Vancouver Big band swings on South Van Big Band keeps jazz and swing alive By JASON GILDER S tanding in the middle of the Fair- view Pub, Alex Viel straddles the line between two very different worlds. To his back, the assorted pa- trons of the Fairview, and to his front, the 17 members of the South Van Big Band jazz orchestra. Viel is both founder and leader of the South Van Big Band, his job is to direct the per- formers, and to cre- Alex Viel ate the connection DIRECTOR, SOUTH VAN BIG BAND between the band and the audience. For a few hours, he fills the Fairview with the sounds of a bygone era. Viel has been involved in music since he was a child, performing in several jazz bands growing up. As an adult, Viel was introduced to Vancouver’s jazz scene. There are about 20 jazz bands that perform in the Met- ro Vancouver area, as well as an annual jazz festival every summer, Viel said. The South Van Big Band was found- ed by Viel during the summer of 2010; while several jazz bands already exist in Vancouver, Viel wanted to create a band with a more modern sound. “I wanted to do something a bit more modern, and a little bit more on the edge,” Viel said;.“The professionals, they push more into doing new, origi- to the current time.” Their first practice only drew in six people, but those who attended really enjoyed it, Viel said. From there, word of mouth took over, and the band grew. “(The members] started telling their buddies, and they started drawing in their friends into the band, and in a couple of months, we were fully popu- lated and the band was at full force,” Viel said. While Viel founded the band, he originally had no intention of becoming the director, he didn’t have any directing experience, but filled the role until he could find someone qualified. “When I first proposed the idea of the band, I said: look guys, I'll just start by trying to conduct, and if we find somebody better, will hire that guy,” Viel said. However, Viel discovered that he enjoyed directing the band, and he has remained the band leader ever since. “I miss performing sometimes, I'll admit that. [But] I think I’m happier as a director just because, like I said, I get to do what I want,” said Viel. For Viel, the South Van Big Band is a vehicle through which he fosters an interest in big band jazz among Van- couverites. “To me, for this band, it’s showing to the public how relatable this music can be." "Sometimes, when people think of big band or jazz, [they think] it’s some off-the-wall, avant garde stuff that has no melody, and it’s only for sophisti- cated hippies in smoky jazz clubs.” Big band jazz is not as popular as it once was, but Viel and the South Van Big Band keeps playing, doing what they can to keep jazz relevant today. “Jazz will always have it’s own niche,’ said Viel. nal, creative music that’s more relevant = : 3 Erik Hougaard, a trombonist in the South Van Big Band, plays at a gig at the > eee ex Fairview Vancouver Pub on March 5. show WHITTIER PHOTO David Moe and Alyson Clow work on a prosthetic at Barber Prosthetics Clinic on March 9. / 4uR4 BROUGHAM PHOTO In the second part of a two-part series, we showcase inspiring Vancouveri- tes who stand apart and inspire our community through their stories. 3D hope for amputees Testing the limits of printing new prosthetics By LAURA BROUGHAM hen first walking into Barber Prosthetics Clinic, it might seem daunting entering di- rectly into the workshop, but that im- pression is very short lived. As soon as you encounter David Moe he brings a sense of fun and relaxation to the room. Moe is the owner of Barber Pros- thetics, a South Vancouver company that does research in the field of prosthetics, as well as making them, and is starting to explore 3D printing. Moe has been around prosthetics his whole life. His father used to work in the Children’s Hospital in Calgary before buying his own practice in Edmonton. The practice became a family busi- ness, and through his time at that prac- tice, he worked with his father, two of his uncles, his grandmother, his sister and his brother. “T started at 14 and I’m still here,” Moe said. When his father bought a practice in 1979, “I started going there and sweep- ing the floor at the end of the day. I'd grab the bus and I'd go down to work, my dad would stay a half hour late so I that I could get two hours worth of work in.” Every patient is approached differ- ently, because some techniques used for one patient can’t be used in the same way for another, according to Moe. “Each person is like a puzzle,” Moe said. “Our role is to know that there is a puzzle, and then help the people to figure out which piece is the next piece that’s actually going to go in to that puzzle.” OWNER, BARBER PROSTHETICS Moe hopes that by the end of his working career, he leaves the profes- sion better than he entered it, whether through his work at Barber Prosthetics, or his time as a prosthetics instructor at BCIT. “Tm always striving to see if we can be better, to see if we can raise the bar, to see if we can develop the highest standard of patient care that’s available,” Moe said. “My goal is to hopefully leave my profession better than I entered it.” Barber Prosthetics got a 3D printer in November of last year, but Moe is hoping to answer some questions about the strength of the sockets, or the piece that joins the prosthetic to the residual limb, before giving any clients anything 3D printed. Moe is doing research with the Na- tional Autonomous University of Mex- ico and BCIT on this topic. “We just created 48 sockets, we’ve just broken them all, and now “Tmo always striving veces we have the data to compare . 3D printed against how we to see ifwe can develop create them now and we'll be the highest standard able to write a paper,” Moe - , said. of patient care that’s “Once we know it'll be available." strong enough, I think Pll ~ DAVID MOE have a far more likelihood of allowing people to walk them, and we'll usher in the 3D printing in a safe, controlled ” manner. Decorations are hung up around the workshop, to give patients something to look at. One decoration, a ruler twisted, no longer useful, hangs prominently. “Tt was a ruler and it had a whole bunch of felt marks on it,” Murphy said. “Then [somebody used] some acetone to rub that mark off, and it took a whole swath of the actual increments off, and it was like ‘well this just became useless.’ So we just bent it into a little shape.” Aging sewers to get needed upgrade Government funds set aside to replace Metro Vancouver sewers By KURTIS GREGORY recent injection of funds into local municipalities boost ef- forts to transition away from sewage systems that eject sewage into local rivers. Burnaby will receive $5.8 million and New Westminster will be given $5.5 million from the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund in order to accelerate their transition to a newer system. The system will seperate the waste- water from the sewage, preventing the need for run-off in times of high water. Fred Nenninger, director of policy, planning and analysis with Metro Van- couver, said that the combined — systems stopped being built | in the 1960’s and only exist today in older parts of the cities. “The sewer combined [Ga systems... Kelly Sveinson are in the very old = ENVIRONMENTAL parts of the City of STUDIES PROFESSOR Vancouver, the old- est part of Burnaby, primarily the lower west part of Burnaby, and New West- minster,” said Nenninger. Nenninger said that of the 1.1 billion litres of sewage that is processed each year, as much as one and a half percent- age of it is ejected with storm water through 40 overflow locations. Kelly Sveinson, an instructor with the environmental studies faculty at Lang- ara, said that the run-off causes a pro- cess known as eutrophication, where by excess nutrients causes organisms like algae to bloom voraciously, depleting oxygen supplies in the water and caus- ing stress or death to animals. If the run-off was stopped, Sveinson said the blooms will likely become less sporadic. “You might see more stability in the ecosystem, the usual thing where there’s not pulses of nutrients." George Otieno, project engineer with New Westminster, said that the money must be spent by March 2018. Sa. ksh Workers install sewer pipe near Westminister Highway in Richmond in 1988. PHOTO COURTESY CITY OF RICHMOND