For many people, jazz history is often believed to be something that happened elsewhere—in New Orleans, Chicago, Harlem, Paris, Kansas City, Montreal, or Los Angeles. But, in his upcoming lecture Chris Wong will illustrate how Vancouver has its own deep and distinctive jazz history shaped by multiple forces including immigration, racism, segregation, cross-border cultural exchange, and a deep-seated passion for music.

Chris Wong comes to this work as a lifelong music nerd who is an aficionado of jazz and other genres, and deeply embedded in Vancouver’s music scene. He began writing about music in high school and after discovering in university that playing music was not his calling, he began writing about music for The Ubyssey student newspaper, where he once interviewed Dizzy Gillespie. Since his university days, Wong has continued to write about both international jazz greats and local jazz heroes for DownBeat (about the Vancouver International Jazz Festival), The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, Georgia Straight, Vancouver Courier, and other publications.