Inspiring the next generation of femme jazz musicians
Kayla Price (she/her) // Contributor
It’s November 10, and you’re sitting in a full audience, bustling with anticipation. Capilano University alumni and band director Casey Thomas Burns takes the stage of The Pearl—a night club in the heart of downtown Vancouver—in a sparkly green pantsuit. Behind her is the rest of her 11-piece big band, The Leading Ladies. Tim Reinert, promoter and organizer of Infidels Jazz live shows across Vancouver, opens the show by saying, “they are the hardest working big band in Metro Vancouver.” Horns back Burns as she addresses the crowd, and the band jumps into the first of nearly a dozen vocal features of the evening, marking their biggest collaborative show to date.
Burns and Riley Poystila are both CapU Jazz Studies alumni, and two of the founding members of The Leading Ladies big band; an energetic ensemble that’s inspiring young femme and non-binary jazz musicians across Metro Vancouver and the province.
Burns began the band in her second year at CapU in 2019. “There was a concert series going on at Presentation House that I was helping to organize that was focusing on women in jazz,” she says. “For the last [show] of the year…I wanted to get more people involved.”
This one-off performance at Pres House sparked the initial idea to start what’s now become The Leading Ladies–getting together a big band of all women and femme-presenting musicians. “There [were] not enough women in the program to do a big band, but we had enough to do a little-big band,” she explains. “That’s how the band first came together, because I did this one show with the help of Jill Townsend.”
Poystila has been playing upright and electric bass in the group since that initial show started it all, and they’ve loved the group dynamic ever since. “It’s the most welcomed I’ve felt in a band. The happiest I’ve felt in a band. The people I’m playing with are genuinely my friends and we have fun making music.”
Since their conception five years ago, The Leading Ladies have toured across the province on numerous occasions, opening the Tofino Jazz Festival in June 2024. They’ve amassed a number of diverse sets for different occasions–modern big band tunes featuring Vancouver-based arrangers and composers, a New Orleans style parade set, classic Winter/Christmas music, a swing dance set, and now a new collection of R&B tunes, which the group performed at The Pearl back on November 10, alongside five of Vancouver’s top R&B vocalists.
“Ladies Night” jazz jam sessions happen on Tuesday nights every couple of months, inviting women and non-binary individuals of all ages and skill levels to come together, bring their horns and call a tune. “The result of it has been that we now have this cool community where ten plus years of [CapU] jazz alumni and femme folks from across the city know each other, [and] make music together pretty regularly.” Burns remarks that “That’s not something we saw before we started doing this, so it’s been cool to create that for other people.” Building community has been a common theme in talking with the two Leading Ladies members. They support other women and people in music, both within their band and anyone outside of it.
These days, the little-big band has been putting in the work rehearsing for their upcoming shows, including a fifteen-show educational residency at the Michael J Fox Theatre in Burnaby, and for their hip winter performance of Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, which they remark is a Christmas favourite for many. “It’s just great music and we get the chance to work with a full sized jazz orchestra.” The show sold out last year, and so The Leading Ladies have brought it back by popular demand, hosting both a matinee and evening show this year. You won’t want to miss them on Sunday, December 14th, 2024 at the Brentwood Presbyterian Church. Tickets go on sale soon for both performances.
You can find more information about the group from their Instagram page @leadingladiesmusic or their website http://www.leadingladieslittlebigband.com/ for updates.