JM) assisted the contractor with tearing down the speaker towers.

The team was done packing the backstage area around 3pm.  After sending the team home, I went to the OLG stage to assist with taking down the speaker towers there.

With today’s work completed, we are now ready to tear down the Main Stage tent.

The main stage tent really looks lonely in the middle of the field but it will be getting a lot of attention tomorrow, July 7^th.

Thanks to all for the hard work.

JM

2022 Jazz festival tear-down shift day 2, July 5th, 2022

The day 2 crew included Don Douglas, Jennifer Barkley, Jean Messier, Ray Angers, Tomo Iwasawa, Kent Johnston, Guy Larocque, Will Brodie, Guy Tauvette and Doug Thompson.  Unfortunately, Vaughn Hall could not join us.

The plan today was to keep cleaning up the backstage area, striking the Follow spots and tearing down the FS tower and finally, going to the OLG stage to take down the LX that hung at the front of the OLG tent.  We also needed to start packing up the main stage gear.

With the rain threatening, I and Ray proceeded to start the work on the FS tower.  Take down the two ladders that were lashed to the tower and prepare to take down the Follow spots.

Once ready, I added Tomo to the FS take down team, and had the remainder of the team receive the follow spots for repacking in their rightful containers.

With the promised heavy downpour holding off, next step was for I and Tomo remove the roof structure from the tower.  We kept at it under a very light rain.  Later, with Ray joining the FS tower crew, we took down the tower one level at a time while the rest of the crew busied themselves with loading up the Wall truck.  We then went to the OLG stage and took down the remainder of the lights.

Confederation Park looks a whole lot different after the Follow Spot tower and FOH tent are removed

Thank you all for the hard work.  We got Day 2 of the teardown done

Jean Messier

Stage Coordinator

2022 Jazz festival tear-down shift day 1, July 4th, 2022

2022 Jazz festival teardown shift day 1, July 7^th, 2022

Today was a great day, and we got a lot accomplished.

Thank you Riek for coming in and cleaning up the cabinets.  After two years in storage, it was long overdue.

While Emily crawled under the stage to chase extension cords and then coiled each them, the rest of the crew were busy supporting the Wall lighting tech with taking down the lights from the truss, and later supporting the crew that was taking down the lights that were hanging at the front of the tent.

In the afternoon, everyone got into the action as we took down the main stage truss then went on to take down the truss at the OLG stage.

All in all, from crew call at 9AM to shutdown at 7:30PM, I am certainly thankful to all those who spent the day doing all the things that had to be done and then some.

As to the day 2 tear-down crew, do not worry, there is plenty to do.

Big thank you to Riek Van den Berg, Jennifer Barkley, Don Douglas, Ray Angers, Will Brodie, Tomo Iwasawa, Emily Plunkett, Don Dodds and Guy Tauvette and of course, yours truly was also present.

The weather does not look very nice for tomorrow but the train is going to be on time.

Thank you all,

JM

Packing up and saying goodbyes

Today was the first of several days for packing up the stages.

The rolling riser is no more

The team worked hard to take down the lighting gear and packing it up. They also took apart the various things that we do at the beginning of the festival to make things easier and better for all. Wall sound sent people to take down and pack up the sound equipment and that was a great help. The trusses still have to come down and a number of other things. Then the stage will be taken down by the contractor and the main stage cover will be taken down by the team working with staff.

Then it all goes away for another year.

Hope to see you all next year again for more fun and great music!

Day 10 at the main stage

Today we had two shows. One was a traditional jazz setup: Piano, Bass, Drums and Sax. The other had mostly the same instruments but had two large drum sets so needed a very large drum riser. Luckily we had 2 8×10 rugs to use as drum rugs…

The evening crew yesterday put them together–thank you so much! Today’s teams were tasked with setting things up and also with the changeover. The piano was SL for one show and SR for the other…

It was a great way to end this year’s festival! Tomorrow we start the pack up.

Thanks so much to all of this year’s volunteers for helping make it all happen!!!!

Day 9 on the main stage

Today we had two fairly big setups and two managers who were great to work with. And the music was worth it.

We left a lot of instruments on stage behind the first show so they had to be draped, as you can see. Black hides so many things on the stage.

Everyone worked well together and, again, we were able to turn the stage over to the second band with lots of time to spare. We also had a nice clean back stage area before the second show started!

If you were wondering what happened to Day 8–well the main stage was dark on July 1 so nothing to report.

Tomorrow is the last day of music–hard to believe it is already at that point.

2022 Volunteer Party

volunteer2Download

Day 7 on the main stage

Today started with both back line people having personal issues and having to be off site, luckily not at the same time. But both were unexpected and unplanned so that complicated things.

Then the first sound check band had a different stage plot than what we had.. The manager emailed it to me and I used my device to show the others as we went along. This was key world with the Hammond, a Rhodes, a Moog and another profile. That was for one member. Another member had a couple of other keyboards and a lot of effects things. Fortunately the base was straightforward. The drummer had a pad in his set but we were expecting that. There were two singers as well. So the trio became a sextet.

We got it all working and then had to strike it all. The Hammond bench fell over and broke.

We dragged the drum set back, much to the dismay of the next band, who insisted this could not be done… It was and we do this often when the band doesn’t use a rolling riser for the drums.

The day team were absolute heroes as they worked hard, managed to deal with the uncertainty and had no lunch break, unfortunately. Luckily there was ice cream and cookies to sustain them. Thank you all!!!

The Day Team, all heroes!

Then we set up the big band. That went well and they gave a great show. Lovely so see a local band on the main stage!

The change between the two shows went pretty well, given that I was the only person who had seen the sound check set up.

The follow spots got used, which is good. The weather behaved and the crowd seemed happy. 🙂

Missing Henry

Every day of the festival, we miss Henry more and more. Yesterday was really hard. Henry taught us how to set up a big band, and we had one. He built the boxers to hold the riser legs . Cleverly, they also serve as steps for high risers and we needed those. He made our work on stage so much better in every way with his creativity and hard work.

Thank you so much, Henry! We feel you here looking after us still.