The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (FIJM) celebrated year 30.\u00a0 Thanks to its efficient publicity department you already know that.\u00a0 My personal \u201chandler\u201d on the international press desk was the multinational Carola Duran who instinctively knew how to calm our consternation when we asked for tickets to long sold-out indoor events.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s begin with the spanking new physical plant.\u00a0 The new pressroom is in a Canadian government gifted building just off the Festival grounds (Place des Arts).\u00a0 It is spacious and welcoming with a bar serving beer, wine, water, both flat and gaseous, and a new pleasant wrinkle: an espresso machine for coffee, latte and cappuccino, all gratuit.\u00a0 One could spend most of one\u2019s time hanging out speaking with fellow fourth estaters you haven\u2019t seen in a year(s) or perhaps ever.\u00a0 I was there over our Independence Day weekend (July 2-6) \u2013FIJM ran from June 30-July 12– when the rain came and went not daily, but hourly. No exaggeration that.<\/p>\n
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As most of the events were presented outdoors you\u2019d think this would have posed an attendance problem. FIJM visitors and locals alike simply raised umbrellas; the ever-fashionable Montr\u00e9alers donned colorful foul weather gear and boots and carried their Starbucks containers.\u00a0 The temps, they were on the cool side.<\/p>\n
For example, Stevie Wonder gave a free\u2013to the public; he got paid\u2014concert before an audience of upwards of a guestimated quarter million souls. FIJM founder Andre Menard told me that extra police were called in not to quell any unrest, but for safety reasons as more streets had to be closed.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t there \u2013I eschew large crowds\u2014but I was told by relatives who live nearby that they were sitting so far away that even the allegory of the cave didn\u2019t apply. They couldn\u2019t see the giant screens and the sound was bouncing off Mont Royal north of Sherbrook (the northern boundary of the festival) where viewers were ensconced.\u00a0 Oh yes, my point: it poured, twice. No one went home.<\/p>\n
The executives-in-charge said that overall attendance was the same, but I found more room to move about the Place than in years past. (This may have been my 13th<\/sup> or 14th <\/sup> Only one person south of the 48th<\/sup> parallel has more FIJM sorties and that\u2019s WBGO\u2019s Michael Bourne with 17.\u00a0 He also wins with more trips to our favorite food haunt, Pizzadelic.)<\/p>\n For the uninitiated FIJM is the largest Jazz Festival in the world with multiple events talking place in- and out-of-doors simultaneously.\u00a0 You can\u2019t wander anywhere and not hear music. There\u2019s blues, Cajun, klezmer, African, reggae, pop, rock, you name the genre they\u2019ve got it.\u00a0 If you want the many phases of jazz and only jazz you can have that, too.<\/p>\n Between the dark clouds I drifted to the main Alcan Rio Tinto stage, which still bore a GM logo. [It was announced after my departure that Toronto Dominion Bank — TD — would replace GM as the new lead sponsor.]\u00a0 There appeared to be more youth bands than in years past. One particular band, Stageband La Decouverte, contained players so young \u2013how young were they?–\u00a0 they were so young that the girls appeared to be not yet into training bras, and the boys looked like after they played they were going back to complete the signs on their tree houses, \u201cNo Girls Allowed.\u201d But they read those stock charts down, let me tell you. Some solos may have been written out for them, but others were not. They swung hard and enthusiastically.<\/p>\n The indoor, i.e., ticketed, concerts showed off the festive side of the 30th<\/sup> Anny.\u00a0 This weekend Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck were just two of the headliners. Brubeck played two Canadian concerts despite his son Michael\u2019s death.\u00a0 \u201cI just had to do it for you guys,\u201d he told Menard in a teary moment.\u00a0 Both the Bennett and Bubeck were sellouts in the largest venue, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.<\/p>\n As was a concert featuring Al Jarreau with vocalist Molly Johnson as his opener.\u00a0 Johnson does cutesy patter followed by mellower songs, which were pleasant enough.\u00a0 I quickly tired of the patter and the songs went nowhere, for more than an hour.\u00a0 I found out later from some of her Toronto neighbors that she does that same repertoire ad nauseum. Jarreau was not much better. He did his shtick. Now Jarreau shtick is better than a whole lot of others, but shtick it was nonetheless. The packed house dug it; I left early to catch Branford Marsalis next door.<\/p>\n The second largest venue, Theatre Maisonneuve, was home to Marsalis\u2019 Quartet featuring Joey Calderazzo on keys. Refreshing straight ahead hard blowing bebop extensions is what this band is all about.\u00a0 Powerful doesn\u2019t cover the topic.\u00a0 Branford announced the mostly unfamiliar music save Monk\u2019s \u201cRhythmning.\u201d Even those \u201cRhythm\u201d changes took on new meaning this night. The sold out house was rapt and attentive and knew when to cheer and applaud loudly. It is so heartwarming to see that.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the reasons I keep coming back to FIJM.