By: Chase Cooper
Walking down the dimly lit steps into BSMT 254, the underground music venue is empty except for the bartenders and the ticket collector, who are ready for tonight’s sold-out show. As the opening band is setting up their equipment, the dimly lit venue starts to fill. Within an hour, the small room is at capacity.
The crowd is pumped after the opening act and eager for the headliner, Lavender Town, a novel jazz fusion band that’s starting to make a name for themselves in Toronto. As the band walked on stage, the tiny spotlights illuminated their faces as red ambient lighting bathed the rest of the stage. A hush took over the room. A pin drop could be heard as the band picked up their instruments.
They kicked off their set with their first-ever single, a cover of the Legend of Zelda theme song “Song of Storms,” released earlier this year. The songs that followed were far from the typical jazz standards: the band played “American Boy” by Estelle, “Party Rockers” by LMFAO and the final song of the night, Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”.
Lavender Town has successfully used a mix of early 2000s pop, video game theme songs and popular lo-fi hip-hop hits to court Gen Z fans who might not have otherwise gone to a jazz performance. Formed just under a year ago, Lavender Town is already selling out venues across the GTA and just played their first set of shows in Montreal. The group is also gaining online traction by utilizing the element of surprise that drives their captivating, high-energy live shows. For example, their cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled 05” on TikTok received nearly a million views. Lavender Town’s sound has been self-described as “Gen-Z jazz” and the crowds at their shows demonstrates they’re indeed cultivating a youthful audience.
Jazz music is often seen as a classy, elegant genre associated with older generations, while young fans prefer hip-hop, pop and electronic music. Toronto is a substantial market for jazz regardless. According to Jazz.FM91’s Jelani Watson, a quarter million people in Toronto tune in to the station every week. However, listeners are mostly over the age of 35, with just 21 per cent between 12 and 34. But the audience of jazz listeners, Watson assures, is on the rise within the city.
Toronto’s jazz scene has everything from performances steeped in tradition at Jazz Bistro to contemporary stylings at smaller venues like Tapestry. Lavender Town is breaking into the scene by taking a modern approach to the sound of jazz by incorporating songs familiar to a younger crowd. The band is also pitching themselves to legions of young TikTok users who may be unfamiliar with the genre.
Bandleader and saxophone player Lazar Minic started promoting the band on Instagram and TikTok not long after the group, most of whom studied jazz together at the University of Toronto, formed last year. Lavender Town’s TikTok account has gained traction with several videos reaching hundreds of thousands of views. This kind of social media presence is cultivating an audience specifically for them and their “Gen-Z jazz” sound.
“We’re really just doing what we want to and it just happens to be something that people want to see,”
said bass player PT Sandberg.
Miric described the band’s sound as jazz fusion, which entails mixing jazz with elements from other genres. They take songs that are sentimental and nostalgic to their generation – ones that were hits in their childhood and adolescence, from the 2000s to the 2010s – and use their instrumental training to create jazz covers. Favourites from the band members include artists like MF DOOM, Beyoncé and Rihanna, all of whom they regularly play at their shows.
“I wouldn’t actually say it sounds like jazz aesthetically. But I would say that the way that we play it is with a jazz mentality, which is interpreting the melody in our own personal way,” said Miric. “Rather than doing covers that sound like the original, we’re kind of taking the structure of the original song and improvising and recomposing over it.”
Fans won’t be wearing tuxedos or cocktail dresses at Lavender Town shows. The band’s young fans prefer t-shirts, jeans, and Converse sneakers. It’s the same crowd one might find, on a different night, at indie rock and hip-hop shows at places like History or The Velvet Underground. Incorporating elements into their performances like electric instruments and smoke machines instead of the serene, composed environment at most traditional jazz shows. And due to their familiar sounding sets, the crowd is always on their feet and even singing along to the instrumental versions of their favourite songs.
They’ve been selling out smaller venues across the city for months now but it was special for the band to book the Monarch Tavern’s 120-person main room, and it still selling out. As the band continues to grow, so do their venues and their audience. After recently returning from their first out-of-town shows, the band is eager to bring Gen Z jazz to new cities.
Back in February, the line curled around the block outside the Monarch Tavern before one of Lavender Town’s biggest shows to date. Inside the charming tavern, smoke machines and ambient LED lighting created a euphoric ambiance. As the crowd poured in, capacity was reached in no time, leaving a line outside of fans out in the cold still hoping to get in.
“It was a bit like a rockstar moment and it felt really, really special”
Sandberg said.
The band fed off the large crowd and its raucous energy as it moved through its set of original songs mixed with big pop hits. The entire venue was dark and the only thing truly visible was the band on stage, lit by a flickering of blue and red lights. Waves of smoke wafted over the stage, creating a sea of haze around the band members. For the young band, it was a show to remember.
