B3 Kings keyboardist Chris Gestrin draws on a long history of holiday music for jazz arrangements

Quartet roasts some chestnuts—and some more adventurous tunes, too—at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts

By Alexander Varty

B3 Kings performs at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts on December 20 and 21

A QUICK SEARCH OF THE Discogs database turns up 24,040 listings for “Christmas jazz”. More surprising, perhaps, is that two of the first three LPs shown on the record collectors’ website are from B.C. residents: Michael Bublé’s Christmas and Diana Krall’s Christmas Songs.

Maybe we here on the coast are overcompensating for the fact that our Christmas snow is delivered in liquid form.

That said, we won’t judge if you stay home, hang up your sodden stockings above a legally certified wood stove, and settle in with a tall glass of Avalon eggnog. But if you really want to get into the holiday spirit, it might be wise to brave the floods and head out to Burnaby’s Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, where the B3 Kings will be roasting some chestnuts—and some more adventurous tunes, too—on December 20 and 21.

You won’t find a more festive scene unless you spike that ’nog and cue up your pristine vinyl copy of Jimmy Smith’s deeply entertaining Christmas Cookin’.

Oddly enough, that’s not an album that B3 Kings mainstay Chris Gestrin is familiar with, although he and Smith share an instrument: the Hammond B3 organ that gives the local band its name. But the keyboardist has a long history with Christmas music, going back to the days when he and his siblings would spend a sleepless night or two in anticipation of what would be found under the family tree.

“It was definitely a big event for us,” Gestrin recalls, reached on his cellphone as he and his violinist wife, Meredith Bates, are travelling to Victoria from their Salt Spring Island home. “Not in a religious way, but just the magic of Christmas as a kid. Getting the Christmas tree, the food, going to my grandparents’ house… And I have two brothers, so it was a big family event for us. Getting presents, giving presents: that whole North American Christmas vibe. An unreligious Christmas!

“We probably listened to Christmas albums,” he adds. “My dad was probably playing Christmas With Chet Atkins or Nana Mouskouri on our big console record player. So I grew up hearing different versions of all these Christmas songs. That’s probably a big part of this.

“I always loved it. As you get older, maybe it loses some of that magic, but with the music, and with having children—I have three kids myself—it’s still there.”

It’s likely that Gestrin’s bandmates—saxophonist Cory Weeds, guitarist Bill Coon, and Denzal Sinclaire, who manages the difficult feat of singing while playing funky and expressive drums—have similarly warm memories of the season, for this is a band that’s all about having fun. 

Chris Gestrin. Photo by Laura Dunfield

“That sort of familiarity helps you: people instantly know what you’re doing, as opposed to just hearing some new compositions or original stuff where they don’t really know what’s happening.”

It might also be another of jazz impresario and Cellar Live record-label owner Weeds’ cunning ploys to attract more listeners to his music of choice, as Gestrin concedes. 

“Yeah, it’s like that,” he says, laughing. “It’s more accessible. You can do unique and quirky arrangements of a lot of these tunes, and people kind of understand what you’re saying because they know the tunes so well. That sort of familiarity helps you: people instantly know what you’re doing, as opposed to just hearing some new compositions or original stuff where they don’t really know what’s happening. They can kind of hear what’s happening with this.”

As well, he continues, the Kings genuinely love playing together. 

“With Denzal, whenever he sings people just melt, because they love his voice. But our sets are half instrumental and half vocal things, and the fact that he plays drums while he’s singing is really impressive for anyone,” the organist explains. “Cory does most of the talking; I think he’s the best of us at being a front man. And, I don’t know, Bill and I, we’ve done a bunch of the arrangements… Meredith says that ‘We bring the class.’ You can use that!

“Over the years Cory’s been the one who organizes most of this: he books the tours and the concerts and all of that, and I’ve done more of the arrangements, so maybe I’m the Christmas kingpin in that sense. But I’d say it’s collaborative, musically, and it works with our different personalities.”

It’s time for Gestrin and Bates to board their ferry, but before they go the keyboardist drops a hint that while every B3 Kings show is a pleasure, there might be more under the tree next year than this. 

“I was trying to look at all our albums, and the first thing we recorded was in 2005,” he notes. “And then we did another one in 2012, and another one in 2019. So I went ‘Wow, they’re seven years apart!’ So next year, 2026, we’ve got to keep it going, right? It’s been seven years, so it’s time for another one—and I’m totally into it!”

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