What's next for the Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival?

Only a handful of minutes after 3:00 PM on a hot and dry Sunday, July 28, 2024, the final act of this year's Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival is ready to go. A few hundred enthusiasts gather beneath mesh that blunts the sun's rays. Some of them stand while others sit on the lawn in their folding chairs. Vocalist Darlene Cooper and pianist Bill Sample count off their R&B-influenced band, Wild Blue Herons, with Miles Foxx Hill on bass and Randall Stoll on drums. The billing on the sign in front of the band reads Wild Blue Herons with Horns; saxophonist Tom Keenlyside and trombonist Jim Hopson wait stage left, and a piano occupies stage right.

"I was pleasantly surprised that the piano was in such good tune after having sat outside for several days," Sample says to me later. "I was actually surprised that Tom Lee Music would be okay with that."

The main stage emerges from the cross-section of a truck that parks in front of the historic Fort Langley Community Hall. You can see it from across the one or two village blocks which form downtown Fort Langley and the de facto festival grounds. The artistic director, Dave Quinn, ambles from the hall's side-door exit to the front of the stage. He wears one of his signature floral shirts, shorts and sandals, and sunglasses plus a hat pulled closely over his forehead toward the sunglasses.

Quinn takes up his wireless microphone and becomes an off-the-cuff emcee, avoiding a delayed start. His introduction omits the first word of the band's name, and he pronounces their animal symbol like HURR-ons, or was it hurr-ONs?

"Please welcome, Blue Herons with Horns!"