Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Chidiac creating B.C. buzz

Vancouver is getting a sense of a fast-rising musician, but Prince George has known of him for a long time. Victoria's music scene can also vouch for Jaron Chidiac. His path to B.C.
EXTRAjaron-chidiac.02_22201.jpg
Prince George musician Jaron Chidiac is catching on in the Vancouver music scene. The Best of Vancouver finalist has an EP on the market, an album in progress, and several Lower Mainland concert dates coming up with his band

Vancouver is getting a sense of a fast-rising musician, but Prince George has known of him for a long time. Victoria's music scene can also vouch for Jaron Chidiac. His path to B.C. buzz started here, passed through the provincial capital and is now causing clamour in the always hot Lower Mainland musical machine.

Chidiac has recently released a four-song EP that's gotten traction with listeners and he's working on more recordings, but it is his live presence that has Vancouver hands clapping. He was among the final four for Live Acts Presents annual Best In Vancouver event, playing that showcase with Porcelain Sky, Robots & Gods and Out Of The Nowhere.

"I didn't win but it was a solid experience for me anyway, and a lot of opportunities have come my way because of that event," Chidiac said. He booked other gigs, he befriended some of the other musicians who were up on the Best In Vancouver stage with him, he established his own band connections instead of being a lone gunman all the time as he had been, and he forged a rapport with a couple of the judges and that relationship has been providing useful input on his next career steps.

Chidiac moved to Vancouver in 2015 after a few years in Victoria. It was a step he took with initial trepidation but something told him it was the correct thing to do at the time and he couldn't have imagined the good time it would be for his musical life.

"I had heard that the music scene in Vancouver was cliquey, everyone was a snob, new people weren't welcome but it couldn't have been more backwards," Chidiac told The Citizen. "It was nothing but a warm teddy bear hug, right from the start. The networking was easygoing, people were interested and supportive in what I was doing and I saw that for other people, too. I started playing a lot, getting a bunch of new opportunities, and Live Acts is one of the main promotion companies here and they have been terrific for me. I was playing by myself at that point but they encouraged me to take it to the next level and get a band together. Everything is building."

Going back to his boyhood, his career has been building almost from his own personal day one. His mom and dad are both musically inclined, and his mom especially took an interest in developing his music skills with a lot of encouragement from his father.

"When I was younger I liked to sing and put on small plays and being the centre of that kind of attention. It made me happy," he said. "My parents wanted to keep us active so I was also put into a lot of sports and activities, and when I turned 13 my mom told me about a play she was in, a musical, and she told me to audition as well."

It was for Bonnie Leach's Excalibur Theatre Arts production of Oliver. "I got in as a chorus boy, and one of Fagin's pickpockets." He would never shake the feeling of the adrenaline fires burning in his belly as the opening scene was about to burst into action each night at the Prince George Playhouse. It was like a drug.

His did seven years of Excalibur shows after that, culminating in the role of Friedrich Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.

He also performed in an operatic production by the Prince George Symphony Orchestra.

Musical theatre and opera are close cousins. Rock 'n' roll is a more distant relative. Chidiac happened to have a vocal teacher at the Prince George Conservatory of Music who wanted to introduce him and a set of classmates to this exciting relation. Jordan Dyck was a coach with classical background, he taught a classical foundation, but on the side he also had a School of Rock just like the namesake movie.

"I was strictly a classical vocalist. I had no concept of rock songs," said Chidiac. "But I just knew I could do this cool thing with my vocal chords and School of Rock was great for taking me into a new world. I was in that group for seven years. One of the other members was in it with me that whole time, Nathan Giede, and we wanted to keep playing together when we were out of the conservatory so we formed a band to do that. Beni Beattie was also with us. We were called Solar Cubes. Beni's dad Greg was teaching me the bass, and I was the bass player in the band, but I knew I wanted to keep playing music no matter what my future held so I also started teaching myself guitar along the way."

Solar Cubes eventually faded away. Chidiac moved to Victoria. He found his way to other musicians down there who worked with him on songwriting and performance skills. His music evolved.

On of the professional musicians who had the most profound influences on his burgeoning craftsmanship was Australian progressive roots rocker John Butler. Chidiac's inner bass player caught Butler's groove and opened wide the doors of composition.

"I still credit a lot of my play style to learning the bass first," Chidiac said. "He uses a lot of open tuning, and that turns into a very rhythmic kind of guitar playing, a spacious, groovy-heavy melody. I saw the John Butler Trio in Vancouver at the Commodore Ballroom and got lucky enough to bump into him off-stage. I got into a great conversation with him. It just makes me appreciate what I do all the more. He is one of the most important players in my mind, and there we were, talking together. Music brings people together. Even during the Best of Vancouver competition, the host told everybody that the whole point wasn't to find a winner, the whole point was to build a music community."

One of the community connections that has most affected Chidiac, and inspired the "pay it forward" attitude, is the Nimbus School of Recording Arts. Part of the programming there calls on the students to do outreach and work with existing musicians for their education projects. Chidiac has been included in some of that. Being a Nimbus guinea pig has contributed invaluably to his own advancement.

He's helping pay the favour back by being one of the acts on stage at the famed Vancouver nightclub The Roxy for a concert event on March 7 called Nimbus Night.

He's also opening for Robots & Gods at a concert spawned by the Best of Vancouver competition (Rs&Gs were the winners). The two bands will be at Studio Records (the first vinyl record store and bar combo in North America) for a performance showcase on Feb. 18.

What hasn't been scheduled but is high on Chidiac's wish list is a concert back in his hometown where the School of Rock graduate can show what post-grad rock 'n' roll looks like.