21st annual Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival hands ladies the spotlight

“Dreamers,” an a cappella song released one month ago by folk-pop superstar Judy Collins, tells a chilling little tale about one little family:

“My name it is Maria. My daughter is a dreamer. She says that she is worried that she will have to leave.

“When I was only 20, I crossed the burning border. I came to find a good life and brought my daughter here.

“When I came to America, I hoped life would be better for me and for my daughter, and here I worked for you.

“This land was made by dreamers and children of those dreamers … .”

It’s a fresh, original folk song — a searingly sad character study of one humble woman, powered by Collins’ ringing voice and a lonely silence surrounding it. According to Billboard magazine, live performances of “Dreamers” have earned stunned standing ovations recently, and Collins said during an interview with Billboard that the song aims to “paint a portrait” of a specific family dilemma that cuts through the blast of 24-hour news talk.

Anybody with any doubts about the power of women artists will find that the 2018 Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival buries those doubts under mountains of great music. The first fest in the #MeToo era has handed most of this year’s spotlight to female singers, composers and instrumentalists.

The legendary Collins is a Seattle native whose career launched in the late 1960s with sweet covers of songs by Joni Mitchell (her first huge hit, Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” won a Grammy Award); then she climbed even higher, up into the ranks of respected American song interpreters, with Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” in the 1970s. More recently, Collins has been touring with an old flame you might have heard of: Stephen Stills, whose classic song about their breakup, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” once lifted to stardom a new harmony-driven band called Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Newsy music

Collins closes the festival with a concert the night of Aug. 26, but amazing music by women will dominate Vancouver’s 21st annual weekend of jazz, blues and related sounds. On the night of Aug. 24 it’s Marcia Ball, a blues singer and pianist who sounds like where she hails from: Texas and Louisiana, the homes of swampy rock and swinging boogie-woogie. Ball is a multiple winner of the Pinetop Perkins Piano Player Award.

On Aug. 25 the double-headliners are singers Tierney Sutton and Shemekia Copeland. Sutton spans styles from mainstream jazz to new interpretations of composers such as Joni Mitchell and Sting (her most recent album is “The Sting Variations”), and she and her band worked with Clint Eastwood on the soundtrack to his film “Sully.” Copeland, who was officially honored with the title “The New Queen of Chicago Blues” by that city in 2011, recently released a soul-searching and newsy album about the state of our nation today, called “America’s Child” and featuring special guests such as John Prine, Rhiannon Giddens and Emmylou Harris.

“After having a child,” Copeland says on her website, “I started thinking about the world I brought him into, how it actually is and how I wished it was.” That’s why “America’s Child” wrestles openly with today’s social issues and controversies, and its passionate opening statement is an endorsement of diversity called “Ain’t Got Time For Hate.” Copeland has shared stages with Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Buddy Guy and many other blues greats.

It’s not all women at this year’s festival. Portland guitar whiz and music maven Cameron Morgan will appear on all three days, in three different outfits: on Aug. 24 with a world-music group called the Triveni Ensemble; on Aug. 25 backing up a female saxophone quartet, The Quadraphonnes; and on Aug. 26 with his own mainstream jazz trio. New Orleans saxophone great and Fats Domino sideman Reggie Houston, now a Portland resident, opens the whole festival at 4 p.m. Aug. 24. Blues guitarist and dynamic singer Coco Montoya plays late on the afternoon of Aug. 25; earlier that day it’s Vancouver’s own smooth piano man, Jim Fischer.

“It is a multifaceted cultural festival,” said festival manager Maria Manzo, “where people hear great music, enjoy Northwest wine, see beautiful fine art and become immersed in an eclectic and creative weekend.”