Welcome

The South Delta Jazz Festival is an annual week long event featuring various concerts for the public plus a five day workshop for students from beginning to adults interested in learning about or improving their jazz improv skills in a small combo setting. 

The South Delta Jazz Festival and Workshop is a program of the Delta Community Music School. The school offers year round private music instruction and also a jazz ensemble program which is held each Tuesday evening at the music school

Click here for our Student Workshop Brochure

Faculty 2010 Jazz Workshop

Jared Burrows – guitar, workshop co-director

Jared Burrows is a guitarist, composer, and educator based in Vancouver. He leads the Jared Burrows Trio and Quartet and co-leads the East Van Jazz Orchestra with Brad Muirhead. Burrows is involved with a huge variety of other ensembles including Djangophilia, Sukha Trio, Knotty Ensemble, Colin MacDonald’s Pocket Orchestra, Len Aruliah’s Quartet, the Indo-jazz fusion band Ta Ki Ta and the Chinese music/jazz fusion group Koan to name a few. He teaches in the Jazz Studies department at Capilano University as well as at SFU, Douglas College and Delta Community Music School. He holds a PhD in Education from Simon Fraser University and a MMus in Jazz Studies from the University of Oregon.

Rob Kohler – bass

Rob Kohler is a bassist who has performed jazz, classical, and pop music all over the world. His playing, composing, and producing skills have appeared on recordings by groups such as the Jared Burrows Trio, the Olem Alves Band, Three Form, This World, and the Platt/Kohler Trio. Rob is a regular performer at the Bozeman Bass Bash in his native Montana and has also toured and performed with such artists as Stefan Karlsson, Alice DiMicele, Madeline Eastman, John Stowell, Danny Gottlieb, Nancy King, Brian Bromberg, and Art Lande. In addition to his amazing performing skills, Kohler has had a long and successful career as a private tutor and school music teacher and currently serves as the Education Director at the world-renowned Stanford Jazz Workshop.

Brad Muirhead – trombone

Brad Muirhead is well known to audiences across Canada and Europe for his powerful sound and inventive improvising and has been involved in theVancouver music scene as a performer, composer and arranger for more than 20 years. He has recorded and toured extensively with his own groups Primal Orbit and Brass Roots as well as the NOW Orchestra, Hugh Fraser’s VEJI, and the Hard Rubber Orchestra. His latest original projects as a leader are “Koan”, a Chinese influenced ethno-jazz-rock-fusion sextet, and the East Van Jazz Orchestra, which he co-leads with Jared Burrows. Brad has been very active as a music educator and has held such positions as Coordinator of the Banff Summer Jazz Workshop, Producer of the Vancouver & Victoria International Jazz Orchestra Workshops and Artistic Director of the Renfrew Community Performance Project

Stephen Robb – clarinet, saxophone, workshop co-director
Stephen is an accomplished clarinetist, jazz pianist, saxophonist, and arranger performing both classical chamber music and jazz idioms, performing the gamut from classical clarinet, chamber and orchestral repertoire to jazz standards, original compositions and free improvisation. Stephen is a graduate of Queen’s University at Kingston, McGill University in Montreal and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Currently Stephen is Music Director of both the Delta Community Music School, and the Delta Youth Orchestra, and teaches clarinet and saxophone at the Richmond Music School.

Stan Taylor – drums

Veteran jazz drummer Stan Taylor has been an integral part of the Vancouver jazz scene for more than 20 years. Stan has played with such artists as Kenny Wheeler, PJ Perry, Vinny Golia, Pat LaBarbara, Ray Anderson, Rob Blakeslee, Fraser MacPherson, Mike Stern, Glen Spearman, Peter Brotzman, Hugh Fraser, and Paul Plimley. In the1990s Stan co-led the legendary Kane/ Taylor Explosion which toured and performed in Canada and the US with the Kokoro Dance Company. Current projects and collaborations include the Jared Burrows Trio and Quartet, Len Aruliah Quartet, ESQ, Daniel Miles Kane Quartet, Lorne Kellet Trio, East Van Jazz Orchestra, Shift, Norm Quinn’s Q4 and many others. Stan is actively involved in recording and performing with these bands and is a sought after private instructor. Stan is a Peace Drums and Istanbul Agop Cymbals endorser.