!earshot Top 200 of 2021

Life Comes Full Circle for Campbell Ryga

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Cambell Ryga's long career has seen him
play with many of the greats of the
Canadian jazz scene and earned him
a few Juno Awards as well.Campbell (Cam) Ryga is one of the best alto saxophonists in Canada. It’s not a secret. He has appeared on nearly 60 recordings. As a leader, he has put out 'Coastal Connection' in 1999 and two years later 'Spectacular' both for CBC Radioland/Universal Records. His most recent release, ‘Deep Cove’, teams him with the wonderful Canadian pianist Renee Rosnes, who now lives in New York. She is also featured on the recently released San Francisco Jazz Collective CD. Ryga has won his share of awards. Since 1987 he has received 3 Juno Awards, two for his work with the Hugh Fraser Quintet, and one for his work with Colin James. He was also honoured with the Jazz Report Magazine’s Award as 'Canada's Alto Saxophonist of the Year in 2000. Since 1981 Cam has toured internationally on many occasions. The tours have taken him to Western Europe and Latin America. Most of this touring has been with the internationally acclaimed Hugh Fraser Quintet, of which he is a founding member, an association that began in 1981. He has been a mainstay at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival playing in many different combinations over the years. He is the son of famed Canadian author George Ryga (The Ecstasy of Rita Joe) and is a noted jazz educator, both at the junior and post-secondary levels. This summer he has put in plenty of mileage. He has travelled from the B.C. interior, where he instructed at the Kelowna jazz camp for his 19th straight year, all the way to another jazz camp in the wilds of Hearst, Ontario. He has a close connection with the musicians he plays with and is known to tease them, in good fun. His band mate and good friend Chris Nelson passed away in 2003 and recently another friend and Vancouver musician, trombonist Dave Robbins, also died. He observed that it was getting so that he didn’t want to answer the phone anymore. I managed to take him away from house painting on his return from Ontario and following is our conversation.

JD: So, Cam, I hear that you have a CD out with former Vancouverite and now New Yorker Renee Rosnes. Would you tell us about that?

CR: Yes. Renee and I co-lead this CD and formed a very wonderful quartet together. Renee and I are roughly the same age. We met in the mid 70s, while we were both involved in the B.C. Honour Band, which is a high school function where the better players, I suppose, were awarded the honour of being involved in the project called the B.C. Honour Band. That’s where I met Renee and actually a number of other people which I still have an association with. That’s a lot of years. It’s thirty years now. But Renee and I and Rudy Petschauer and Chris Nelson formed a quartet together when I moved to Vancouver to go to college. They were all living here and we formed a group called Coastal Connection. We used to play a lot at the old Classical Joint, which was a coffeehouse and the mainstay of the Vancouver jazz scene in the late 70s and into the 80s and generally we’d go right over to Basin Street, which was an after hours club that started about 2 AM and went to about 5 AM. We used to do that every weekend.

In the mid 80s Renee and Rudy moved off to New York and Renee found great fame and became affiliated with the Who’s Who of the international jazz scene. Her touring schedule became very, phenomenal. Basically, we kind of lost touch, a little bit. I thought it would be really neat to reunite in some kind of way, shape or form, as much of our collective experiences and busy careers would allow it to. That was the premise behind this. Unfortunately, Chris Nelson, our bass player passed away from cancer at a very young age. (Note: The CD is dedicated to Chris Nelson). At the time of doing this recording I had very much hoped that Chris was going to be part of it, but alas, Chris became too ill, so I have a bass player from Toronto, Neil Swainson, who actually is also originally a BC person. He has a very busy touring schedule with George Shearing and what not, so I was very honoured – and Rudy of course doing a lot of touring – to get all these guys together – and thanks in no small part to the CBC and Claire Lawrence, who really made all this possible. We created, what I consider to be, a beautiful record called Deep Cove. We did it for CBC Records and they actually brought Renee, Rudy and Neil to me, out here in Vancouver, where we recorded it. We’re looking at doing something else in the near future – a new release. It was a very exciting group and a lot of memories. Renee did a lot of writing for that album, as did I, and we really did enjoy it. (Note: Ryga wrote a song for his son, who wasn’t born yet, called “Not Yet Here” for the CD).

JD: Good. So what did you do this summer?

CR: This summer was pretty much wall to wall, with respect to summer music camps. I’m always involved with many of them throughout the province and back east in Ontario. So that’s what kept me busy, and it seems to be getting busier and busier every year. I must be doing something right because I seem to be getting more and more of these. I seem to have only about two weeks of summer where I’m not actually doing camps and it’s a little bit tough because we have our little boy—he’s now 23 months old and it’s difficult to be away from him and my wife for that length of time. Obviously, you don’t get that time back. So I’m going to try to stay home a little bit more the next couple of years, over the summer. I really do enjoy camps and I enjoy all the educational work I’m involved in.

JD: You also teach at Kwantlen and Capilano colleges (in Greater Vancouver), don’t you?

CR: Primarily Cap College, yes. I’ve been there for about three years. I have a number of private music students up there and they seem to come from all over the place these days. Some come from out of the province to spend some time with me and that’s very flattering. They are very nice and are playing at a very high calibre.

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