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A strong contributor to bringing jazz into the Canadian mainstream, clarinetist, composer, bandleader, music educator Phil Nimmons is one of the first artists in Canada to have significantly bridged the enduring gap between jazz and classical music. As a Vancouver musician in the early forties to the late fifties, his career extends from playing saxophone in dance bands with Sandy De Santis at the Palomar Ballroom to regular appearances on CBC Radio for over 23 years including his weekly show Nimmons 'N' Nine, Jazz Workshop, and Serenade in Rhythm with the Ray Norris Quintet who performed a countless number of Phil's compositions and arrangements. A passionate music educator, Phil is the founder of over half a dozen jazz programs across the nation including the University of Toronto (1973), the Banff School of Fine Arts (1970), and the Advanced School of Contemporary Music (1960), which he co-developed with jazz masters pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Ray Brown.

While in his early teens at Lord Byng Secondary in Vancouver, young Phil pulled together a 5-piece neighbourhood band "for musicians who wanted to play." Lifting the heads off charts by Count Basie, Jimmy Lunceford, and Tommy Dorsey, "We played them all in unison [and] thought we'd died and gone to heaven," Phil recalls with a nostalgic chuckle. His mother swiftly rationalized any noise complaints from his neighbouring Point Grey residents by answering: "At least I know where he is!"

While a pre-med student at the University of British Columbia, Phil played clarinet in a jazz group with two of his closest friends, pianist Doug Parker and guitarist Chester Cotter in addition to his dance band gig as a saxophonist at the Palomar Ballroom. Many a night was also spent jamming at the Mandarin Gardens, a musicians' after-hours hangout downtown on Pender Street. "Great place. Great food. Great strippers," Phil adds jokingly. "And of course you went down there and eventually got enough nerve to play. We had such great opportunities to mingle," he notes in retrospect, not only with local musicians "but also the bands when they came through. We got to talk to all the musicians that were in Hampton's band, Ellington's, Basie's band, Benny Goodman." It was through Lionel Hampton's visit to Vancouver in 1945 that Phil met trumpeter Joe Wilder, with whom he has since maintained a friendship of more than sixty years.

"I was going out into strange fields at those times. By comparison, I was an avant garde player."
-Phil Nimmons

Phil's thriving career as a composer and arranger was greatly nurtured during his years with the Ray Norris Quintet, a Nat Cole-inspired ensemble with clarinet, guitar, bass, drums, and accordion. "I think one of the greatest things any composer or arranger can have is the ability to write something and hear it right away," says Phil, who composed challenging pieces often consisting of eight chord changes to one bar of music. Guitarist Ray Norris "was a great visionary," Phil declares with deep gratitude. "[He let] me do whatever I wanted to do. He didn't just pay lip service to anything that was fresh or new or different. I think he really related to it."

"I was just like a sponge waiting to absorb it all."
-Phil Nimmons

Equally versed in classical music, Phil attributes his greatest influences to trumpeter Lawrence Wilson, for whom Phil worked as a music copyist in his late teens, and John Avison who was conductor of the CBC Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. Phil also wrote dramatic music for CBC Radio in addition to many other large-scale arrangements for various ensembles including several with conductor Ricky Hyslop, for whom he remembers writing his first big-band chart titled "Milkman, Keep Those Bubbles Quiet."

"Music is an aural art form. That's the way it should be--get back to being listened to."
-Phil Nimmons

Phil's open-mindedness to different kinds of music has given him a powerful and highly influential voice in the national and international music scene. One of his greatest concerns for today's music industry is that "the entertainment component of our media has become, to my mind, out of whack." Phil hopes to see a return to music as an aural art form that is simply "listened to," he says. "There's the avant garde, there's Dixieland, there's all kinds of stylistic representations being done sincerely by performers. It seems like we deal with fads in order to be successful, whereas every musician that I'm so grateful to have shared some of my life with has given me something because (I hope that) I have an open mind. And I would like to see more of that."

FOR MORE INFO

(YouTube Video) Phil Nimmons 'n' Nine Plus Six play "Think Nice Thoughts"

(YouTube Video) Phil Nimmons 'n' Nine Plus Six play "Bird Burger"