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| TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR |
| Sybil Walker, manager of the erstwhile Senator, stands in front of the sign that will likely change to “Savoy Grill” when the new owners renovate the Victoria St. location. |
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Farewell to all that jazz
After 15 years, the venerable Senator closes its doors
Club owes renown to tireless manager, by Geoff Chapman
GEOFF CHAPMAN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
The Colonial, Bourbon St., the Bermuda Onion, East & 85th, Basin Street, George's Spaghetti House and the Town Tavern have become mere memories in Toronto's jazz landscape.
And now The Senator, perhaps the most sacred of all, has formally joined its fallen comrades.
The last lines of "For All We Know," from seasoned vocalist Sheila Jordan backed by Toronto musicians, wrapped up the club's bookings for the Downtown Jazz Festival last weekend and, with it, its jazz lineup.
In the room was Senator manager Sybil Walker, the sparkplug who's maintained the quality of the Senator's jazz schedule for 15 years. "Sheila referred a lot to the Senator and said it was vital to keep jazz going. It was very special," Walker says. "But very difficult and heartbreaking for me."
All three floors of the building located where Victoria St. meets the concrete and iron "park" that is Dundas Square will be renovated. The new owners have said nothing official about any music policy or a reopening date, except for putting in a new phone number that answers to the name Savoy Grill. The piano has gone, and soon artist Hilary Kyro will be removing her huge jazz paintings from the second-floor walls.
The grievous Senator loss has been part of many a jazz conversation since the news broke. Ironically, it comes at a time when local jazz is in a buoyant state, the scene crowded with new and talented hopefuls who have gone through the jazz programs at University of Toronto, York and Humber College and with more and more jazz festivals and cruises.
Jazz venues do come and go. Some seem to last only days, others have succumbed to owner nervousness if there's one empty seat in the house, still more fight losing battles with landlords eager to cash in on the club's location or just to grab a share of the spoils.
Some places have special qualities that let them keep going.
And there's no doubt the special quality most responsible for the Senator's well-earned renown in Canada and abroad has been Sybil Walker, who's been running the place almost from its start in June 1990, trying to fill every one of the venue's 150 seats.
Walker, originally from Belleville, attended Shaw Business College and came to Toronto as an au pair because she was anxious to leave small-town life.
Later she went into the restaurant business.
"It was the worst mistake I ever made," she says, chuckling, in an interview. But it was working in restaurants like The Generator and Sherlock's that sparked her interest in jazz, since her route home to Queen and Spadina meant passing the Colonial on Yonge and Bourbon St. on Queen.
"I heard players like Dexter Gordon, Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Smith, Bill Evans and Maxine Sullivan there. I also got to know a number of musicians, and my interest was solidified as I had a long, close relationship with bassist Freddie McHugh....
"But jazz was still a social thing then and I had no inkling that it would become most of my life."
Then Walker heard that Bob Sniderman, son of Sam "The Record Man" Sniderman, was planning to open a jazz club. Since she already knew him through the restaurant business, she sought him out.
"I was asked would I like to run it and I said yes. For the first six months I was managing and doing other stuff. The club opened in June 1990 with Jane Bunnett and Dewey Redman, and soon after that came singer Betty Carter, when the place was jammed, Cassandra Wilson, Red Rodney with CBS doing a segment on him, and many more.
"These were vibrant times, things felt rosy, the Bermuda Onion and the Montreal Bistro were healthy. The jazz scene was vigorous but there had always been more than one jazz club in Toronto."
`I'd open a jazz club if I could. I'm a night person and I love the theatre of jazz.'
Sybil Walker, Senator manager
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Through the fall of 1990 Walker shared booking duties with Sniderman but soon she took over that and other related chores — such as negotiating with agents, dealing with contracts, publicity, taxes, immigration fees for visiting musicians ($150), arranging hotels, staff, working the door, looking after the third-floor room as well as organizing the restaurant's catering business.
"It was something I learned on the fly, 12 hours a day minimum. But if you want to work, that's what you do."
Walker understood that if you don't bring in names, people won't come, so the biggest risk the club was taking was financial. Yes, fans came out to see Ahmad Jamal, Joe Pass, Ray Brown, Stanley Turrentine and Shirley Horn but their visits cost between $10,000 and $20,000 per week.
"It's a fine line to try to keep standards from slipping," says Walker. Jazz life went well until the mid-1990s. Problems were relatively minor; a flood meant cancellation of pianist Renee Rosnes' Saturday night sets, a famed saxophonist was discovered lying drunk on the floor of his hotel when he should have been playing, but most problems were routine.
Yet as the old joke goes: How do you make a million dollars running a jazz club? Start with two million.
By 1995 the Canadian dollar was weakening and Walker found it risky to book out-of-towners. "I had to be creative, getting them once a month instead of once a week, but this opened my eyes regarding local musicians."
Yet she still found time, for six years, to be artistic director of the jazz hydra known as the JVC Jazz Festival, recalling with pleasure performances by the likes of trumpeter Art Farmer, Turrentine and organist Shirley Scott.
The club tried reaching out to a broader community. It started jazz for kids, which didn't work, and half-price Wednesdays for students, which did.
"It's been really tough for the last five years," she says. "We had been trying to fill three rooms on the site: the street-level restaurant, the jazz club and the Guitar Bar, and it worked — only so long as Phantom of the Opera was running across the street at the Pantages Theatre (now the Canon).
"With pre-show and after-show business, we could make it work, but even during the last years of the Phantom's 10-year run (it closed in 1999) business was tapering off and since then there have been no long-running shows at the Canon — Wicked lasted six weeks, Dame Edna two and The Producers closed early, while other negative factors were SARS and the slow makeover of Dundas Square.
"After The Producers closed early, we knew the Senator would go. It worked for a long time but it's still a bit of a shock. I'll miss it terribly."
What will Walker miss most?
"The musicians, the fever-pitch excitement of opening night, hearing people new to jazz, like singer Ann Hampton-Calloway, feeling the music come together on the third or fourth night, seeing local musicians at their best, feeling the magic. Working on co-productions that brought artists such as Dave Brubeck, Sonny Rollins, Sadao Watanabe, Shirley Horn and Diana Krall to major Toronto stages."
What will she do now? Well, as artistic director she's already programmed late September's all-Canadian jazz festival at Port Hope.
"I'm not ready to retire. And I'd open a jazz club if I could, with fewer full weeks, but more one-off shows and theme nights," Walker says. "I'm a night person and I love the theatre of jazz. A lot of people deserve a stage and doing that would be a privilege as well as a labour of love. Perhaps I'll help produce records, organize music for events or I could stay in the restaurant business — but not to the same extent."
At The Rex before last week's festival began, Walker was presented with a watch from the jazz community. Clearly she will be sorely missed by everyone in jazz hereabouts, just as they'll miss the Senator.
Not only will I miss both her and the Senator, but I'll also miss the plaque on its bar designating a space for me to watch live jazz forever, a brilliant official retirement gift bestowed on me last year, though I, too, was not ready to retire.
Additional articles by Geoff Chapman
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