<\/p>\n Earlier in Maisonneuve was the bus and truck version of Bob Belden\u2019s brilliant and unique conception Miles from India<\/em> [ed. note: Belden has ended his association with the Miles from India<\/em> band] Some of the personnel on this tour were Nicholas Payton, trumpet, Bill Evans, tenor and soprano and JJA Jazz Award alto sax winner Rudresh Mahanthappa; Pete Cosey, guitar; Robert Irving III, keys; drummers Lenny White, Ndugu Chancler and Vince Wilburn plus six Indian musicians, including Badal Roy, on various percussion, sitar and mandolin.<\/p>\n The CD does not do justice to Belden\u2019s creation [ed. note: credit due also to Louis Banks]. The Indian musicians are spread out center stage with the Western instrumentalists at the edges. The drummers are splayed out in the rear. It is a feast for all the senses as you can feel every pulse. The selections are from Kind of Blue<\/em>, E.S.P.<\/em>, Bitches Brew<\/em> and later electric Miles, all East Indian inflected with ample space for percussive abstracts. This was another \u201chot ticket\u201d concert with the attendees on their feet clapping rhythmically and screaming for encores.<\/p>\n This was my favorite concert of the weekend.<\/p>\n (An aside here: both the very beautiful and acoustically piquant Wilfred-Pelletier and Theatre Maisonneuve have no center aisle.\u00a0 Each row contains some 30 seats.\u00a0 It appears to me that if you\u2019re in the middle, which I was, you have serious problems in an emergency of any kind.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t the only one who noticed.)<\/p>\n In other highlights, saxophonist Sadao Watanabe made a rare Western appearance with an all-Japanese band. Watanabe, an early pop-jazz fusion artist, played a set of familiar-sounding things perfectly performed, as his is wont. As I had just arrived after a miserably long and wet drive north from New York City, I fell out early.<\/p>\n Guitars were billed as the featured events for the third year. There was a guitar exhibit and many guitarists played. I caught Frank Vignola doing a short string trio \u2013rhythm guitar and bass– set of Django Reinhardt-flavored tunes, as well as a more traditional trio led by Canadian Sylvain Provost. Nice contrast there as Vignola was hot and fleetingly virtuosic, Provost more laid back.<\/p>\n But for me it was saxophones. Lee Konitz played a set of tunes with a group called Minsarah. Straight out of the book of his old boss Lenny Tristano, the alto saxist played pure improvs. As Phil Woods said, \u201cYou can\u2019t steal a Lee Konitz lick because he hasn\u2019t got any.\u201d The acoustic hall Gesu, which is in the basement of a church, is a perfect venue for Konitz. At one point he put a rag in the bell of his horn as a mute. Gesu is an intimate space where you get to know the players real fast. It\u2019s become my favorite.<\/p>\n In addition to Marsalis and Konitz, the pairing of Joshua Redman and Joe Lovano was everything you\u2019d expect. Taking pages from historic tenor duels the reports from the scalped ticket Gesu was that they blew a hole in the bell tower with “Blues Up \u2018n\u2019 Down” then encored with “Body and Soul.” <\/em>Talk about fire and ice. Chilean reporter Pepe Hosiasson noted that though he was exhausted from his long flight he would not give up his seat. \u201cI fell into bed a very happy man,\u201d he said the next day.<\/p>\n In the new Festival Headquarters there is a nightclub that replaced Spectrum, the converted movie theatre that was lost to the wreckers ball. Dubbed Astral, it was there I saw a local 10-piece band with the Franglish title Le Large Ensemble. Its instrumentation includes a couple of drummers\/percussionists, guitarists and a frontline of saxes and trumpet re-imagining music of various styles and composers including Miles Davis.<\/p>\n Speaking of clubs, a highlight of my visits to Montreal, fest or no, is always a visit to Upstairs.\u00a0 Slightly off the beaten path, this small venue enjoys crowds that are unusually enthusiastic and knowledgeable. (And the Chilean chef is killing.) This time it was Sheila Jordan, with whom I shared a birthday celebration this past November at Dizzy\u2019s Club in Jazz at Lincoln Center.\u00a0 She turned 80; me 70. Ms. Jordan, who loves to say that she loved Charlie Parker so much she married his piano player (first name Duke), did a wonderful creatively improvised set of scat and vocalese. She was accompanied by the local Jeff Johnston Trio, which kept up with her every nuance. Not easy to do.<\/p>\n If it sounds like I was kept busy during my abbreviated stay at FIJM, mix in dinner with cousins and some hang time on the one sunny day and you\u2019ve got it about right. But I miss that the pressroom was no longer in the hotel where the musicians stay. There I could slap more palms, grab some greeting hugs and exchange road war stories. For me that\u2019s an important part of what jazz life is about.<\/p>\n By the way, you need your passport to get in and out of Canada; drivers\u2019 license notwithstanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FIJM is the largest Jazz Festival in the world with multiple events talking place in- and out-of-doors simultaneously. You can\u2019t wander anywhere and not hear music. There\u2019s blues, Cajun, klezmer, African, reggae, pop, rock, you name the genre they\u2019ve got it. If you want the many phases of jazz and only jazz you can have that, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jazzhouse.org\/diary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}