Trumpet virtuoso Cuong Vu joins Vancouver jazz festival

Trumpeter Cuong Vu is bringing his innovative sound to the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, where he'll perform with two distinct local ensembles in improvised pairings that arose from a chance meeting abroad.

Vu, a Seattle-based virtuoso known for blending electronic effects with acoustic trumpet, will join the Tom Wherrett Trio on June 30 at Tyrant Studios and the Malleus Trio on July 3 at Ocean Artworks as part of the festival.

The collaborations grew out of a spontaneous meeting last summer at the Saalfelden Jazz Festival in Austria. "We ran into each other last summer at the Saalfelden Jazz Festival," Vu explains. "He [Cole Schmidt, the Vancouver festival's co-artistic director] was a guest there, and the director of that festival wanted to come to the Vancouver festival. We're friends, so I said 'Hey, I'll come up and hang out with you for a few days.' And then Cole said, 'You want to play some gigs?' I said 'I might as well. Sure!' He sent me links to the two outfits I'm playing with, and I thought I could make good music with them."

Vu brings serious credentials to both pairings. The Vietnam-born, American-raised trumpeter spent several years touring and recording with jazz-guitar superstar Pat Metheny, appearing on Metheny's Grammy Award–winning albums Speaking of Now and The Way Up. More recently, Vu has released his own work coaxing inventive performances from guitarist Bill Frisell: Ballet, a tribute to composer and arranger Michael Gibbs, and Change in the Air.

The Tom Wherrett Trio — guitarist Wherrett alongside drummer Dan Gaucher and bassist Karlis Silins — has already proven Vu's compatibility with electric six-string stylists. The Malleus Trio, featuring drummer Ben Brown, tenor saxophonist Dominic Conway, and bassist Geordie Hart, leans toward acoustic modern jazz but offers equally fertile ground for Vu's gorgeous tone and melodic sensibility.

While Vu is well known for using electronic effects to alter his acoustic trumpet's sound — an approach he developed to find space for trumpet in groove and rock music — he's increasingly exploring unamplified timbral possibilities. "One thing influences the other," he explains. "I started playing with effects just because they were around and I was like, 'Hey, I want to try this!' I thought it would help me get into more groove-oriented music or rock music; you don't really hear trumpet in that stuff unless it's Earth, Wind & Fire or Tower of Power. So when we were doing it I realized that, wow, I don't like the way it's altering my sound at all. I don't like sounding like a synthesizer or a bad guitar or whatever. And that's when I got into the electronic delays, because the delays let me play..."